|
Results for Praxiteles
|
On this page:
|
(b Athens, ?c. 400 BC; d Athens, c. 330 BC). Greek sculptor.
His career spanned the 370s to the 340s BC. He was the foremost Attic sculptor of the Late Classical period (see also GREECE, ANCIENT,
See the Abbreviations for further details.
Praxiteles (active ca. 370-330 B.C.) was one of the leading Greek sculptors of the 4th century B.C. His style, refined and graceful, greatly influenced the art of his own time and the succeeding epochs.
Praxiteles was probably the son of Kephisodotos, an Athenian sculptor, since he named one of his own sons Kephisodotos, and the same name ran in families in alternate generations. Pliny the Elder, in his Naturalis historia, places Praxiteles in the 104th Olympiad, or 364-361 B.C., and the base of a portrait statue from Leuktra bearing an inscription stating that Praxiteles the Athenian made it dates from about 330 B.C. These are the only definite dates we have regarding him.
At the beginning of the 4th century B.C. Athenian civilization had undergone profound changes. The disillusionment with civic values caused by the Peloponnesian War had turned artistic taste away from the idealism of Phidias's art toward a more humanized, personal view of the world and the gods. Praxiteles brought the gods down to a human level; he made them less majestic but gave them a consummate grace.
The marble Hermes Holding the Infant Dionysos was found in 1877 in the Heraion at Olympia, where Pausanias, who ascribes it to Praxiteles, had seen it in the 2d century A.D. Whether it is a Greek original, a Greek copy, or a good Roman copy, the statue is one of the finest ancient works preserved and shows the salient characteristics of the sculptor's style. Praxiteles softened the precisely articulated rendering of musculature of the previous century into a softer, fluid harmony of subtly modulated surfaces; and for the architectonically balanced composition of Polykleitos he substituted a languid S-curve. This curve, often called the "Praxitelean curve, " is a hallmark of his sculpture.
In antiquity the most famous work by Praxiteles was the marble Aphrodite (Venus) of Knidos. His openly sensuous treatment of the nude female form was a new feature in Greek art and created an ideal type that endured until the end of antiquity. Pliny tells us that this work made the city of Knidos famous and that it was "the finest statue not only by Praxiteles but in the whole world." Athenaios adds that Phryne, Praxiteles's mistress, was the model. There are a number of Roman copies of the statue, and it is reproduced on Roman coins from Knidos.
According to Pausanias, the base of Praxiteles's statue Leto and Her Children at Mantinea was decorated with a scene depicting Apollo, Marsyas, and the Muses. Three slabs from the base were found in 1877 at Mantinea: two show three Muses each, lovely draped figures, and the third depicts Marsyas playing the flute and Apollo with his Phrygian slave. The base may have been executed by one of Praxiteles's students, working from the master's designs.
The Apollo Sauroktonos ("lizard slayer") by Praxiteles is known from Pliny's description of it, fairly accurate Roman copies in both marble and bronze (Pliny lists it with the sculptor's bronze works), and the Roman coins from Philippopolis in Thrace and Nikopolis on the Danube. Apollo is represented as a boy leaning against a tree trunk waiting to kill a lizard with an arrow. The sinuous figure of the dreamy god perhaps illustrates better than any other work by Praxiteles how his vision of the gods differed from the emotionally neutral images of his 5th-century predecessors.
Ancient authors mention many other works by Praxiteles, and almost all have been connected with anonymous originals or copies in various museums. These include the famous Eros, which Pausanias says Phryne dedicated in her native city, Thespiai; a young satyr pouring wine, a bronze statue seen by Pausanias in the Street of the Tripods in Athens; the cult image of Artemis Brauroniaon the Acropolis in Athens; and an image of Eubouleus, the swinehered of Eleusinian myth, at Eleusis.
