Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-8kt4b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-30T01:29:12.559Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Argive Hera of Polycleitus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

Of all the renderings of the goddess Hera, the gold and ivory statue by Polycleitus in the Heraeum near Argos was the most famous, and was considered by the ancients one of the most beautiful works of Greek art. It certainly held its place beside the masterpieces of Phidias, and is even called by Strabo the most beautiful of all.

As in the case of the Zeus and Athene of Phidias, and the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles, it is most natural that numerous attempts were made in the past to identify this Polycleitan Hera with some extant monument. And, as the most beautiful Aphrodite extant, the Melian Aphrodite in the Louvre, was at once singled out as representing the most famous statue of which there is record in ancient authors, so the famous colossal mask of Hera, known as the Juno Ludovisi, was the first to be identified with the great Polycleitan statue. This identification has been abandoned. Then followed the so-called Farnese Hera, the claims of which were powerfully upheld by Brunn.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1901

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 30 note 1 Strabo, viii. p. 372. ἐν ᾦ (Heraion) τὰ Πολυκλείτου ξόανα τῇ μὲν τὲχνῃ κάλλιστα τῶν πάντων πολυτελείᾳ δὲ καὶ μεγέθει τῶν Φειδίου λειπόμενα What the plural here means I am unable to say. It may have included the Hebe by Naucydes placed beside her. We must of course not lay too much stress upon the testimony of Strabo, who does not show himself the most discriminating art-critic.

page 30 note 2 Overbeck, , Kunstmythol. iii. pp. 50 and 83Google Scholar. Atlas, Taf. IX. 7 and 8. The Ludovisi is considered by some to be more of the type established by Praxiteles. To me the so-called Hera Pontini possesses more of the characteristics of that artist. Others see in the Ludovisi head features of Lysippian art. This may be so; but there are to my mind survivals of Polycleitan art which might well make this a modification belonging to the Lysippian period in which traits of the Polycleitan type have survived.

page 30 note 3 Brunn, , Bullet. dell' Inst. Arch. Rome, 1846 p. 124Google Scholar seq. Annali, 1864 p. 298 seq. Overbeck, , Gr. Kunstmythologie iii. p. 50Google Scholar seq., Atlas, Taf. IX. 142. Furtwängler, , Meisterwerke pp. 557Google Scholar and 76 seq.

page 30 note 4 The most recent commentators of Pausanias (Blümner-Hitzig, ii. note p. 566) say: ‘Es ist noch nicht gelungen eine statuarische Replik derselben nachzuweisen.Overbeck, , Gr. Kunstmythologie, iii. p. 51Google Scholar, ‘dass wir nach dem gegenwärtigen Stand unseres Wissens nicht zu sagen vermögen, weder dass Polyklet das kanonische Heraideal geschaffen habe, noch welches die von ihm festgestellten massgebenden Züge dieses Ideales, namentlich was den Typus des Kopfes anlangt gewesen seien.

page 31 note 1 Greek and Roman Antiquities in the Brit. Museum, 1880, No. 140, p. 62; Museum Marbles, xi. Pl. V.; Specimens of Anc. Sculpt. i. Pl. 23. Mansell's Photogr. No. 1279.

Restored: the neck, the whole nose, excepting top of bridge and half of left nostril; end of foremost curl on her left side as well as same on right side. Band and hair above in front within line of ear. We must ask the question why this piece is broken out in that manner. May it not have been a higher portion of Stephane with decorated work which was broken or cut away? Moreover the working of the hair behind this and on the crown of the head is so rough that it points to some more elaborate work from the front having surmounted it originally.

Dimensions:—

Height from chin to top of head … .28 mt. Greatest width taken across centre of the eyes … … … … … … .225 mt.

Depth from back to front … … … .225 mt.

From middle of forehead to end of chin … … … … … … .17 mt.

From end of cheek-bone to cheek-bone .143 mt.

Width between inner angles of eyes… .036 mt.

Width of bridge of nose on level of top of eye-lid… … … … … .022 mt.

