Greek statues. Outstanding sculptors of ancient Hellas

MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY OF PRINTING

Faculty of artistic and technical design of printed materials

"Antique sculpture"

Department of History and Cultural Studies

Teacher: Assoc. Prof. Bobrova V.D.

Student: Mikhailova A.P. 1st year, 2nd group

Moscow 2002

INTRODUCTION

Italian humanists of the Renaissance called Greco-Roman culture antique (from the Latin word antiques - ancient) as the earliest known to them. And this name has remained with it to this day, although more ancient cultures have been discovered since then. It has been preserved as a synonym for classical antiquity, that is, the world in whose bosom our European civilization arose. Preserved as a concept precisely separating Greco-Roman culture from the cultural worlds Ancient East.

The creation of a generalized human appearance, raised to a beautiful norm—the unity of its physical and spiritual beauty—is almost the only theme of art and the main quality of Greek culture as a whole. This provided Greek culture with rare artistic power and key importance for world culture in the future.

Ancient Greek culture had a huge influence on the development of European civilization. The achievements of Greek art partially formed the basis for the aesthetic ideas of subsequent eras. Without Greek philosophy, especially Plato and Aristotle, the development of neither medieval theology nor the philosophy of our time would have been possible. The Greek education system has survived to this day in its basic features. Ancient Greek mythology and literature have been inspiring poets, writers, artists, and composers for many centuries. It's hard to overestimate the influence antique sculpture on sculptors of subsequent eras.

The significance of ancient Greek culture is so great that it is not for nothing that we call its heyday the “golden age” of humanity. And now, thousands of years later, we admire the ideal proportions of architecture, the unsurpassed creations of sculptors, poets, historians, and scientists. This culture is the most humane; it still gives people wisdom, beauty and courage.

The periods into which the history and art of the ancient world are usually divided.

Ancient period- Aegean culture: III millennium-XI century. BC e.

Homeric and Early Archaic periods: XI-VIII centuries. BC e.

Archaic period: VII-VI centuries. BC e.

Classical period: from the 5th century until the last third of the 4th century. BC e.

Hellenistic period: last third of the 4th-1st centuries. BC e.

The period of development of the tribes of Italy; Etruscan culture: VIII-II centuries. BC e.

Royal period of ancient Rome: VIII-VI centuries. BC e.

Republican period of Ancient Rome: V-I centuries BC e.

Imperial period of ancient Rome: I-V centuries n. e.

In my work I would like to consider Greek sculpture of the Archaic, Classical and Late Classical periods, sculpture of the Hellenistic period, as well as Roman sculpture.

Greek art developed under the influence of three very different cultural currents:

Aegean, which apparently still retained vitality in Asia Minor and whose light breath met the spiritual needs of the ancient Hellene in all periods of its development;

Dorian, aggressive (generated by the wave of the northern Dorian invasion), inclined to introduce strict adjustments to the traditions of the style that arose in Crete, to temper the free imagination and unbridled dynamism of the Cretan decorative pattern (already greatly simplified in Mycenae) with the simplest geometric schematization, stubborn, rigid and imperious;

Eastern, who brought to young Hellas, as before to Crete, examples of artistic creativity from Egypt and Mesopotamia, the complete concreteness of plastic and pictorial forms, and his remarkable visual skills.

The artistic creativity of Hellas for the first time in the history of the world established realism as the absolute norm of art. But realism does not lie in the exact copying of nature, but in completing what nature could not accomplish. So, following the plans of nature, art had to strive for that perfection that she only hinted at, but which she herself did not achieve.

At the end of the 7th - beginning of the 6th century. BC e. A famous shift occurs in Greek art. In vase painting, the focus begins to be on the person, and his image takes on more and more real features. A plotless ornament loses its former meaning. At the same time - and this is an event of enormous significance - a monumental sculpture appears, main topic which is, again, a person.

From this moment on, Greek fine art firmly entered the path of humanism, where it was destined to win unfading glory.

On this path, art for the first time acquires a special, inherent purpose. Its purpose is not to reproduce the figure of the deceased in order to provide a saving shelter for his “Ka”, not to assert the inviolability of established power in monuments exalting this power, not to magically influence the forces of nature embodied by the artist in specific images. The purpose of art is to create beauty, which is equivalent to goodness, equivalent to the spiritual and physical perfection of a person. And if we talk about the educational significance of art, then it increases immeasurably. For the ideal beauty created by art gives rise to a desire for self-improvement in a person.

To quote Lessing: “Where, thanks to beautiful people, beautiful statues appeared, these latter, in turn, made an impression on the former, and the state owed beautiful statues for beautiful people.”

The first Greek sculptures that have come down to us still clearly reflect the influence of Egypt. Frontality and at first timidly overcoming the stiffness of movements - with the left leg put forward or the hand attached to the chest. These stone sculptures, most often made of marble, which Hellas is so rich in, have an inexplicable charm. They show the youthful breath, the inspired impulse of the artist, his touching belief that through persistent and painstaking effort, constant improvement of one’s skill, one can completely master the material provided to him by nature.

On the marble colossus (early 6th century BC), four times the height of a man, we read the proud inscription: “All of me, statue and pedestal, were taken from one block.”

Who do the ancient statues depict?

These are naked young men (kuros), athletes, winners in competitions. These are barks - young women in tunics and cloaks.

A significant feature: even at the dawn of Greek art, sculptural images of gods differ, and even then not always, from images of humans only in emblems. So in the same statue of a young man we are sometimes inclined to recognize either simply an athlete, or Phoebus-Apollo himself, the god of light and the arts.

...So, early archaic statues still reflect the canons developed in Egypt or Mesopotamia.

Frontal and imperturbable is the tall kouros, or Apollo, sculpted around 600 BC. e. (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art). His face is framed by long hair, cunningly woven “in a cage”, like a stiff wig, and it seems to us that he is stretched out in front of us, flaunting the excessive width of his angular shoulders, the rectilinear immobility of his arms and the smooth narrowness of his hips.

Statue of Hera from the island of Samos, probably executed at the very beginning of the second quarter of the 6th century. BC e. (Paris, Louvre). In this marble we are captivated by the majesty of the figure, sculpted from the bottom to the waist in the form of a round pillar. Frozen, calm majesty. Life is barely visible under the strictly parallel folds of the chiton, under the decoratively arranged folds of the cloak.

And this is what else distinguishes the art of Hellas on the path opened by it: the amazing speed of improvement of methods of depiction, together with a radical change in the style of art itself. But not like in Babylonia, and certainly not like in Egypt, where style changed slowly over thousands of years.

Mid-6th century BC e. Only a few decades separate the "Apollo of Teney" (Munich, Glyptothek) from the previously mentioned statues. But how more lively and graceful is the figure of this young man, already illuminated by beauty! He had not yet moved, but he was all ready to move. The outline of his hips and shoulders is softer, more measured, and his smile is perhaps the most radiant, innocently rejoicing in the archaic.

The famous “Moschophorus” which means calf bearer (Athens, National Archaeological Museum). This is a young Hellene bringing a calf to the altar of the deity. Hands pressing the legs of an animal resting on his shoulders to his chest, the cruciform combination of these arms and these legs, the meek muzzle of the body doomed to slaughter, the thoughtful look of the donor, filled with indescribable significance - all this creates a very harmonious, internally inextricable whole that delights us with its complete harmony, sounding musicality in the marble.

“Head of Rampin” (Paris, Louvre), named after its first owner (the Athens Museum houses a headless marble bust found separately, to which the Louvre head seems to fit). This is the image of the winner in the competition, as evidenced by the wreath. The smile is a little forced, but playful. Very carefully and elegantly worked hairstyle. But the main thing in this image is a slight turn of the head: this is already a violation of frontality, emancipation in movement, a timid harbinger of true freedom.

The “Strangford” kouros of the late 6th century is magnificent. BC e. (London, British Museum). His smile seems triumphant. But is it not because his body is so slender and almost freely appears before us in all its courageous, conscious beauty?

We had better luck with the koros than with the kouros. In 1886, fourteen marble cores were excavated from the ground by archaeologists. Buried by the Athenians during the destruction of their city by the Persian army in 480 BC. e., the barks partially retained their color (variegated and by no means naturalistic).

Taken together, these statues give us a clear idea of ​​Greek sculpture of the second half of the 6th century. BC e. (Athens, Acropolis Museum).

Either mysteriously and soulfully, then innocently and even naively, then the barks smile obviously flirtatiously. Their figures are slender and stately, their elaborate hairstyles are rich. We have seen that contemporary kouros statues are gradually freeing themselves from their former constraint: the naked body has become livelier and more harmonious. Progress no less significant is observed in female sculptures: the folds of robes are arranged more and more skillfully to convey the movement of the figure, the thrill of life of the draped body.