Praxiteles's two sons, Kephisodotos and Timarchos, worked in the tradition of their father. The Praxitelean school profoundly influenced Hellenistic sculpture in its choice of themes and their formal realization. The soft fusion of planes and delicate expression of his style can be seen in particular in early Hellenistic sculpture and minor arts, for example, the Tanagra terra-cotta figurines.
Further Reading
The best work is in Italian: G. E. Rizzo, Prassitele (1932). Praxiteles is discussed in all general surveys of ancient Greek sculpture, among the finest of which is Gisela M. A. Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks (4th ed. 1970).
For more information on Praxiteles, visit Britannica.com.
Praxitelēs, one of the most famous Greek sculptors, born at Athens c.390 BC. One surviving marble statue is thought to be his original work (although some would argue that it is a Hellenistic copy); it was discovered in 1877 in the Heraeum at Olympia (where Pausanias had seen it) and represents the god Hermes with the infant god Dionysus on his arm. His most famous work was the Aphroditē of Cnidus, now known through copies. Praxiteles exemplified the tendency of the Greek sculptors of the fourth century to move away from the severe dignity of the fifth century to an art more concerned with human feeling. His graceful, sinuous poses were much imitated.
Praxiteles (Ancient Greek: Πραξιτέλης, English IPA: /prækˈsɪtɨliːz/) of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue. While no indubitably attributable sculpture by Praxiteles is extant, numerous copies of his works have survived; contemporary authors, including Pliny the Elder, wrote of his oeuvres; and coins engraved with silhouettes of his various famous statuary types from the period still exist.
A supposed relationship between Praxiteles and his beautiful model, the Thespian courtesan Phryne, has inspired speculation and interpretation in works of art ranging from painting (Gérôme) to comic opera (Saint-Saëns) to shadow puppetry (Donnay).
It has been maintained by some writers that there were two sculptors of the name, one, a contemporary of Pheidias, the other, his more celebrated grandson. Though it is common in Greece for the same name to repeat every other generation, there is no certain evidence for either position.
Accurate dates for Praxiteles are elusive. It seems clear that he was no longer working in the time of Alexander the Great, or that king would have employed him. Pliny's date, 364 BC, is probably that of one of his most noted works.
The subjects chosen by Praxiteles were either human beings or the less elderly and dignified deities. It is Apollo, Hermes and Aphrodite who attract him rather than Zeus, Poseidon or Athena.
Praxiteles and his school worked almost entirely in marble. At the time the marble quarries of Paros were at their best; nor could any marble be finer for the purposes of the sculptor than that of which the Hermes is made. Some of the statues of Praxiteles were coloured by the painter Nicias, and in the opinion of the sculptor they gained greatly by this treatment.
In 1911 the Encyclopaedia Britannica noted that "Our knowledge of Praxiteles has received a great addition, and has been placed on a satisfactory basis, by the discovery at Olympia in 1877 of his statue of Hermes with the Infant Dionysus, a statue which has become famous throughout the world."[1] Later opinions have varied, reaching a low with the sculptor Aristide Maillol, who railed "It's kitsch, it's frightful, it's sculpted in soap from Marseille".[2] In 1948 Carl Blümel published it in a monograph as The Hermes of a Praxiteles[3], reversing his earlier (1927) opinion that it was a Roman copy, finding it not fourth century either but referring it instead to a Hellenistic sculptor, a younger Praxiteles of Pergamon.[4]
The sculpture was located where Pausanias had seen it in the late second century CE[5]. Hermes is represented as in the act of carrying the child Dionysus to the nymphs who were charged with his rearing. The uplifted right arm is missing, but the possibility that the god holds out to the child a bunch of grapes to excite his desire would reduce the subject to a genre figure, C. Waldstein noted in 1882, remarking that Hermes looks past the child, "the clearest and most manifest outward sign of inward dreaming."[6].The statue is today exhibited at the Olympia Archaeological Museum.
