Scopas

Roman marble head of Meleager, after Scopas, on a restored bust (British Museum)

Scopas or Skopas (Σκόπας) (c.395 BC-350 BC) was an Ancient Greek sculptor and architect, born on the island of Paros.

Scopas worked with Praxiteles, he sculpted parts of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, especially the reliefs. He led the building of the new temple of Athena at Tegea. Similar to Lysippus, Scopas is in his art a successor of the Classical Greek sculptor Polyclitus.

The faces of the heads almost in quadrat with deeply sunken eyes and a slightly opened mouth are specific characters in the figures of Scopas.

Works after Scopas are preserved in the British Museum (reliefs) in London; fragments from the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens; the celebrated Ludovisi Ares in the Palazzo Altemps, Rome; a statue of Pothos restored as Apollo Citharoedus in the Capitoline Museum, Rome; and a statue of Meleager in the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Literature

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Scopas

• Andreas Linfert: Von Polyklet zu Lysipp. Polyklets Schule und ihr Verhältnis zu Skopas v. Paros. Diss. Freiburg i. B. 1965.
• Andrew F. Stewart: Skopas of Paros. Noyes Pr., Park Ridge, N.Y. 1977. ISBN 0-8155-5051-0
• Andrew Stewart: Skopas in Malibu. The head of Achilles from Tegea and other sculpures by Skopas in the J. Paul Getty Museum J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Calif. 1982. ISBN 0-89236-036-4

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