Persistent improvement in realism is what is perhaps most characteristic of the development of all Greek art of that time. His deep spiritual unity overcame the stylistic features characteristic of various regions of Greece.

The whiteness of marble seems to us inseparable from the very ideal of beauty embodied by Greek stone sculpture. The warmth of the human body shines for us through this whiteness, wonderfully revealing all the softness of the modeling and, according to the idea ingrained in us, ideally harmonizing with the noble inner restraint, the classical clarity of the image of human beauty created by the sculptor.

Yes, this whiteness is captivating, but it was generated by time, which restored the natural color of marble. Time has changed its appearance greek statues, but did not disfigure them. For the beauty of these statues seems to flow from their very soul. Time has only illuminated this beauty in a new way, diminishing something in it, and involuntarily emphasizing something. But in comparison with those works of art that the ancient Hellenes admired, the ancient reliefs and statues that have come down to us are still deprived of time in something very significant, and therefore our very idea of ​​Greek sculpture is incomplete.

Like the nature of Hellas itself, Greek art was bright and colorful. Light and joyful, it shone festively in the sun in a variety of its color combinations, echoing the gold of the sun, the purple of the sunset, the blue warm sea and the greenery of the surrounding hills.

The architectural details and sculptural decorations of the temples were brightly painted, which gave the entire building an elegant and festive look. Rich coloring enhanced the realism and expressiveness of the images - although, as we know, the colors were not selected in exact accordance with reality - it attracted and amused the eye, making the image even clearer, understandable and relatable. And almost all ancient sculpture that has come down to us has completely lost this coloring.

Greek art of the late 6th and early 5th centuries. BC e. remains essentially archaic. Even the majestic Doric temple of Poseidon at Paestum, with its well-preserved colonnade, built of limestone already in the second quarter of the 5th century, does not show complete emancipation of architectural forms. Massiveness and squatness, characteristic of archaic architecture, determine its overall appearance.

The same applies to the sculpture of the Temple of Athena on the island of Aegina, built after 490 BC. e. Its famous pediments were decorated with marble sculptures, some of which have come down to us (Munich, Glyptothek).

In earlier pediments, sculptors arranged the figures in a triangle, changing their scale accordingly. The figures of the Aegina pediments are of the same scale (only Athena herself is higher than the others), which already marks significant progress: those closer to the center stand at full height, those on the sides are depicted kneeling and lying down. The plots of these harmonious compositions are borrowed from the Iliad. Individual figures are beautiful, for example, a wounded warrior and an archer pulling his bowstring. Undoubted success has been achieved in liberating movements. But one feels that this success was achieved with difficulty, that this is still just a test. An archaic smile still wanders strangely on the faces of the combatants. The whole composition is not yet coherent enough, too emphatically symmetrical, and not inspired by a single free breath.

THE GREAT FLOWER

Alas, we cannot boast of sufficient knowledge of Greek art of this and its subsequent, most brilliant period. After all, almost all Greek sculpture of the 5th century. BC e. died. So, based on later Roman marble copies from lost, mainly bronze, originals, we are often forced to judge the work of great geniuses, whose equals are difficult to find in the entire history of art.

We know, for example, that Pythagoras of Rhegium (480-450 BC) was the most famous sculptor. By the emancipation of his figures, which included, as it were, two movements (the initial one and the one in which part of the figure would appear in a moment), he powerfully contributed to the development of the realistic art of sculpting.

Contemporaries admired his findings, the vitality and truthfulness of his images. But, of course, the few Roman copies of his works that have come down to us (such as “The Boy Taking out a Thorn.” Rome, Palazzo Conservatori) are insufficient for a full assessment of the work of this brave innovator.

The now world-famous “Charioteer” is a rare example of bronze sculpture, an accidental surviving fragment of a group composition performed around 450 BC. A slender young man, like a column that has taken on a human form (the strictly vertical folds of his robe further enhance this resemblance). The straightness of the figure is somewhat archaic, but its overall calm nobility already expresses the classical ideal. This is the winner in the competition. He confidently leads the chariot, and such is the power of art that we guess the enthusiastic cries of the crowd that cheer his soul. But, full of courage and courage, he is restrained in his triumph - his beautiful features are imperturbable. A modest, although conscious of his victory, young man, illuminated by glory. This image is one of the most captivating in world art. But we don't even know the name of its creator.

In the 70s of the 19th century, German archaeologists undertook excavations at Olympia in the Peloponnese. In ancient times, pan-Greek sports competitions took place there, the famous Olympic Games, according to which the Greeks kept chronology. The Byzantine emperors banned the games and destroyed Olympia with all its temples, altars, porticoes and stadiums.

The excavations were enormous: for six years in a row, hundreds of workers uncovered a huge area covered with centuries-old sediments. The results exceeded all expectations: one hundred and thirty marble statues and bas-reliefs, thirteen thousand bronze objects, six thousand coins/up to a thousand inscriptions, thousands of pottery items were excavated from the ground. It is gratifying that almost all the monuments were left in place and, although dilapidated, now flaunt under their usual sky, on the same land where they were created.

The metopes and pediments of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia are undoubtedly the most significant of the surviving sculptures of the second quarter of the 5th century. BC e. To understand the enormous shift that has occurred in art in this short time - only about thirty years, it is enough to compare, for example, the western pediment of the Olympic Temple and the Aegina pediments, which are quite similar to it in the general compositional scheme, which we have already considered. Both here and there there is a tall central figure, on each side of which small groups of fighters are evenly spaced.

The plot of the Olympic pediment: the battle of the Lapiths with the centaurs. According to Greek mythology, centaurs (half-humans, half-horses) tried to kidnap the wives of the mountain inhabitants of the Lapiths, but they saved their wives and destroyed the centaurs in a fierce battle. This plot has already been used more than once by Greek artists (in particular, in vase painting) as the personification of the triumph of culture (represented by the Lapiths) over barbarism, over the same dark power of the Beast in the image of a finally defeated kicking centaur. After the victory over the Persians, this mythological battle acquired a special meaning on the Olympic pediment.

No matter how mutilated the marble sculptures of the pediment are, this sound reaches us completely - and it is grandiose! Because, unlike the Aegina pediments, where the figures are not organically welded together, here everything is imbued with a single rhythm, a single breath. Along with the archaic style, the archaic smile completely disappeared. Apollo reigns over the hot battle, deciding its outcome. Only he, the god of light, is calm amid the storm raging nearby, where every gesture, every face, every impulse complements each other, making up a single, inextricable whole, beautiful in its harmony and full of dynamism.

The majestic figures of the eastern pediment and the metopes of the Olympian Temple of Zeus are also internally balanced. We do not know exactly the names of the sculptors (there were apparently several) who created these sculptures, in which the spirit of freedom celebrates its triumph over the archaic.

The classical ideal is victoriously asserted in sculpture. Bronze becomes the sculptor’s favorite material, because metal is more subdued than stone and it is easier to give a figure any position, even the most daring, instant, sometimes even “imaginary” one. And this does not at all violate realism. After all, as we know, the principle of Greek classical art is the reproduction of nature, creatively corrected and supplemented by the artist, revealing in it a little more than what the eye sees. After all, Pythagoras of Regius did not sin against realism, capturing two different movements in a single image!..

The great sculptor Myron, who worked in the middle of the 5th century. BC. in Athens, created a statue that had a huge influence on the development of fine art. This is his bronze “Discobolus”, known to us from several marble Roman copies, so damaged that only their totality

allowed us to somehow recreate the lost image.

The discus thrower (otherwise known as the discus thrower) is captured at the moment when, throwing back his hand with a heavy discus, he is ready to throw it into the distance. This is the climactic moment, it visibly foreshadows the next one, when the disc shoots into the air and the athlete’s figure straightens in a jerk: an instant gap between two powerful movements, as if connecting the present with the past and future. The discus thrower's muscles are extremely tense, his body is curved, and yet his young face is completely calm. Wonderful creativity! A tense facial expression would probably be more believable, but the nobility of the image lies in this contrast of physical impulse and mental peace.

“Just as the depths of the sea always remain calm, no matter how much the sea rages on the surface, in the same way the images created by the Greeks reveal a great and strong soul amid all the disturbances of passion.” This is what the famous German art historian Winckelmann, the true founder of scientific research into the artistic heritage of the ancient world, wrote two centuries ago. And this does not contradict what we said about the wounded heroes of Homer, who filled the air with their lamentations. Let us recall Lessing’s judgments about the boundaries of fine art in poetry, his words that “the Greek artist depicted nothing but beauty.” This was, of course, the case during the era of great prosperity.

