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The Problem of the Hermes of Olympia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

W. L. Cuttle
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Extract

Praxiteles worked from perhaps about 370 B.C. to about 330 B.C. : he was a prolific sculptor, both in bronze and marble. To him was ascribed the chief part in the introduction of a psychological interest into Greek statues, whereby they became individual rather than typical : he exaggerated the slimness and the curvature of the human body, and employed in a certain measure the technique of impressionism. These general characteristics were long recognized in a number of copies of his works, which were much appreciated by the Romans.

About A.D. 174 Pausanias, compiling his guide-book to Greece, visited Olympia and saw there in the Heraeum a marble group which he described as a ‘Hermes carrying the infant Dionysos : the work of Praxiteles’. This is the only reference in ancient literature to such a work by that sculptor.

Type
Articles
Information
Antiquity , Volume 8 , Issue 30 , June 1934 , pp. 151 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1934

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References

1 Gardner, E.A. Handbook of Greek Sculpture, p.388.Google Scholar

2 Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture,English edition, p.3.Google Scholar

3 A.J.A. 1931,35, 249ff.Google Scholar

4 Or ‘ punch ’ : the name ‘ pointed chisel’ is erroneous : see Casson, The Technique of Early Greek Sculpture, pp. 169 ff ., for the names of tools employed by sculptors.

5 See MissRichter, A.J.A. 35,p.280:she can only find two exceptions–the Marathon Bay boy, which has lost its support, and some Roman copies of the Aphrodite of Knidos, where the apparent disregard of the rule is to be ascribed to faulty restoration of the feet.Google Scholar

6 See Gardiner, Olympia, passim.Google Scholar

7 A. and Croiset, M. Histoire de la littérature grecque2 (1901), V, 683ff.Google Scholar

8 Imhoof–Gardner,A Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias, E. LXXXVIII.

9 Ibid., N. V, N. VI, N. VII.

10 Historia Numorum2 ,p. 452.

11 Greek Coins,p.166.

12 sp. cit. p. 97 ; PLATES, T. IV, T. v ; also illustrated by Seltman, 9. cit. pl. xxxv, 12,and in Guide to Principal Coins of the Greeks, III.B.49.

13 Robert, Archaeologische Hermeneutik, pp.338ff.Google Scholar

14 Journal of Hellenic Studies,1932,52, p.22.Google Scholar