Six Greek sculptors / by Ernest A. Gardner.

  • Ernest Arthur Gardner
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Six Greek sculptors / by Ernest A. Gardner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    283/448 page 165
    an athlete anointing himself, standing in much the same position, with his right hand holding the oil-flask above his head. As the Satyr is also somewhat simpler and severer in style than other Praxitelean works, it is usually assigned to the earlier years of Praxiteles, while he was still under the influence of his predecessors. Groups of two figures, such as this of Dionysus and the satyr who attends him, became common in later branches of the Praxitelean school. They offer an admirable opportunity for contrast and harmony in the composition and relation of the god and his attendant, as well as for the pleasing variety of their character and mood. There are none among the gods in whose representa¬ tion we should expect the art of Praxiteles to find a more congenial task than Apollo and Artemis, and we find accordingly that several statues of these deities are recorded among his works, and that many extant figures of them in our museums are derived more or less directly from him or from his pupils. Of a group of the two with their mother Leto, which he made for Mantinea, only the basis has been found ; and to this we must recur later when considering another aspect of his art. Perhaps the best known statue of Apollo attributed to him is one of some mythological interest, the Sauroctonus, or lizard-slayer. The origin of the
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3