But what is beautiful in the description may seem ugly in the image (the elders looking at Helen!). And therefore, he also notes, the Greek artist reduced anger to severity: for the poet, the angry Zeus throws lightning, for the artist he is only strict.

Tension would distort the features of the discus thrower, would disrupt the bright beauty of the ideal image of an athlete confident in his strength, a courageous and physically perfect citizen of his polis, as Myron presented him in his statue.

In Myron's art, sculpture mastered movement, no matter how complex it may be.

The art of another great sculptor - Polykleitos - establishes the balance of the human figure at rest or at a slow step with emphasis on one leg and a correspondingly raised arm. An example of such a figure is his famous

"Doriphoros" - a young spear-bearer (marble Roman copy from a bronze original. Naples, National Museum). In this image there is a harmonious combination of ideal physical beauty and spirituality: young athlete, also, of course, personifying a wonderful and valiant citizen, seems to us deep in his thoughts - and his whole figure is filled with purely Hellenic classical nobility.

This is not only a statue, but a canon in the strict sense of the word.

Polykleitos set out to accurately determine the proportions of the human figure, consistent with his idea of ​​ideal beauty. Here are some results of his calculations: head - 1/7 of the total height, face and hand - 1/10, foot - 1/6. However, to his contemporaries his figures seemed “square”, too massive. The same impression, despite all its beauty, is made on us by his “Doriphoros”.

Polykleitos outlined his thoughts and conclusions in a theoretical treatise (which has not reached us), to which he gave the name “Canon”; the same name was given in ancient times to “Doriphoros” himself, sculpted in strict accordance with the treatise.

Polykleitos created relatively few sculptures, completely absorbed in his theoretical works. And while he was studying the “rules” that determine human beauty, his younger contemporary, Hippocrates, the greatest physician of antiquity, devoted his entire life to studying the physical nature of man.

To fully reveal all the possibilities of man - such was the goal of art, poetry, philosophy and science of this great era. Never before in the history of the human race has the consciousness penetrated so deeply into the soul that man is the crown of nature. We already know that the contemporary of Polykleitos and Hippocrates, the great Sophocles, solemnly proclaimed this truth in his tragedy Antigone.

Man crowns nature - this is what the monuments of Greek art of the heyday claim, depicting man in all his valor and beauty.

Voltaire called the era of Athens' greatest cultural flowering the "age of Pericles." The concept of “century” here should not be understood literally, because we are talking about only a few decades. But in terms of its significance, this short period in history deserves such a definition.

The highest glory of Athens, the radiant radiance of this city in world culture is inextricably linked with the name of Pericles. He took care of the decoration of Athens, patronized all the arts, attracted the best artists to Athens, and was a friend and patron of Phidias, whose genius probably marks the highest level in the entire artistic heritage of the ancient world.

First of all, Pericles decided to restore the Athenian Acropolis, destroyed by the Persians, or rather, on the ruins of the old Acropolis, still archaic, to create a new one, expressing the artistic ideal of completely liberated Hellenism.

The Acropolis was in Hellas what the Kremlin was in Ancient Rus': an urban stronghold that contained temples and other public institutions within its walls and served as a refuge for the surrounding population during war.

The famous Acropolis is the Acropolis of Athens with its temples the Parthenon and Erechtheion and the buildings of the Propylaea, the greatest monuments of Greek architecture. Even in their dilapidated state, they still make an indelible impression.

This is how the famous Russian architect A.K. describes this impression. Burov: “I climbed the zigzag approach... walked through the portico - and stopped. Straight ahead and slightly to the right, on a rising blue marble rock covered with cracks - the platform of the Acropolis, the Parthenon grew and floated towards me, as if from boiling waves. I don’t remember how long I stood motionless... The Parthenon, while remaining unchanged, was constantly changing... I came closer, I walked around it and went inside. I stayed near him, in him and with him all day. The sun was setting into the sea. The shadows lay completely horizontally, parallel to the seams of the marble walls of the Erechtheion.

Green shadows thickened under the portico of the Parthenon. The reddish shine slipped for the last time and went out. The Parthenon is dead. Together with Phoebus. Until next day."

We know who destroyed the old Acropolis. We know who blew up and who destroyed the new one, erected by the will of Pericles.

It’s scary to say that these new barbaric acts, which aggravated the destructive work of time, were not committed at all in ancient times and not even out of religious fanaticism, such as, for example, the savage defeat of Olympia.

In 1687, during the war between Venice and Turkey, which then ruled over Greece, a Venetian cannonball that flew onto the Acropolis blew up a powder magazine built by the Turks in... the Parthenon. The explosion caused terrible destruction.

It’s good that thirteen years before this disaster, a certain artist who accompanied the French ambassador visiting Athens managed to sketch the central part of the western pediment of the Parthenon.

The Venetian shell hit the Parthenon, perhaps by accident. But a completely systematic attack on the Athenian Acropolis was organized at the very beginning of the 19th century.

This operation was carried out by the “most enlightened” connoisseur of art, Lord Elgin, a general and diplomat who served as the English envoy in Constantinople. He bribed the Turkish authorities and, taking advantage of their connivance on Greek soil, did not hesitate to damage or even destroy famous architectural monuments, just to take possession of especially valuable sculptural decorations. He caused irreparable damage to the Acropolis: he removed almost all the surviving pediment sculptures from the Parthenon and broke part of the famous frieze from its walls. At the same time, the pediment collapsed and broke. Fearing popular outrage, Lord Elgin took all his booty to England at night. Many Englishmen (in particular, Byron in his famous poem “Childe Harold”) harshly condemned him for the barbaric treatment of great monuments of art and for unseemly methods of acquiring artistic values. Nevertheless, the English government acquired a unique collection of its diplomatic representative - and the Parthenon sculptures are now the main pride of the British Museum in London.

Having robbed the greatest monument of art, Lord Elgin enriched the art vocabulary with a new term: such vandalism is sometimes called “Elginism”.

What is it that shocks us so much in the grandiose panorama of marble colonnades with broken friezes and pediments, towering over the sea and over the low houses of Athens, in the mutilated statues that still flaunt on the steep cliff of the Acropolis or are exhibited in a foreign land as a rare museum value?

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who lived on the eve of the highest prosperity of Hellas, owns the following famous saying: “This cosmos, the same for everything that exists, was not created by any god or man, but it has always been, is and will be an eternally living fire, igniting in measures , extinguishing measures.” And he is

He said that “what diverges agrees by itself,” that the most beautiful harmony is born from opposites, and that “everything happens through struggle.”

Classical Hellas art accurately reflects these ideas.

Is it not in the play of opposing forces that the overall harmony of the Doric order (the relationship between column and entablature) arises, as well as the statue of Doryphorus (the verticals of the legs and hips in comparison with the horizontals of the shoulders and the muscles of the abdomen and chest)?

The consciousness of the unity of the world in all its metamorphoses, the consciousness of its eternal regularity inspired the builders of the Acropolis, who wished to establish the harmony of this never-created, always young world in artistic creativity, giving a single and complete impression of beauty.

The Athenian Acropolis is a monument that proclaims man's faith in the possibility of such an all-reconciling harmony, not in an imaginary, but in a very real world, faith in the triumph of beauty, in man's calling to create it and serve it in the name of good. And therefore this monument is forever young, like the world, forever excites and attracts us. In its unfading beauty there is both consolation in doubt and a bright call: evidence that beauty visibly shines over the destinies of the human race.

The Acropolis is a radiant embodiment of the creative human will and human mind, establishing harmonious order in the chaos of nature. And therefore, the image of the Acropolis reigns in our imagination over all of nature, just as it reigns under the sky of Hellas, over a shapeless block of rock.

The wealth of Athens and its dominant position provided Pericles with ample opportunities in the construction he planned. To decorate the famous city, he drew funds at his own discretion from the temple treasuries, and even from the general treasury of the states of the maritime union.

Mountains of snow-white marble, mined very nearby, were delivered to Athens. The best Greek architects, sculptors and painters considered it an honor to work for the glory of the generally recognized capital of Hellenic art.

We know that several architects participated in the construction of the Acropolis. But, according to Plutarch, Phidias was in charge of everything. And we feel throughout the entire complex the unity of design and a single guiding principle, which has left its mark even on the details of the most important monuments.

This general concept is characteristic of the entire Greek worldview, of the basic principles of Greek aesthetics.

The hill on which the monuments of the Acropolis were erected is not even in its outline, and its level is not the same. The builders did not come into conflict with nature, but, having accepted nature as it was, they wanted to ennoble and decorate it with their art, in order to create an equally bright artistic ensemble under a bright sky, clearly outlined against the backdrop of the surrounding mountains. An ensemble more perfect in its harmony than nature! On an uneven hill, the integrity of this ensemble is perceived gradually. Each monument lives its own life in it, is deeply individual, and its beauty again reveals itself to the eye in parts, without violating the unity of the impression. Climbing the Acropolis, you even now, despite all the destruction, clearly perceive its division into precisely demarcated sections; You examine each monument, walking around it from all sides, with every step, with every turn, discovering some new feature in it, a new embodiment of its general harmony. Separation and community; the brightest individuality of the particular, smoothly incorporating into the unified harmony of the whole. And the fact that the composition of the ensemble, obeying nature, is not based on symmetry, further enhances its internal freedom with impeccable balance of its component parts.

So, Phidias was in charge of everything in planning this ensemble, which, perhaps, had no equal in artistic significance in the whole world. What do we know about Phidias?

A native Athenian, Phidias was probably born around 500 BC. and died after 430. The greatest sculptor, undoubtedly the greatest architect, since the entire Acropolis can be revered as his creation, he also worked as a painter.

The creator of huge sculptures, he, apparently, also succeeded in the plastic arts of small forms, like other famous artists of Hellas, not hesitating to express himself in the most diverse forms of art, even those revered by minor ones: for example, we know that he minted figurines of fish, bees and cicadas

A great artist, Phidias was also a great thinker, a true exponent in art of the Greek philosophical genius, the highest impulses of the Greek spirit. Ancient authors testify that in his images he was able to convey superhuman greatness.

Such a superhuman image was, apparently, his thirteen-meter statue of Zeus, created for the temple at Olympia. She died there along with many other most precious monuments. This ivory and gold statue was considered one of the “seven wonders of the world.” There is information, apparently coming from Phidias himself, that the greatness and beauty of the image of Zeus was revealed to him in the following verses of the Iliad:

Rivers, and as a sign of black Zeus

wiggles his eyebrows:

Quickly fragrant hair up

rose from Kronid

Around the immortal head, and shook

Olympus is multi-hilly.

Like many other geniuses, Phidias did not escape malicious envy and slander during his lifetime. He was accused of appropriating part of the gold intended to decorate the statue of Athena in the Acropolis - this is how opponents of the democratic party sought to discredit its head, Pericles, who entrusted Phidias with the reconstruction of the Acropolis. Phidias was expelled from Athens, but his innocence was soon proven. However - as they said then - after him... the goddess of the world Irina herself “left” Athens. In the famous comedy “Peace” by Phidias’s great contemporary Aristophanes, it is said in this regard that, obviously, the goddess of peace is close to Phidias and “because she is so beautiful because she is related to him.”

Athens, named after the daughter of Zeus Athena, was the main center of the cult of this goddess. The Acropolis was erected in her glory.

According to Greek mythology, Athena emerged fully armed from the head of the father of the gods. This was the beloved daughter of Zeus, whom he could not refuse anything.

Eternally virgin goddess of the pure, radiant sky. Together with Zeus he sends thunder and lightning, but also heat and light. Warrior goddess, repelling the blows of enemies. Patroness of agriculture, public assemblies, and citizenship. The embodiment of pure reason, highest wisdom; goddess of thought, science and art. Light-eyed, with an open, typically Attic round-oval face.

Climbing the hill of the Acropolis, the ancient Hellene entered the kingdom of this many-faced goddess, immortalized by Phidias.

A student of the sculptors Hegias and Ageladas, Phidias fully mastered the technical achievements of his predecessors and went even further than them. But although the skill of Phidias the sculptor marks the overcoming of all the difficulties that arose before him in the realistic depiction of a person, it is not limited to technical perfection. The ability to convey the volume and liberation of figures and their harmonious grouping do not in themselves give rise to a genuine flap of wings in art.

The one who “without the frenzy sent by the Muses approaches the threshold of creativity, in the confidence that, thanks to dexterity alone, he will become a fair poet, he is weak,” and everything created by him “will be eclipsed by the creations of the frenzied.” This is what one of the greatest philosophers of the ancient world, Plato, said.

Above the steep slope of the sacred hill, the architect Mnesicles erected the famous white marble buildings of the Propylaea with Doric porticos located at different levels, connected by an internal Ionic colonnade. Amazing the imagination, the majestic harmony of the Propylaea - the ceremonial entrance to the Acropolis, immediately introduced the visitor to the radiant world of beauty, affirmed by human genius.

On the other side of the Propylaea grew a gigantic bronze statue of Athena Promachos, which means Athena the Warrior, sculpted by Phidias. The fearless daughter of the Thunderer personified here, on the Acropolis Square, the military power and glory of her city. From this square, vast distances opened up to the eye, and sailors rounding the southern tip of Attica clearly saw the high helmet and spear of the warrior goddess sparkling in the sun.

Now the square is empty, because all that remains of the statue, which caused indescribable delight in ancient times, is a trace of the pedestal. And to the right, behind the square, is the Parthenon, the most perfect creation of all Greek architecture, or, rather, what has been preserved from the great temple, under the shadow of which another statue of Athena once stood, also sculpted by Phidias, but not a warrior, but Athena the Virgin: Athena Parthenos.

Like Olympian Zeus, it was a chryso-elephantine statue: made of gold (in Greek - “chrysos”) and ivory (in Greek - “elephas”), fitting a wooden frame. In total, about one thousand two hundred kilograms of precious metal went into its production.

Under the hot shine of golden armor and robes, the ivory on the face, neck and hands of the calmly majestic goddess with a human-sized winged Nike (Victory) on her outstretched palm lit up.

Evidence from ancient authors, a smaller copy (Athena Varvakion, Athens, National Archaeological Museum) and coins and medallions with the image of Athena Phidias give us some idea of ​​this masterpiece.

The goddess's gaze was calm and clear, and her features were illuminated with an inner light. Her pure image expressed not a threat, but a joyful consciousness of victory, which brought prosperity and peace to the people.

The chryso-elephantine technique was considered the pinnacle of art. Placing gold and ivory plates on wood required the finest craftsmanship. The great art of the sculptor was combined with the painstaking art of the jeweler. And as a result - what brilliance, what radiance in the twilight of the cella, where the image of the deity reigned as the highest creation of human hands!

The Parthenon was built (447-432 BC) by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates under the general direction of Phidias. In agreement with Pericles, he wished to embody the idea of ​​triumphant democracy in this largest monument of the Acropolis. For the goddess he glorified, a warrior and a maiden, was revered by the Athenians as the first citizen of their city; according to ancient legends, they themselves chose this celestial goddess as the patroness of the Athenian state.

The pinnacle of ancient architecture, the Parthenon was already recognized in ancient times as the most remarkable monument of the Doric style. This style is extremely improved in the Parthenon, where there is no longer a trace of the Doric stockiness and massiveness so characteristic of many early Doric temples. Its columns (eight on the facades and seventeen on the sides), lighter and thinner in proportion, are slightly inclined inward with a slight convex curvature of the horizontals of the base and ceiling. These subtle deviations from the canon are of decisive importance. Without changing its basic laws, the Doric order here seems to absorb the relaxed grace of the Ionic, which creates, on the whole, a powerful, full-voiced architectural chord of the same impeccable clarity and purity as the virgin image of Athena Parthenos. And this chord acquired even greater resonance thanks to the bright colors of the relief decorations of the metopes, which stood out harmoniously against the red and blue background.

Four Ionic columns (which have not reached us) rose inside the temple, and on its outer wall there was a continuous Ionic frieze. So behind the grandiose colonnade of the temple with its powerful Doric metopes, the hidden Ionic core was revealed to the visitor. A harmonious combination of two styles, complementing each other, achieved by combining them in one monument and, what is even more remarkable, by their organic fusion in the same architectural motif.

Everything suggests that the sculptures of the Parthenon pediments and its relief frieze were executed, if not entirely by Phidias himself, then under the direct influence of his genius and according to his creative will.

The remains of these pediments and frieze are perhaps the most valuable, the greatest that has survived to this day from all Greek sculpture. We have already said that now most of these masterpieces adorn, alas, not the Parthenon, of which they were an integral part, but the British Museum in London.

The Parthenon sculptures are a true storehouse of beauty, the embodiment of the highest aspirations of the human spirit. The concept of the ideological nature of art finds in them perhaps its most striking expression. For the great idea inspires every image here, lives in it, determining its entire existence.

The sculptors of the Parthenon pediments glorified Athena, asserting her high position in the host of other gods.

And here are the surviving figures. This is a round sculpture. Against the background of the architecture, in perfect harmony with it, the marble statues of the gods stood out in their full volume, measuredly, without any effort, placed in the triangle of the pediment.