Opposing arguments have been made that the statue is a copy by a Roman copyist.[7] Since the Romans adopted much of Greek culture and art this is a possibility. Mary Wallace suggested a second-century date and a Pergamene origin on the basis of the sandal type.[8] Other assertions have been attempted by scholars to prove the origins of the statue on the basis of the unfinished back, the appearance of the drapery, and the technique used with the drilling of the hair; however scholars cannot conclusively use any of these arguments to their advantage because exceptions exist in both Roman and Greek sculpture.
As with the 'Hermes and Dionysus', gracefulness in repose, and an indefinable charm are also the attributes of works in museums which appear to be copies of statues by Praxiteles. Perhaps the most notable of these are the Apollo Sauroktonos, or the lizard-slayer, a youth leaning against a tree and idly striking with an arrow at a lizard (Louvre Museum), and the Aphrodite of Knidos at the Vatican Museums, which is a copy of the statue made by Praxiteles for the people of Cnidus, and by them valued so highly that they refused to sell it to King Nicomedes, who was willing in return to discharge the whole debt of the city, which, says Pliny, was enormous.
On June 22, 2004, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), announced the acquisition of an ancient bronze sculpture of Apollo Sauroktonos, believed to be the only near-complete original work by Praxiteles. The dating and attribution of the sculpture will continue to be studied, the museum noted. This piece was to be included in the 2007 Praxiteles exhibition organized by the Louvre Museum in Paris, but pressure from Greece, which disputes the work's provenance and legal ownership, caused the French to exclude it from the show.
The Satyr of the Capitol at Rome has commonly been regarded as a copy of one of the Satyrs of Praxiteles; but we cannot identify it in the list of his works. Moreover, the style is hard and poor; a far superior replica exists in a torso in the Louvre. The attitude and character of the work are certainly of Praxitelean school.
Excavations at Mantineia in Arcadia have brought to light the basis of a group of Leto, Apollo and Artemis by Praxiteles. This basis was doubtless not the work of the great sculptor himself, but of one of his assistants. Nevertheless it is pleasing and historically valuable. Pausanias (viii. 9, I) thus describes the base, "on the base which supports the statues there are sculptured the Muses and Marsyas playing the flutes (auloi)." Three slabs which have survived represent Apollo; Marsyas; a slave, and six of the Muses, the slab which held the other three having disappeared.
The Leconfield Head (a head of the Aphrodite of Cnidus type, included in the 2007 exhibition at the Louvre)[9] in the Red Room, Petworth House, West Sussex, UK, was claimed by Adolf Furtwängler[10] to be an actual work of Praxiteles, based on its style and its intrinsic quality. The Leconfield Head, the keystone of the Greek antiquities at Petworth[11] was probably bought from Gavin Hamilton in Rome in 1755.
The Aberdeen Head, whether of Hermes or of a youthful Heracles) in the British Museum, is linked to Praxiteles by its striking resemblance to the Hermes of Olympia.
Aphrodite of Cnidus is Praxiteles's most famous statue. It was the first time that a full-scale female figure was portrayed nude.
Vitruvius (vii, praef. 13) lists Praxiteles as an artist on the Mausoleum of Maussollos and Strabo (xiv, 23, 51) attributes to him the whole sculpted decoration of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. These mentions are widely considered as dubious[12].
Besides these works, associated with Praxiteles by reference to notices in ancient writers, there are numerous copies of the Roman age, statues of Hermes, of Dionysus, of Aphrodite of Satyrs and Nymphs and the like, in which a varied expression of Praxitelean style may be discerned.
Five points of composition may be mentioned, which appear to be in origin Praxitelean, however these points cannot prove to be conclusive.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
Join the WikiAnswers Q&A community. Post a question or answer questions about "Praxiteles" at WikiAnswers.
Copyrights:
 |
 | Art Encyclopedia. The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
|
| Classical Literature Companion. The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Copyright © 1993, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
 |
| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more |
 |
| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Praxiteles". Read more |
Be the first to tackle this...
Mentioned In:
