Jack P, Conor K, Michelle S.

     We've been studying two influential artists in Greece before the Hellenistic period started. Although neither Paraxiteles or Lysippos have a surviving original piece, their art influenced every sculptor from that point in time.

Parixiteles: The Man Who Made the Goddess of Beauty Blush

Praxiteles was the head Athenian sculptor in his time. The Aphrodite of Knidos was shown with her preparing to take a bath. The modest placement of her hands on her body was an attempt to make herself more modest, but the gesture only seemed to emphasize the fact that she was naked.  She was also leaning forward, emphasizing her breasts and thighs. The statue was apparently so accurate of the goddess Aphrodite that an old legend says that she came down to earth to see the statue for herself and exclaimed, “When did Praxiteles see me naked?” (Art: A Brief History, pg. 111-112)

Praxiteles’s work tended to involve the use of many curves, smaller heads, and heavier bodies than what were previously made. (Classical Art and the Culture of Greece and Rome, pg. 117) Formerly, only men had been depicted naked, but Praxiteles created The Aphrodite Statue, which was the first statue of a fully nude woman. Praxiteles’s lover Phryne was the model for this and later pieces. (Art Across Time, pg. 178-180)

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 Lysippos: Rebellious Sculptor                                                                          www.google.com/imghp

 Some of Lysippos’s pieces include the great Bronze Statues of Zeus and Hercules, the Statue of Socrates, and portraits of Alexander the Great. The way we know that they existed is through Roman copies of his art. For example, the Head of Alexander was found in Pergamum and is believed to be a copy of one of his portraits. The great sculpter before Lysippos’s time was named Polykeitos, who made very idealistic statues. He also preferred to use only youth models for his art. Lysippus decided not to conform to this way of art and made his statues much more naturalistic, portraying the things he sculpted exactly as he saw them. This technique allowed the real human emotion to be transferred through to the art much more easily. He would use models of any age, capturing the essence of both young and old people.(Art Across Time, pg. 178-180)

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Bibliography:

Adams, Laurie Schneider. Art Across Time. London: Laurie Schneider Adams, 1999.

Onians, John. Classical Art and The Cultures of Greece and Rome. N.p.: John Onians, 1999.

Stokstad, Marilyn. Art: A Brief History. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2007.