A reclining youth, a hero or god (perhaps Dionysus), with a beaten face, broken hands and feet. How freely, how naturally he settled down on the section of the pediment allotted to him by the sculptor. Yes, this is complete liberation, a victorious triumph of the energy from which life is born and a person grows. We believe in his power, in the freedom he has gained. And we are enchanted by the harmony of the lines and volumes of his naked figure, joyfully imbued with the deep humanity of his image, qualitatively brought to perfection, which indeed seems superhuman to us.

Three headless goddesses. Two are sitting, and the third is stretched out, leaning on her neighbor’s knees. The folds of their clothes accurately reveal the harmony and slenderness of the figure. It is noted that in the great Greek sculpture of the 5th century. BC e. the drapery becomes an “echo of the body.” One might say, “an echo of the soul.” Indeed, in the combination of folds, physical beauty breathes here, generously revealing itself in the wavy haze of the vestment, as the embodiment of spiritual beauty.

The Ionic frieze of the Parthenon, one hundred and fifty-nine meters long, on which more than three hundred and fifty human figures and about two hundred and fifty animals (horses, sacrificial bulls and sheep) were depicted in low relief, can be revered as one of the most remarkable monuments of art created in the century enlightened genius Phidias.

Frieze subject: Panathenaic procession. Every four years, Athenian girls solemnly presented the priests of the temple with a peplos (cloak) that they had embroidered for Athena. The whole people took part in this ceremony. But the sculptor depicted not only the citizens of Athens: Zeus, Athena and other gods accept them as equals. It seems that there is no line drawn between gods and people: both are equally beautiful. This identity was, as it were, proclaimed by the sculptor on the walls of the sanctuary.

It is not surprising that the creator of all this marble splendor himself felt equal to the celestial inhabitants he depicted. In the battle scene, on the shield of Athena Parthenos, Phidias minted his own image in the form of an old man lifting a stone with both hands. Such unprecedented audacity gave new weapons into the hands of his enemies, who accused the great artist and thinker of godlessness.

The fragments of the Parthenon frieze are the most precious heritage of Hellas culture. They reproduce in our imagination the entire ritual Panathenaic procession, which in its endless diversity is perceived as a solemn procession of humanity itself.

The most famous wrecks: “Riders” (London, British Museum) and “Girls and Elders” (Paris, Louvre).

Horses with upturned muzzles (they are depicted so truthfully that it seems we hear their loud neighing). Young men sit on them with straight outstretched legs, forming a single line, sometimes straight, sometimes beautifully curved, together with their figure. And this alternation of diagonals, similar but not repeating movements, beautiful heads, horse muzzles, human and horse legs directed forward, creates a certain unified rhythm that captivates the viewer, in which a steady forward impulse is combined with absolute regularity.

Girls and elders are straight figures of striking harmony facing each other. In girls, a slightly protruding leg indicates forward movement. It is impossible to imagine clearer and more concise compositions of human figures. The smooth and carefully crafted folds of the vestments, like the flutes of Doric columns, give the young Athenian women a natural majesty. We believe that these are the most worthy representatives of the human race.

The expulsion from Athens and then the death of Phidias did not diminish the radiance of his genius. It warmed all Greek art of the last third of the 5th century. BC. The Great Polykleitos and another famous sculptor, Cresilaus (author of the heroic portrait of Pericles, one of the earliest Greek portrait sculptures) were influenced by him. An entire period of Attic ceramics bears the name Phidias. In Sicily (in Syracuse) wonderful coins are minted, in which we clearly recognize an echo of the plastic perfection of the Parthenon sculptures. And in our Northern Black Sea region, works of art have been found that perhaps most clearly reflect the impact of this perfection.

To the left of the Parthenon, on the other side of the sacred hill, rises the Erechtheion. This temple, dedicated to Athena and Poseidon, was built after Phidias left Athens. A most elegant masterpiece of the Ionic style. Six slender marble girls in peplos - the famous caryatids - serve as columns in its southern portico. The capital resting on their heads resembles the basket in which the priestesses carried sacred objects of worship.

Time and people did not spare this small temple, a repository of many treasures, which was turned into a Christian church in the Middle Ages, and under the Turks into a harem.

Before saying goodbye to the Acropolis, let's take a look at the relief of the balustrade of the temple of Nike Apteros, i.e. Wingless Victory (wingless so that it never flies away from Athens), just before the Propylaea (Athens, Acropolis Museum). Executed in the last decades of the 5th century, this bas-relief already marks the transition from the courageous and stately art of Phidias to a more lyrical one, calling for a serene enjoyment of beauty. One of the Victories (there are several of them on the balustrade) unties her sandal. Her gesture and raised leg agitate her robe, which seems damp, so softly it envelops her entire figure. We can say that the folds of the drapery, now spreading out in wide streams, now running over one another, give birth in the shimmering chiaroscuro of marble to a most captivating poem of female beauty.

Each genuine rise of human genius is unique in its essence. Masterpieces can be equivalent, but not identical. There will never be another Nika like her in Greek art. Alas, her head is lost, her arms are broken. And, looking at this wounded image, it becomes creepy to think how many unique beauties, unprotected or deliberately destroyed, perished for us irrevocably.

LATE CLASSIC

The new era in the political history of Hellas was neither bright nor creative. If V century. BC. was marked by a flourishing Greek city-states, then in the 4th century. Their gradual decomposition occurred along with the decline of the very idea of ​​Greek democratic statehood.

In 386, Persia, which had been completely defeated by the Greeks under the leadership of Athens in the previous century, took advantage of the internecine war, which weakened greek cities-states in order to impose peace on them, according to which all the cities of the Asia Minor coast came under the control of the Persian king. The Persian power became the main arbiter in the Greek world; it did not allow a national unification of the Greeks.

Civil wars showed that Greek states unable to unite on their own.

Meanwhile, unification was an economic necessity for the Greek people. The neighboring Balkan power, Macedonia, which had strengthened by that time, whose king Philip II defeated the Greeks at Chaeronea in 338, was able to complete this historical task. This battle decided the fate of Hellas: it found itself united, but under foreign rule. And the son of Philip II, the great commander Alexander the Great, led the Greeks on a victorious campaign against their ancestral enemies - the Persians.

This was the last classical period of Greek culture. At the end of the 4th century. BC. The ancient world will enter an era that is no longer called Hellenic, but Hellenistic.

In the art of late classics we clearly recognize new trends. During the era of great prosperity, the ideal human image was embodied in the valiant and beautiful citizen of the city-state.

The collapse of the polis shook this idea. Proud confidence in the all-conquering power of man does not disappear completely, but sometimes it seems to be obscured. Thoughts arise that give rise to anxiety or a tendency to serenely enjoy life. Interest in the individual world of man is growing; ultimately it marks a departure from the powerful generalizations of earlier times.

The grandeur of the worldview, embodied in the sculptures of the Acropolis, gradually becomes smaller, but the general perception of life and beauty is enriched. The calm and majestic nobility of the gods and heroes, as Phidias portrayed them, gives way to the identification in art of complex experiences, passions and impulses.

Greek 5th century BC. valued strength as the basis of a healthy, courageous beginning, strong will and vital energy - and therefore the statue of an athlete, a winner in competitions, personified for him the affirmation of human power and beauty. Artists of the 4th century BC. attracted for the first time by the charm of childhood, the wisdom of old age, the eternal charm of femininity.

The great mastery achieved by Greek art in the 5th century is still alive in the 4th century. BC, so that the most inspired artistic monuments of the late classics are marked with the same stamp of highest perfection.

The 4th century reflects new trends in its construction. Greek late classical architecture is marked by a certain desire for both pomp, even grandiosity, and lightness and decorative grace. The purely Greek artistic tradition is intertwined with eastern influences coming from Asia Minor, where Greek cities were subject to Persian rule. Along with the main architectural orders - Doric and Ionic, the third - Corinthian, which arose later, is increasingly used.

The Corinthian column is the most magnificent and decorative. The realistic tendency in it overcomes the original abstract geometric scheme of the capital, dressed in the Corinthian order in the flowering robe of nature - two rows of acanthus leaves.

The isolation of policies was abolished. For the ancient world, an era of powerful, albeit fragile slave-owning despotisms was dawning. Architecture was given different tasks than in the age of Pericles.

One of the most grandiose monuments of Greek architecture of the late classics was the tomb that has not reached us in the city of Halicarnassus (in Asia Minor) of the ruler of the Persian province of Carius Mausolus, from which the word “mausoleum” comes.

The Halicarnassus mausoleum combined all three orders. It consisted of two tiers. The first housed a mortuary chamber, the second a mortuary temple. Above the tiers was high pyramid, topped with a four-horse chariot (quadriga). The linear harmony of Greek architecture was revealed in this monument of enormous size (it apparently reached forty to fifty meters in height), its solemnity reminiscent of the funeral structures of the ancient eastern rulers. The mausoleum was built by the architects Satyr and Pythias, and its sculptural decoration was entrusted to several masters, including Skopas, who probably played a leading role among them.

Scopas, Praxiteles and Lysippos are the greatest Greek sculptors of the late classics. In terms of the influence they had on the entire subsequent development of ancient art, the work of these three geniuses can be compared with the sculptures of the Parthenon. Each of them expressed their bright individual worldview, their ideal of beauty, their understanding of perfection, which through the personal, revealed only by them, reach eternal - universal, peaks. Moreover, again, in the work of each, this personal thing is in tune with the era, embodying those feelings, those desires of his contemporaries, which most corresponded to his own.

The art of Skopas breathes passion and impulse, anxiety, struggle with some hostile forces, deep doubts and sorrowful experiences. All this was obviously characteristic of his nature and, at the same time, clearly expressed certain moods of his time. By temperament, Skopas is close to Euripides, just as they are close in their perception of the sorrowful destinies of Hellas.

A native of the marble-rich island of Paros, Skopas (c. 420 - c. 355 BC) worked in Attica, in the cities of the Peloponnese, and in Asia Minor. His creativity, extremely extensive both in the number of works and in subject matter, perished almost without a trace.

From the sculptural decoration of the temple of Athena in Tegea, created by him or under his direct supervision (Skopas, famous not only as a sculptor, but also as an architect, was also the builder of this temple), only a few fragments remained. But just look at the mangled head of a wounded warrior (Athens, National Archaeological Museum) to feel the great power of his genius. For this head with arched eyebrows, eyes directed upward and a slightly open mouth, a head in which everything - both suffering and grief - seems to express the tragedy not only of Greece in the 4th century. BC, torn apart by contradictions and trampled upon by foreign invaders, but also the primordial tragedy of the entire human race in its constant struggle, where victory still follows death. So, it seems to us, little remains of the bright joy of existence that once illuminated the consciousness of the Hellene.

Fragments of the frieze of the tomb of Mausolus, depicting the battle of the Greeks with the Amazons (London, British Museum)... This is undoubtedly the work of Skopas or his workshop. The genius of the great sculptor breathes in these ruins.

Let's compare them with the fragments of the Parthenon frieze. Both there and here there is freedom of movement. But there emancipation results in majestic regularity, and here - in a real storm: the angles of the figures, the expressiveness of gestures, the widely flowing clothes create a wild dynamism unprecedented in ancient art. There the composition is built on the gradual coordination of parts, here on the sharpest contrasts.

And yet the genius of Phidias and the genius of Skopas are related in something very significant, almost the main thing. The compositions of both friezes are equally harmonious, harmonious, and their images are equally specific. It was not without reason that Heraclitus said that the most beautiful harmony is born from contrasts. Scopas creates a composition whose unity and clarity are as impeccable as that of Phidias. Moreover, not a single figure dissolves in it or loses its independent plastic meaning.

This is all that remains of Skopas himself or his students. Other things related to his work are later Roman copies. However, one of them gives us probably the most vivid idea of ​​his genius.

The Parian stone is a bacchante.

But the sculptor gave the stone a soul.

And, like a drunken woman, she jumped up and rushed

she's dancing.

Having created this maenad, in a frenzy,

with a dead goat,

You made a miracle with an idolizing chisel,

Skopas.

This is how an unknown Greek poet glorified the statue of the Maenad, or Bacchae, which we can judge only from a small copy (Dresden Museum).

First of all, we note a characteristic innovation, very important for the development of realistic art: in contrast to the sculptures of the 5th century. BC, this statue is completely designed to be viewed from all sides, and you need to walk around it to perceive all aspects of the image created by the artist.

Throwing back her head and bending her entire body, the young woman rushes in a stormy, truly Bacchic dance - to the glory of the god of wine. And although the marble copy is also just a fragment, there is, perhaps, no other monument of art that conveys with such force the selfless pathos of fury. This is not a painful exaltation, but a pathetic and triumphant one, although the power over human passions has been lost in it.

Thus, in the last century of the classics, the powerful Hellenic spirit was able to preserve all its primordial greatness even in the frenzy generated by seething passions and painful dissatisfaction.

Praxiteles (a native Athenian, worked in 370-340 BC) expressed a completely different principle in his work. We know a little more about this sculptor than about his brothers.

Like Scopas, Praxiteles disdained bronze, creating his greatest works in marble. We know that he was rich and enjoyed great fame, which at one time eclipsed even the glory of Phidias. We also know that he loved Phryne, the famous courtesan, accused of blasphemy and acquitted by the Athenian judges, who admired her beauty, which they recognized as worthy of national worship. Phryne served him as a model for statues of the goddess of love Aphrodite (Venus). The Roman scholar Pliny writes about the creation of these statues and their cult, vividly recreating the atmosphere of the era of Praxiteles:

“...Higher than all the works not only of Praxiteles, but generally existing in the Universe, is the Venus of his work. To see her, many swam to Knidus. Praxiteles simultaneously made and sold two statues of Venus, but one was covered with clothing - it was preferred by the inhabitants of Kos, who had the right to choose. Praxiteles charged the same price for both statues. But the inhabitants of Kos recognized this statue as serious and modest; the Cnidians bought what they rejected. And her fame was immeasurably higher. King Nicomedes subsequently wanted to buy it from the Cnidians, promising for it to forgive the Cnidian state all the huge debts they owed. But the Cnidians preferred to move everything rather than part with the statue. And not in vain. After all, Praxiteles created the glory of Cnidus with this statue. The building where this statue is located is all open, so it can be viewed from all sides. Moreover, they believe that the statue was built with the favorable participation of the goddess herself. And on one side the delight it evokes is no less...”

Praxiteles is an inspired singer of female beauty, so revered by the Greeks of the 4th century. BC. In the warm play of light and shadow, as never before, the beauty of the female body shone under his incisor.

The time has long passed when a woman was not depicted naked, but this time Praxiteles exposed in marble not just a woman, but a goddess, and this at first caused surprised censure.

The Cnidus Aphrodite is known to us only from copies and borrowings. In two Roman marble copies (in Rome and in the Munich Glyptothek) it has come down to us in its entirety, so we know its general appearance. But these one-piece replicas are not top-notch. Some others, although in ruins, give a more vivid idea of ​​this great work: the head of Aphrodite in the Louvre in Paris, with such sweet and spiritual features; her torsos, also in the Louvre and in the Naples Museum, in which we guess the enchanting femininity of the original, and even a Roman copy, taken not from the original, but from a Hellenistic statue inspired by the genius of Praxiteles, “Venus of Khvoshchinsky” (named after the Russian who acquired it collector), in which, it seems to us, the marble radiates the warmth of the beautiful body of the goddess (this fragment is the pride of the antique department of the A.S. Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts).

What so delighted the sculptor’s contemporaries in this image of the most captivating of goddesses, who, having taken off her clothes, prepared to plunge into the water?

What delights us even in broken copies that convey some features of the lost original?

With the finest modeling, in which he surpassed all his predecessors, enlivening the marble with shimmering highlights of light and giving the smooth stone a delicate velvety quality with virtuosity inherent only to him, Praxiteles captured in the smooth contours and ideal proportions of the goddess’s body, in the touching naturalness of her pose, in her gaze, “wet and shiny”, according to the testimony of the ancients, those great principles that Aphrodite expressed in Greek mythology, the eternal principles in the consciousness and dreams of the human race: Beauty and Love.

Praxiteles is sometimes recognized as the most striking exponent in ancient art of that philosophical trend, which saw in pleasure (whatever it consisted of) the highest good and the natural goal of all human aspirations, i.e. hedonism. And yet his art already foreshadows the philosophy that blossomed at the end of the 4th century. BC. “in the groves of Epicurus,” as Pushkin called the Athenian garden where Epicurus gathered his students...

The absence of suffering, a serene state of mind, the liberation of people from the fear of death and fear of the gods - these were, according to Epicurus, the main conditions for the true enjoyment of life.

After all, by their very serenity, the beauty of the images created by Praxiteles, the gentle humanity of the gods he sculpted, affirmed the beneficialness of liberation from this fear in an era that was by no means serene and merciful.

The image of an athlete obviously did not interest Praxiteles, just as he was not interested in civic motives. He sought to embody in marble the ideal of a physically beautiful young man, not as muscular as Polykleitos, very slender and graceful, smiling joyfully, but slightly slyly, not particularly afraid of anyone, but not threatening anyone, serenely happy and filled with the consciousness of the harmony of all his creatures.

This image, apparently, corresponded to his own worldview and therefore was especially dear to him. We find indirect confirmation of this in an entertaining anecdote.

The love relationship between the famous artist and such an incomparable beauty as Phryne greatly fascinated his contemporaries. The lively mind of the Athenians was sophisticated in conjectures about them. It was reported, for example, that Phryne asked Praxiteles to give her his best sculpture as a sign of love. He agreed, but left the choice to her, slyly hiding which of his works he considered the most perfect. Then Phryne decided to outsmart him. One day, a slave sent by her ran to Praxiteles with the terrible news that the artist’s workshop had burned down... “If the flame destroyed Eros and Satyr, then everything was lost!” - Praxiteles exclaimed in grief. So Phryne found out the author’s own assessment...

We know from reproductions these sculptures, which enjoyed enormous fame in the ancient world. At least one hundred and fifty marble copies of “The Resting Satyr” have reached us (five of them are in the Hermitage). Can't count antique statues, figurines made of marble, clay or bronze, funerary steles and all kinds of items of applied art, inspired by the genius of Praxiteles.

Two sons and a grandson continued the work of Praxiteles in sculpture, who was himself the son of a sculptor. But this family continuity, of course, is negligible compared to the general artistic continuity that goes back to his work.

In this regard, the example of Praxiteles is particularly illustrative, but far from exceptional.

Even if the perfection of a truly great original is unique, a work of art that reveals a new “variation of the beautiful” is immortal even in the event of its destruction. We do not have an exact copy of either the statue of Zeus in Olympia or the Athena Parthenos, but the greatness of these images, which determined the spiritual content of almost all Greek art during its heyday, is clearly visible even in miniature jewelry and coins of that time. They would not have been in this style without Phidias. Just as there would have been no statues of careless youths lazily leaning on a tree, no naked marble goddesses captivating with their lyrical beauty, who adorned the villas and parks of nobles in great numbers in Hellenistic and Roman times, just as there would have been no Praxitelean style at all, no Praxitelean sweet bliss, so long retained in ancient art - if not for the genuine “Resting Satyr” and the genuine “Aphrodite of Cnidus,” now lost God knows where and how. Let us say again: their loss is irreparable, but their spirit lives on even in the most ordinary works of imitators, and therefore lives for us too. But if these works had not been preserved, this spirit would somehow have glimmered in human memory, only to shine again at the first opportunity.

By perceiving the beauty of a work of art, a person becomes spiritually enriched. The living connection between generations is never completely broken. The ancient ideal of beauty was resolutely rejected by medieval ideology, and the works that embodied it were mercilessly destroyed. But the victorious revival of this ideal in the age of humanism testifies that it was never completely exterminated.

The same can be said about the contribution to art of every truly great artist. For a genius, embodying a new image of beauty born in his soul, enriches humanity forever. And so from ancient times, when for the first time those formidable and majestic animal images were created in a Paleolithic cave, from which all fine art came, and into which our distant ancestor put his whole soul and all his dreams, illuminated by creative inspiration.

Brilliant upswings in art complement each other, introducing something new that no longer dies. This new thing sometimes leaves its mark on an entire era. So it was with Phidias, so it was with Praxiteles.

However, did everything that Praxiteles himself created perish?

According to the ancient author, it was known that the statue of Praxiteles “Hermes with Dionysus” stood in the temple at Olympia. During excavations in 1877, a relatively little damaged marble sculpture of these two gods was discovered there. At first, no one had any doubt that this was the original of Praxiteles, and even now its authorship is recognized by many experts. However, careful study of the marble processing technique itself has convinced some scientists that the sculpture found in Olympia is an excellent Hellenistic copy, replacing the original, probably taken out by the Romans.

This statue, which is mentioned by only one Greek author, apparently was not considered Praxiteles’ masterpiece. Nevertheless, its merits are undoubted: amazingly fine modeling, soft lines, a wonderful, purely Praxitelean play of light and shadow, a very clear, perfectly balanced composition and, most importantly, the charm of Hermes with his dreamy, slightly absent-minded gaze and the childish charm of little Dionysus. And, however, in this charm there is a certain sweetness visible, and we feel that in the entire statue, even in the surprisingly slender figure of a very well-curled god in its smooth curve, beauty and grace slightly cross the line beyond which beauty and grace begin. The art of Praxiteles is very close to this line, but it does not violate it in its most spiritual creations.

Color appears to have played a large role in the overall appearance of Praxiteles' statues. We know that some of them were painted (by rubbing melted wax paints, which softly enlivened the whiteness of the marble) by Nicias himself, the famous painter of that time. The sophisticated art of Praxiteles acquired even greater expressiveness and emotionality thanks to color. The harmonious combination of two great arts was probably realized in his creations.

Let us finally add that in our Northern Black Sea region, near the mouths of the Dnieper and Bug (in Olbia), a pedestal of a statue with the signature of the great Praxiteles was found. Alas, the statue itself was not in the ground.

Lysippos worked in the last third of the 4th century. BC e., during the time of Alexander the Great. His work seems to complete the art of the late classics.

Bronze was this sculptor's favorite material. We do not know his originals, so we can judge him only from the surviving marble copies, which far from reflecting his entire work.

The number of monuments of art of Ancient Hellas that have not reached us is immense. The fate of Lysippos's enormous artistic heritage is terrible proof of this.

Lysippos was considered one of the most prolific artists of his time. They say that he set aside a coin from the reward for each completed order: after his death there were as many as one and a half thousand. Meanwhile, among his works there were sculptural groups numbering up to twenty figures, and the height of some of his sculptures exceeded twenty meters. People, elements and time dealt with all this mercilessly. But no force could destroy the spirit of Lysippos’s art, erase the trace he left.

According to Pliny, Lysippos said that, unlike his predecessors, who depicted people as they are, he, Lysippos, sought to depict them as they appear. With this, he affirmed the principle of realism, which had long triumphed in Greek art, but which he wanted to bring to full completion in accordance with the aesthetic principles of his contemporary, the greatest philosopher of antiquity, Aristotle.

Lysippos's innovation lay in the fact that he discovered enormous realistic possibilities in the art of sculpture that had not yet been used. And in fact, his figures are not perceived by us as created “for show”; they do not pose for us, but exist on their own, as the artist’s eye captured them in all the complexity of the most varied movements, reflecting one or another emotional impulse. Bronze, which can easily take any shape when cast, was most suitable for solving such sculptural problems.

The pedestal does not isolate the figures of Lysippos from the environment; they truly live in it, as if protruding from a certain spatial depth, in which their expressiveness is manifested equally clearly, albeit differently, from any side. They are therefore completely three-dimensional, completely liberated. The human figure is constructed by Lysippos in a new way, not in its plastic synthesis, as in the sculptures of Myron or Polykleitos, but in some fleeting aspect, exactly as it appeared (appeared) to the artist at a given moment and as it had not yet been in the previous and already will not happen in the future.

The amazing flexibility of the figures, the complexity itself, and sometimes the contrast of movements - all this is harmoniously ordered, and there is nothing in this master that even in the slightest degree resembles the chaos of nature. Conveying, first of all, a visual impression, he subordinates this impression to a certain order, established once and for all in accordance with the very spirit of his art. It is he, Lysippos, who violates the old, Polykleitan canon of the human figure in order to create his own, new, much lighter, more suitable for his dynamic art, which rejects all internal immobility, all heaviness. In this new canon, the head is no longer 1.7, but only 1/8 of the total height.

The marble repetitions of his works that have come down to us give, in general, a clear picture of the realistic achievements of Lysippos.

The famous "Apoxiomen" (Rome, Vatican). This young athlete, however, is not at all the same as in the sculpture of the previous century, where his image radiated a proud consciousness of victory. Lysippos showed us the athlete after the competition, carefully cleaning his body from oil and dust with a metal scraper. The not at all sharp and seemingly inexpressive movement of the hand reverberates throughout the entire figure, giving it exceptional vitality. He is outwardly calm, but we feel that he has gone through great excitement, and fatigue from extreme stress is visible in his features. This image, as if snatched from an ever-changing reality, is deeply human, extremely noble in its complete ease.

“Hercules with a Lion” (St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum). This is the passionate pathos of a struggle for life and death, again as if seen from the outside by the artist. The entire sculpture seems to be charged with a violent, intense movement, irresistibly merging the powerful figures of man and beast into one harmoniously beautiful whole.