Width of mouth … … … … … .048 mt.

page 32 note 1 παρθενία Paus. viii. 22, 2; Schol. Pind., Ol. 6, 149Google Scholar; Steph. Byz. v. Ερμιών

page 32 note 2 τελεία Paus. i. 1,4; viii. 9, 1; ix. 2, 5; viii. 22, 2 ἐς τὴν Στύμφαλον ὠνόμασεν ὁ Τήμενος χήραν) Aristoph., Thesm. 973.Google Scholar

page 32 note 3 βασίλεια Phoron. ap. Clem. Str. i. p. 418; Aesch. Suppl. 291; Sen. Agam. 349; Appul. M. 6, 4; Kaibel, , Epigr. 822.Google Scholar

page 32 note 4 Preller, , Gr. Myth. Είλείθυια i.4 p. 171Google Scholar; ζυγία p. 170; suckling, p. 171.

page 32 note 5 In an extremely ingenious and interesting paper (Hermes, xxxv. 1900, pp. 141 seq.)— with some of the conclusions of which I cannot however agree—Prof. C. Robert draws most instructive inferences concerning the works and the dates of some Greek sculptors—notably of Polycleitus—from a thorough investigation of the list of Olympian victors recently found and published by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt in the Oxyrhynchos Papyri. He thus gives us the striking new information that the early work of Polycleitus (the Kyniskos) dates back to the year 460 B.C. (p. 188), that he was born about 477 and that he had thus already passed the sixties (?) when he fashioned the Argive Hera. (Und als er die Hera schuf, war er, wie wir jetzt sehen, mindestens ein Sechziger. p. 186.)

page 33 note 1 Thueyd. iv. 133, cf. Waldstein, , Excavations of the Am. Sch. at the Heraeum of Argos, No. 1. London 1892, p. 3Google Scholar.

page 33 note 2 The passage referring to the statue of Hera, ii. 17, 4 reads as follows: τὸ δὲ ἄγαλμα τῆς Ηρας ἐπὶ θρόνου κάθηται μεγέθει μέγα, χρυσοῦ μὲν καὶ ἐλέφαντος Πολυκλείτου δὲ ἔργον ἔπεστι δέ οἱ στέφανος Χάριτας ἔχων καὶ Ωρας ἐπειργασ μένας καὶ τῶν χειρῶν τῇ μὲν καρπὸν φέρει τῇ δὲ σκῆπτρον . . . . . . κόκκυγα δὲ ἐπὶ τῷ σκήπ τρῳ καωῆσθαί φασι . . . . . Λέγεται δὲ παρεστηκέναι τῇ Ηρᾳ τέχνη Ναυκύδους ἄγαλμα Ηβης ἐλέφαντος καὶ τοῦτο καὶ χρυσοῦ

page 33 note 3 For the literature on this subject see Frazer, , Pausanias, Notes to vi. 6, 2Google Scholar; ii. 22, 7; vi. 17, 5. Robert, (Hermes, xxxv. (1900) p. 190Google Scholarseq.) makes Naucydes the brother of the elder Polycleitus.

page 33 note 4 Pausaniae Graeciae Descriptio, i. 2nd Part, p. 567 (Note to p. 423, 18).

page 34 note 1 I have consulted on this point my colleague Sir Richard Jebb, who has kindly sent me the following note on the passage, which, I am happy to find, confirms what I had myself suspected.

‘The words could mean:

(1) ‘An agalma, which stands by the Hera, is said to be one of Hebe, the work of Naucydes.’

In this case, the doubt implied would refer to the subject, as well as the author, of the agalma.

Or: (2) ‘An agalma of Hebe etc. … is said to be the work of Naucydes.’

The doubt would then refer to the authorship only.

If Pausanias meant: ‘It is said that an agalma of Hebe, the work of Naucydes, once stood by the Hera,’ he ought to have written (1) παραστῆναί ποτε or (2), if he meant παρεσ τηκέναι to be the inf. of the pluperf., παρεσ τηκέναι ποτέ (or some similar adverb).

As the text stands, λέγεται παρεστηκέναι would naturally mean ‘is said to stand.’ From the words, ἐλέφαντος καὶ τοῦτο καὶ χρυσοῦ I should rather infer that Pausanias had the agalma before his eyes; but this point cannot be pressed.

παρὰ δ᾿ αὐτήν Does this refer to (1) the Ηρα or (2) the Ηβη whose agalma has just been mentioned? The latter would be the more natural.’

page 34 note 2 Imhoof-Gardner, , Numism. Comment. etc. (Journal of Hellen. Stud. 1885)Google Scholar Pl. LIV. (I.) No. xv; Berlin Münzcat. i. No. xii., xiii., xv.; Frazer, , Paus. iii. p. 185Google Scholar, Fig. 30; Blümner-Hitzig, Paus. i. 2nd Part Taf. xvi., No. 20. Overbeck, Kunstmyth. iii. Münztafel iii. No. 1.

page 34 note 3 Imhoof-Gardner, ibid. No. xii. xiii., Brit. Mus. Catal. of Gr. Coins, Pelop. Argos, No 156; Head, , Historia Numor. p. 367Google Scholar; Frazer, ibid. p. 184; Blümner-Hitzig, ibid. No. 18. Overbeck, Kunstmyth. iii. Münztafel iii., Nos. 2 and 3.

page 34 note 4 Brit. Mus. Argos, Nos. 33, 34, 37, 35 and 40, 41; Imhoof-Gardner, ibid. No. xiv.; Overbeck, ibid. Münztafel, ii. No. 6; Percy Gardner, Types of Gr. Coins, Pl. VIII. No. 13; Blümner-Hitzig, ibid. No. 23.

page 34 note 5 Blümner-Hitzig, ibid. p. 566. ‘Dafür ist fast allgemein angenom men dass der schöne autonome Kopf argeiischer Didrachmen, die eben aus jener Zeit stammen, uns eine gute, wenn auch nicht absolut treue Vorstellung von dem Typus der polykletiscken Hera geben.’ But cf. Overbeck, , l.c., p. 44.Google Scholar

page 34 note 6 Meisterwerke, p. 413.

page 35 note 1 Overbeck, l.c. Münztafel, ii.

page 35 note 2 Friederichs, K., Der Doryphoros des Polyklet, Berlin, 1860Google Scholar; see for criticism of this, O. Rayet, Monuments de l'Art Antique, i., on Pl. 29.

page 35 note 3 Cf. Overbeck, , Die Antiken Schriftquellen, etc. p. 170Google Scholar, Nos. 952–964; p. 173, Nos. 967–977.

page 35 note 4 See the chapter on Polycleitus in Furtwängler's Meisterwerke, etc. (Masterpieces, etc. translated by Eugénie Sellers).

page 35 note 5 Michaelis, , ‘Die sogenannten Ephesischen Amazonenstatuen,’ Jahrbuch d. Kaiserl. Deutschen Arch. Instit. Berlin 1887, i. pp. 14Google Scholar, seq. Robert, op. cit. p. 190, considers the various types probably all to be Polycleitan, and thinks the ‘Berlin’ type to have been made between 450 and 440, the ‘Capitoline’ between 430–420 B.C.

page 35 note 6 Masterpieces, etc. p. 243. It is in no sense to diminish the merit of his discovery and his full claims to it, but to confirm it, if I say that I had independently come to the same conclusion about the earlier and later style of Polycleitus in the Doryphores and Diadumenos.

page 36 note 1 First (in 1893) in the Archaeolog. Studien H. Brunn dargebracht, repeated Masterpieces, p. 223. I have dealt exhaustively with this question in the forthcoming official publication. How any trained archaeologist could have considered the small marble head which Furtwängler compares with the marble head of ‘Hera’ from the Heraeum, which I first published in 1892, and find any resemblance is to me incomprehensible. The only point of contact is a superficial similarity in the curious braid on the top of the head which Furtwängler's head has in common with the Heraeum head as well as with the ‘Karyatides’ from the Erechtheum (and it is probably upon this that he and some others have seen an Attic character in the Heraeum head) His original attribution of his small head (now unwisely discarded by him) to the style of the Olympian pedimental figures, is much nearer the mark.

