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The Greek sculptor Myron (active ca. 470-450 B.C.) was one of the most renowned sculptors of the early classical period.
Myron was born at Eleutherai on the Attic side of Mt. Kithairon, probably before 500 B.C. We do not know his father's name; his teacher is said by Pliny the Elder to have been Hageladas, the principal caster of monumental bronze statues at Argos about 500. Myron established no school, his only known pupil being his son Lykios. His period of major activity seems to have been during the quarter century following the decisive Greek victories over the Persians in 480-479.
Our knowledge of Myron's work comes from ancient literary sources, among the most important of which is Pliny. Pausanias, who traveled through Greece during the third quarter of the 2d century A.D., contributes additional important information about works of Myron still visible. Although Myron made at least one cult statue, an image of Hekate on Aegina, most of his recorded works, at least 21 of which are mentioned by classical authors, were votive in nature: dedications of victorious athletes and worshipers at sanctuaries. His statues are said to have been scattered in sanctuaries throughout the Greek world, from Sicily to Ionia, with a concentration on the Athenian Acropolis. As far as is known, Myron worked exclusively in bronze, with the exception of the Hekate, done in wood. He also fashioned vessels in metal, following a pattern of involvement in the minor arts common to sculptors in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C.
Of Myron's recorded works, there are two for which little or no doubt remains for identification through copies. The first is the famous Diskobolos, or Discus Thrower. Lucian's description of the statue, which depicts the midpoint of the youthful athlete's windup for the throw, is almost unanimously considered to refer to a statue of which several large-scale marble copies exist (for example, the Lancelotti statue and the copy from Castel Porziano, both in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome), as well as statuettes and depictions on gems. The composition, highly rhythmical as well as seemingly unstable, reflects an "experimental" spirit that runs through many other works of early classical sculpture, which explored many variations in poses of violent action and arrested movement. The Diskobolos is widely admired for its particular resolution of the exertion and instability of an instant of motion into a composition of unified balance and harmony. The statue is designed within a single plane, apparently meant to be seen from the sides only. Its date must be very near 450 B.C.; its subject and occasion for execution, most likely an athletic victory, remain unknown.
Also identified beyond reasonable doubt is a group of Athena and the satyr Marsyas, which stood on the Athenian Acropolis. Athena has thrown down the flutes, and Marsyas is about to pick them up. The principal copy of the Marsyas is in the Vatican Museums, Rome. The Athena has been recognized in a Roman statue in the Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt am Main. Details missing from the two copies can be seen on Athenian bronze coins struck under emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-138) and an Attic red-figured oinochoe of the third quarter of the 5th century B.C. The composition, in which both figures move away from each other and the central element, the fateful flutes, is tense with drama and foreshadows the centripetal arrangement given to the contest of Athena and Poseidon in the west pediment of the Parthenon.
Myron's statues of athletes elicited much admiration in antiquity; among these, the statue of Ladas, an Olympic victor in the footrace, seems to have captured the fleetness of the runner, poised on tiptoe at the start of the race. No copies of this statue have been identified. Numerous scholarly efforts to attribute male heads of early classical style to Myron must remain tentative. Among his more ambitious compositions is the over-life-size group of three figures that stood in the Heraion at Samos; in Franz Willemsen's view (1965), it may represent the introduction of Herakles to Olympos.
Myron also was famous as a sculptor of animals; his Heifer on the Acropolis was particularly well known. That this statue, an appropriate votive offering, had widespread influence among his contemporaries and successors cannot be doubted; again, scholarly attempts to identify individual marble sculptures or bronze statuettes as copies of the Heifer cannot be definitely proved.
Ancient critical opinion held that Myron fell short of full classical perfection. Most modern scholars consider him to be the great experimental innovator of the early classical period ("Severe style").
Further Reading
For a discussion of the ancient sources on Myron see Jerome J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece, 1400-31 B.C. (1965). Scholarly discussions of Myron are found in Franz Willemsen's article "Myron" in the Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. 10 (1965); G.M.A. Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks (4th ed. 1970); and B. S. Ridgway, The Severe Style in Greek Sculpture (1970).
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Myron of (Greek Μύρων) working circa 480-440 BC, was an Athenian sculptor from the mid-fifth century BC.[1] He was born in Eleutherae on the borders of Boeotia and Attica. According to Pliny's Natural History, Ageladas of Argos was his teacher.[2]
The traveller Pausanias noted sculptures by Myron that remained in situ in the second century CE. Chionis, a seventh century Olympic victor from Sparta was commemorated in an idealized bronze by Myron[3]
He worked almost exclusively in bronze:[4] and though he made some statues of gods and heroes, his fame rested principally upon his representations of athletes, in which he made a revolution, according to commentators in Antiquity, by introducing greater boldness of pose and a more perfect rhythm, subordinating the parts to the whole. Pliny's remark that Myron's works were numerosior than those of Polycleitus and "more diligent"[5] seem to suggest that they were considered more harmonious in proportions (numeri) and at the same time more convincing in their realism: diligentia connoted "attentive care to fine points", a quality that, in moderation, was characteristic of the best works of art, according to critics in Antiquity.[6]
His most famous works according to Pliny's Natural History (34.57-59) were a heifer, a dog (canem, Cerberus?), a Perseus, a satyr— Marsyas— admiring the flute and Minerva (Athena), a Hercules, which was taken to the shrine dedicated by Pompey the Great at the Circus Maximus, Discobolus (the discus thrower), and an Apollo for Ephesus, "which Antony the triumvir took from the Ephesians, but the deified Augustus restored it again after being warned in a dream".[7] The Early Imperial Roman writers consistently rated Myron among the greatest of Greek sculptors, a sign that his contemporaneous reputation had remained high.
The heifer seems to have earned its fame mainly by serving as a peg on which to hang epigrams,[8] which tell us nothing about the pose of the animal. An epigram[9] on Ladas, the fleetest runner of his time, notes that he was commemorated in a sculpture by Myron; of Myron's Ladas there is no known copy. A description by Lucian[10] conclusively identifies as Myron's the Discobolus or "Discus-Thrower", of which several copies exist, of which the best is in the Palazzo Massimi alle Terme, Rome. Strabo also registers stray comments on Myron, especially a large group at Samos; several surviving heads were identified as copies of Myron's Samian Athena by C.K. Jenkins in 1926.[11]
A marble figure in the Lateran Museum, which is now restored as a dancing satyr, is almost certainly a copy of a work of Myron, a Marsyas desirous of picking up the aulos which Athena had thrown away.[12] The full group is copied on coins of Athens, on a vase and in a relief which represent Marsyas as oscillating between curiosity and the fear of the displeasure of Athena.
The ancient critics say of Myron that, while he succeeded admirably in giving life and motion to his figures, he did not succeed in rendering the emotions of the mind. This agrees with the extant evidence, in a certain degree, though not perfectly. The bodies of his men are of far greater excellence than the heads. The face of the Marsyas is almost a mask; but from the attitude we gain a vivid impression of the passions which sway him. The face of the discus-thrower is calm and unruffled; but all the muscles of his body are concentrated in an effort.
A considerable number of other extant works were ascribed to the school or the influence of Myron by Adolf Furtwängler.[13] These attributions have not stood up to the test of time.
A papyrus from Oxyrhyncus gives dates of victors at Olympia of whom Myron made statues of the athlete Timanthes, victorious at Olympia in 456 BC, and of Lycinus, victorious in 448 and 444. This helps us to fix his date. He was a contemporary, but a somewhat older contemporary, of Pheidias and Polykleitos.[14]
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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