Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller.

  • Karl Otfried Müller
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    64/664
    01. Poly crates 63, 3, till about 64, 1. E^ya noAv»5«r£/« Arist. PoL v, 9, 4. Pisistratus 55, 1.—63, 2 ; his sons till 67, 3. 1 77. Deeper causes lay in the progressive development of Grecian life itself. Epic poetry, which put the field of my- thology into a state of cultivation for the plastic art, had well nigh exhausted its subject about the 50th Olympiad. Out of it grew up lyric and dramatic poetry side by side with 2 sculpture. Gymnastics and orchestics, arts Avhich were exer- cised with the greatest zeal, but which the Homeric age knew not yet in that state of improvement to which they were car- ried by the Doric race, had reached their zenith nearly about the fiftieth Olympiad; they left behind, on the one hand, a lively enthusiasm for the beautiful and significant in the hu- man form, and, on the other, awakened the desire to perpetu- ate by statues the remembrance especially of the strength and valour of victorious combatants. , 1. The Hesiodic bards come down to about the 40th 01. Pisander, 01. 33—40, made Hercules with the lion's hide and club, as the plastic art afterwards represented him. Dor. i. p. 451. The epic materials were already transformed into lyric by Stesichorus (50). 2. Hellenic nudity began at Olympia on the race-course (in the wrestling games later) with Orsippus the Megarian, 01.15. C. I. i. p. 553 ; but it emanated especially from Crete and Sparta. ' Aywj/sj (jri<pa.vnctt (in Homer there are merely xQ^fiotrlrxt) [this word generally misunderstood] at Olympia since the 7th 01. Gymnastics flourished in an especial man- ner at Sparta (chiefly 20—50), in ^gina (45—80), with great splendour at Crotona (50—75). In the time of Thaletas, Sacadas, &c. (01. 40—50), the gymnopaedic, hyporchematic, and other kinds of orchestics were already cultivated in a highly artistic manner ; the oldest tragedians from the time of Thes- pis (01. 61) were especially masters of the dance. The works of the an- cient artists, according to Athen. xiv. p. 629 b. contained much that was borrowed from the ancient art of dancing. 1 78. By the forming of athletes art was now first directed to a more accurate study of nature, of which it, however, also very soon took advantage in the representations of gods and 2 heroes. In the temples of the gods, highly animated forms now took, as consecrated gifts, the place of the cauldrons, tripods, &c., which had formerly constituted the principal 3 ofierings. However, the imitation of natural forms bore, as it does in every art which begins with industry and love, a severe character, and the connexion with the wooden images of the earlier period hindered in many points the striving after nature and truth. 1. On the study of nature as basis of the development of genuine art,'Schorn, Studien der Griech. Kunstlcr, p. 174, who here draws cor- rectly the boundary between art and handicraft.