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.

    317/448 page 191
    nature. Above all, there is a warmth of life such as is to be seen in only a few of the heads that have survived from ancient times. Various statues of Aphrodite by Scopas are recorded, one of them later in Rome, in which he is said to have rivalled Praxiteles himself in his rendering of the goddess nude. The motive of the bath, evidently present in this statue as in the Cnidian Aphrodite, suggests the comparison; and, if it is justified, we seem to have in this head some kind of contemporary replica of Scopas’ work. Another head of a goddess that has often been quoted as showing resemblance to the style of Scopas is the one found to the south of the Acropolis in Athens.1 This seems to have been a well-known work, as there is a copy of it— or of its original—in Berlin. Though it has not quite the same correspondence in details to the Tegea heads that we see in the Laurium head, it shows a good deal of the same character, in the simple and massive forms, the parted lips and dilated nostrils, and in the wide- open and deeply shadowed eyes. The hair, with its crisp and rippled texture, is in contrast with the soft Praxitelean treatment of female hair, but resembles what we see in the Demeter of Cnidus, another work that must certainly be placed in the same category, even if its relation to Scopas himself be not closer. 1 Handbook, Fig. 101.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3