page 37 note 1 See my artirle on ‘A Head of Polycleitan Style etc.’ in American Journal of Arch. ix. (1894) p. 334.

page 38 note 1 The mistake as regards the sex of the head —especially with the restored neck which the ‘Bacchus’ had—is not a grave one and is easily incurred by any archaeologist, when an antique head (especially with such short hair) is severed from the body. In such cases doubts must often be felt. I need merely remind the reader that the beautiful head at Bologna which Furtwängler has so ingeniously restored to the Athene at Dresden and which he with much probability identifies with the Lemnian Athene of Phidias, was held by several authorities to be a male head. I also take this opportunity of stating that the authorities of the British Museum (who gave me every assistance in my research) could not be expected to discover the nature and attribution of the head. In the reproduction given here the female character of the head is made more obvious by the fact that the modern (male) neck has been omitted. We can as little expect that the officials of Museums should make all the discoveries concerning the objects in their care as that librarians should anticipate all the discoveries made by students in the manuscripts and books in their library.

page 39 note 1 See Overbeck, ibid. Münztafel, and Percy Gardner, Types of Gr. Coins, l.c.

page 39 note 2 The best illustration in Brunn Denkm. Gr. und Röm. Sculpt. Pl. VII. See also Collignon, , Hist. de la Sculpt. Grecque, ii. p. 141Google Scholar, Fig. 68.

page 40 note 1 See Olympia, Treu, die Sculpturen, Tafelband iii. Pls. X. and XI.; also Collignon, op. cit. i. Pls. VII.–VIII.

page 40 note 2 Rayet, Monum. de l'Art Gr. i. Pl. 39; Brunn, Denkm. Gr. und Röm. Sculpt. No. 294 first from our left, No. 295 first from our left.

page 40 note 3 See note, p. 44.

page 40 note 4 The Coins of Elis, p. 19.

page 41 note 1 Mr. G. F. Hill has drawn my attention to the fact that the prototype of these points is to be found in the points which are visible with the lens, if not with the naked eye, on all the early autonomous tetradrachms of Argos; in Pl. III., they are to be discovered, three in number, standing out from the top edge of the crown.

page 41 note 2 If this was so the words ἔπεστι and ἐπειρ γασμένας used by Pausanias would be the appropriate words for a diadem so ornamented.

page 41 note 3 Dr. Dressel of the Coin Department of the Berlin Museum informs me that Dr. Imhool-Blumer considers the crown on these coins to be the mural ‘turreted’ crown.

page 41 note 4 B.M. Cat. Italy, Croton, No. 88; Pandosia, No. 2.

page 41 note 5 Smith, C., Cat. Gr. and Etr. Vases, Brit. Mus. iii. p. 195Google Scholar, E. 257 (a).

page 41 note 6 See also the Hera on a vase quoted by Mr. Smith. from the Elite Ceramogr. i. Pl. 29.

page 41 note 7 Terracotta in the Brit. Mus., No. C. 102.

page 42 note 1 Cf. Waldstein, Excavations, etc. Pl. VII.

page 42 note 2 One of the students of our Cambridge School will shortly publish a more elaborate treatment of the development of this pattern in the successive stages of Greek art, especially in the Simae of Greek temples. According to Furtwängler the acanthus was first introduced into Attica in the Erechtheum.

page 42 note 3 Penrose, Principles of Athen. Archit. 2nd edit. ch. x.; Yorke, ‘Balustr. of Athena Nike, , Journ. Hellen. Stud. xiii. (1892, 3)Google Scholar, note to p. 273.

page 42 note 4 See note, p. 44.

page 42 note 5 Dr. Imhoof-Blumer considers it such.

page 43 note 1 In a paper which I have just sent to press, presenting the discovery of some reproductions of pedimental figures from the Parthenon, I am dealing more fully with this question.

page 43 note 2 Cf. the head published by Eugénie, Sellers, Journal Hellen. Stud. xiv. (1894) pp. 198Google Scholar seq. Pl. V.