Polykleitos

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(b Argos or Sikyon, fl c. 450-c. 415 BC). Greek sculptor. Along with Pheidias, with whom he is often compared in the sources, Polykleitos was the most important sculptor in bronze of the 5th century BC. He wrote a manual (the Canon) and headed the first recorded major 'school' of sculptors, which lasted three generations, and he influenced not only the sculpture of his own time but also Hellenistic and Roman sculpture.

See the Abbreviations for further details.

Polykleitos (active ca. 450-420 B.C.), one of the great innovative Greek sculptors of the 5th century, stands alone in his concentration on the problems of the nude, male human body, for which he evolved a standard of proportion and representation that in one way or another influenced the subsequent development of sculpture in Western civilization.

Polykleitos, the elder of two sculptors of this name, was a master bronze caster of the Argive school. His earliest works, probably done about 450 B.C. or a little earlier, are statues of victors in athletic contests. The end of his career cannot have come long after 423, when the old temple of Hera in Argos burned and Polykleitos made a gold-and-ivory seated cult statue of Hera for the new temple.

In contrast to his contemporary Phidias, whose favorite subjects were gods and goddesses, Polykleitos portrayed mortals. He is most famous for creating an ideal nude male figure and explaining it in a book, calling both the Canon, that is, "rule" or "example." The Doryphoros, or spear bearer, a statue of a standing nude youth, has been identified as this statue, which Cicero and Pausanius plausibly attributed to Polykleitos. The original statue was in bronze; it is known from many copies, including excellent marble copies (Museo Nazionale, Naples; Uffizi, Florence). The figure is squarely built and stands in a relaxed contrapposto position, weight on right leg, left hand bent backward to hold a spear shaft over his shoulder. The identification most often suggested for the Doryphoros is Achilles. The face still preserves traces of early classical severity. Here, the human body now reacts in a relaxed, organic manner, with every part of the figure responding naturally to the principal action. The stocky torso is treated in an almost architectonic fashion, with chest and abdominal areas sharply separated from one another. That the figure was painstakingly designed cannot be denied; the system of proportions that Polykleitos embodied in his Canon, however, has so far eluded scholars.

The second work that can be attributed with reasonable probability to Polykleitos is a more slender and graceful athlete, the Diadoumenos, or youth tying a victor's fillet around his head. It is likely that this statue is considerably later than the Doryphoros, perhaps finished about 430 B.C. While tectonic organization, pose, and modeling all show a close relationship to the Doryphoros, extension of the arms horizontally away from the body at shoulder height in a more complex and active gesture points to a later, more evolved stage in Polykleitos's stylistic development. Of the numerous copies, an over-life-size marble version from Delos (National Museum, Athens) and a large terra-cotta statuette (Metropolitan Museum, New York) are outstanding. In one interpretation, the figure represents Apollo, the personification of victory; however, a specific, although unknown, human victor seems more likely.

A Herakles and a Hermes are attributed by Cicero (Deoratore) and Pliny (Natural History) to Polykleitos. The Herakles is still relatively little known; while several excellent heads have been shown with some probability to represent the Hermes, the position of the body remains unknown. Among many other athlete statues associated with Polykleitos, one may mention the Diskophoros, probably an early work, and the "Westmacott Athlete" and "Dresden Boy, " both statues of very young athletes, done toward the end of his career.

Polykleitos's only well-known statue of a female subject is his wounded Amazon, which Pliny (Natural History) tells us was the winning entry in the contest at the Artemision in Ephesus. E. Berger (1966) is undecided between the "Sciarra" and the "Capitoline" types, both of which exhibit the contrapposto pose characteristic of works like the Doryphoros. Further study and discoveries will be necessary before Polykleitos's Amazon can be convincingly reconstructed. Of his other female figures, his gold-and-ivory cult statue of Hera, made for the new temple of Hera in Argos, is unique. Pausanias describes it as seated, holding a scepter in one hand, on which a cuckoo rests, and a pomegranate in the other; his observation that she wore a diadem, worked with Charites and Horai, finds partial confirmation in the decorated polos work on the head of Hera on late classical Argive coins. The sculpture may have been smaller than the gold-and-ivory statues of Athena Parthenos at Athens and Zeus at Olympia by Phidias.

Further Reading

For a discussion of the ancient sources on Polykleitos see Jerome J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece, 1400-31 B.C. (1965). Scholarly discussions of Polykleitos are found in Ernst Berger's article "Polykleitos" in the Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. 11 (1966); C. C. Vermeule, Polykleitos (1969); B. S. Ridgway, The Severe Style in Greek Sculpture (1970); and G. M. A. Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks (4th ed. 1970).

Polycleitus (second half of the fifth century BC), of Argos, one of the most celebrated Greek sculptors. His most famous work was the very large statue of Hera in gold and ivory made for her temple (Heraeum) at Argos. Ancient writers compared it favourably with Pheidias' statue of Zeus at Olympia; Strabo said the Zeus was more magnificent but the Hera more beautiful in workmanship. Also celebrated was his Doryphorus (‘youth holding a spear’), which is known through Roman copies. Polycleitus is said to have written a book on proportion and to have embodied his ideal of physical perfection in this statue.

Not to be confused with Polyclitus, a freedman in the service of the Roman emperor Nero.

The Canon of Polyclitus Doryphoros - Diadumenos - Discophoros

Polykleitos' Doryphoros (Spear-Bearer), an early example of classical contrapposto.

Polykleitos (or Polyklitos, Polycleitus, Polyclitus; Greek Πολύκλειτος); called the Elder^[1], was a Greek sculptor in bronze of the fifth and the early fourth century BC. Next to Phidias, Myron and Kresilas, he is considered the most important sculptor of Classical antiquity: the fourth-century catalogue attributed to Xenocrates (the "Xenocratic catalogue"), which was Pliny's guide in matters of art, ranked him between Phidias and Myron^[2].

He was of the school of Argos, a contemporary of Phidias (possibly also taught by Ageladas) and, in the opinion of the Greeks^{[citation needed]}, his equal. His figure of an Amazon for Ephesus was regarded as superior to those by Phidias and Kresilas at the same time^{[citation needed]}; and his colossal gold and ivory statue of Hera which stood in her temple – the Heraion of Argos – was compared with the Zeus by Phidias. He also sculpted a famous bronze male nude known as the Doryphoros ("Spear-carrier"), which survives in the form of numerous Roman marble copies. Further sculptures attributed to Polykleitos^{[citation needed]} are the Discophoros ("Discus-bearer"), Diadumenos ("Diadem-wearer") and a Hermes at one time placed, according to Pliny, in Lysimachia (Thrace). Polykleitos' Astragalizontes ("Boys Playing at Knuckle-bones") was claimed by the Emperor Titus and set in a place of honour in his atrium^[3].

Polykleitos, along with Phidias, created the Classical Greek style. Although none of his original works survive, literary sources identifying Roman marble copies of his work allow reconstructions to be made. An essential element of his and the Classical Greek style is the use of a relaxed pose with the shifted balance of weight known today as contrapposto yielding a naturalness that was a source of his fame.

A Polykleitan Diadumenos, in a Roman marble copy (National Archaeological Museum of Athens).

Discophoros
(British Museum)

Polykleitos consciously created a new approach to sculpture; he wrote a treatise (Kanon) and designed a male nude (also known as Kanon) exemplifying his aesthetic theories of the mathematical bases of artistic perfection, which motivated Kenneth Clark to place him among "the great puritans of art":^[4] His Kanon "got its name because it had a precise commensurability (symmetria) of all the parts to one another"^[5] "His general aim was clarity, balance, and completeness; his sole medium of communication the naked body of an athlete, standing poised between movement and repose" Kenneth Clark observed.^[6] Though the Kanon may be represented by his Doryphoros, the bronze has not survived, but references to it in other ancient books imply that its main principle was expressed by the Greek words symmetria, the Hippocratic principle of isonomia ("equilibrium"), and rhythmos. "Perfection, he said, comes about little by little (para mikron) through many numbers"^[7]. By this Polykleitos meant that a statue should be composed of clearly definable parts, all related to one another through a system of ideal mathematical proportions and balance, no doubt expressed in terms of the ratios established by Pythagoras for the perfect intervals of the musical scale: 1:2 (octave), 2:3 (harmonic fifth), and 3:4 (harmonic fourth). The refined detail of Polykleitos' models for casting executed in clay is revealed in a famous remark repeated in Plutarch's Moralia, that "the work is hardest when the clay is under the fingernail"^[8].

Polykleitos and Phidias were of the first generation of Greek sculptors to have a schools of followers. Polykleitos' school lasted for at least three generations, but it seems to have been most active in the late 300s and early 200s BC. The Roman writers Pliny and Pausanias noted the names of about twenty sculptors in Polykleitos' school, defined by their adherence to his principles of balance and definition. Skopas and Lysippus are the best-known successors of Polykleitos.

His son, Polykleitos the Younger, worked in the fourth century BC. Although he was also a sculptor of athletes, his greatest fame was won as an architect. He designed the great theater at Epidaurus.

Notes

1. ^ Only in cases where it is necessary to distinguish him from his son, a major architect but minor sculptor.
2. ^ Andrew Stewart, "Polykleitos of Argos," One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant Works, 16.73
3. ^ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia
4. ^ Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, 1956:63;"...they derive the principles of their art, as if from a law of some kind, and he alone of men is deemed to have rendered art itself in a work of art." Pliny's Natural History, 34.55-6.
5. ^ Galen, De Temperamentis.
6. ^ Clark 1956:63.
7. ^ Philo, Mechanicus, quoted in Stewart.
8. ^ Plutarch, Moralia, quoted in Stewart.

Sources

• This article incorporates text from the article "Polyclitus" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Polykleitos

• smARThistory - Diadumenos

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