We can judge from the following story what impression Lysippos’ sculptures made on his contemporaries. Alexander the Great loved his figurine “Feasting Hercules” so much (one of its repetitions is also in the Hermitage) that he did not part with it on his campaigns, and when his last hour came, he ordered it to be placed in front of him.

Lysippos was the only sculptor whom the famous conqueror recognized as worthy of capturing his features.

“The statue of Apollo is the highest ideal of art among all the works that have been preserved to us from antiquity.” Winckelmann wrote this.

Who was the author of the statue that so delighted the famous ancestor of several generations of scientists - the “antiquities”? None of the sculptors whose art shines most brightly to this day. How is this possible and what is the misunderstanding here?

The Apollo that Winckelmann is talking about is the famous “Apollo Belvedere”: a marble Roman copy of a bronze original by Leochares (last third of the 4th century BC), so named after the gallery where it was exhibited for a long time (Rome, Vatican) . This statue once caused a lot of admiration.

We recognize in the Belvedere "Apollo" a reflection of Greek classics. But it’s just a reflection. We know the frieze of the Parthenon, which Winckelmann did not know, and therefore, despite all its undoubted effectiveness, the statue of Leochares seems to us internally cold, somewhat theatrical. Although Leochares was a contemporary of Lysippos, his art, losing the true significance of its content, smacks of academicism and marks a decline in relation to the classics.

The fame of such statues sometimes gave rise to a misconception about all Hellenic art. This idea has not been erased to this day. Some artists are inclined to reduce the importance of the artistic heritage of Hellas and turn in their aesthetic searches to completely different cultural worlds, in their opinion, more in tune with the worldview of our era. (Suffice it to say that such an authoritative exponent of the most modern Western aesthetic tastes, like the French writer and art theorist Andre Malraux, included in his work “The Imaginary Museum of World Sculpture” half as many reproductions of sculptural monuments of Ancient Hellas as the so-called primitive civilizations of America, Africa and Oceania !) But I stubbornly want to believe that the majestic beauty of the Parthenon will again triumph in the consciousness of mankind, establishing in it the eternal ideal of humanism.

Concluding this brief overview of Greek classical art, I would like to mention another remarkable monument kept in the Hermitage. This is a world-famous Italian vase from the 4th century. BC e. , found near the ancient city of Cuma (in Campania), called the “Queen of Vases” for the perfection of composition and richness of decoration, and although probably not created in Greece itself, reflects the highest achievements of Greek sculpture. The main thing in the black-lacquer vase from Qom is its truly impeccable proportions, slender outline, general harmony of forms and strikingly beautiful multi-figured reliefs (preserving traces of bright coloring), dedicated to the cult of the fertility goddess Demeter, the famous Eleusinian mysteries, where the darkest scenes were replaced by rosy ones visions, symbolizing death and life, eternal withering and awakening of nature. These reliefs are echoes of the monumental sculpture of the greatest Greek masters of the 5th and 4th centuries. BC. Thus, all the standing figures resemble the statues of the school of Praxiteles, and the sitting ones - the school of Phidias.

SCULPTURE OF THE HELLENISM PERIOD

With the death of Alexander the Great, the time of Hellenism begins.

The time had not yet come for the establishment of a single slave-owning empire, and Hellas was not destined to rule the world. The pathos of statehood was not hers driving force, so she couldn’t even unite herself.

The great historical mission of Hellas was cultural. Having led the Greeks, Alexander the Great was the executor of this mission. His empire collapsed, but Greek culture remained in the states that arose in the East after his conquests.

In previous centuries, Greek settlements spread the radiance of Hellenic culture to foreign lands.

In the centuries of Hellenism, foreign lands disappeared; the radiance of Hellas appeared all-encompassing and all-conquering.

The citizen of a free polis gave way to a “citizen of the world” (cosmopolitan), whose activities took place in the universe, the “ecumene”, as humanity of that time understood it. Under the spiritual leadership of Hellas. And this, despite the bloody feuds between the “diadochi” - Alexander’s insatiable successors in their lust for power.

It's like that. However, the newly-minted “citizens of the world” were forced to combine their high calling with the fate of powerless subjects of equally newly-minted rulers, ruling in the manner of oriental despots.

The triumph of Hellas was no longer disputed by anyone; it concealed, however, deep contradictions: the bright spirit of the Parthenon turned out to be both the winner and the vanquished at the same time.

Architecture, sculpture and painting flourished throughout the vast Hellenistic world. Urban planning on an unprecedented scale in the new states asserting their power, the luxury of the royal courts, the enrichment of the slave-owning nobility in the rapidly flourishing international trade provided artists with large orders. Perhaps, as never before, art was encouraged by those in power. And in any case, never before has artistic creativity been so extensive and varied. But how can we evaluate this creativity in comparison with what was produced in the art of the archaic, the heyday and the late classics, the continuation of which was Hellenistic art?

The artists had to spread the achievements of Greek art throughout all the territories conquered by Alexander with their new multi-tribal state formations and at the same time, in contact with the ancient cultures of the East, preserve these achievements in purity, reflecting the greatness of the Greek artistic ideal. Customers - kings and nobles - wanted to decorate their palaces and parks with works of art as similar as possible to those that were considered perfection during the great era of Alexander's power. It is not surprising that all this did not attract the Greek sculptor to the path of new searches, prompting him to simply “make” a statue that would seem no worse than the original of Praxiteles or Lysippos. And this, in turn, inevitably led to the borrowing of an already found form (with adaptation to the internal content that this form expressed from its creator), i.e. to what we call academicism. Or to eclecticism, i.e. a combination of individual features and findings of the art of various masters, sometimes impressive, spectacular due to the high quality of the samples, but lacking unity, internal integrity and not conducive to the creation of one’s own, namely one’s own - an expressive and full-fledged artistic language, one’s own style.

Many, many sculptures of the Hellenistic period show us to an even greater extent precisely those shortcomings that the Belvedere Apollo already foreshadowed. Hellenism expanded and, to a certain extent, completed the decadent tendencies that appeared at the end of the late classics.

At the end of the 2nd century. BC. A sculptor named Alexander or Agesander worked in Asia Minor: in the inscription on the only statue of his work that has come down to us, not all the letters have been preserved. This statue, found in 1820 on the island of Milos (in the Aegean Sea), depicts Aphrodite-Venus and is now known throughout the world as the “Venus Milos” This is not just a Hellenistic, but a late Hellenistic monument, which means it was created in an era marked by some decline in art.

But it is impossible to put this “Venus” in a row with many other, contemporary or even earlier sculptures of gods and goddesses, which testify to considerable technical skill, but not to the originality of the design. However, there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly original in it, something that was not already expressed in previous centuries. A distant echo of Praxiteles' Aphrodite... And yet, in this statue everything is so harmonious and harmonious, the image of the goddess of love is, at the same time, so regally majestic and so captivatingly feminine, her whole appearance is so pure and the wonderfully modeled marble glows so softly that it seems to us : the chisel of a sculptor of the great era of Greek art could not have carved anything more perfect.

Does it owe its fame to the fact that the most famous Greek sculptures, which were admired by the ancients, were irretrievably lost? Statues such as the Venus de Milo, the pride of the Louvre in Paris, were probably not unique. No one in the “ecumene” of that time, or later, in the Roman era, sang it in verse, either in Greek or Latin. But how many enthusiastic lines, grateful outpourings are dedicated to her

now in almost all languages ​​of the world.

This is not a Roman copy, but a Greek original, albeit not from the classical era. This means that the ancient Greek artistic ideal was so high and powerful that under the chisel of a gifted master it came to life in all its glory even in times of academicism and eclecticism.

Such grandiose sculptural groups as “Laocoon with his sons” (Rome, Vatican) and “Farnese Bull” (Naples, National Roman Museum), which aroused the boundless admiration of many generations of the most enlightened representatives of European culture, now, when the beauty of the Parthenon has been revealed, seem to us to be overly theatrical , overloaded, crushed into details.

However, probably belonging to the same Rhodian school as these groups, but sculpted by an artist unknown to us in an earlier period of Hellenism, “Nike of Samothrace” (Paris, Louvre) is one of the pinnacles of art. This statue stood on the bow of the stone monument ship. With the flapping of her mighty wings, Nika-Victory rushes forward uncontrollably, cutting through the wind, under which her robe flutters noisily (we seem to hear it). The head is broken off, but the grandeur of the image reaches us completely.

The art of portraiture is very common in the Hellenistic world. “Eminent people” are multiplying, having succeeded in the service of rulers (diadochi) or who have risen to the top of society thanks to a more organized exploitation of slave labor than in the former fragmented Hellas: they want to imprint their features for posterity. The portrait is becoming more and more individualized, but at the same time, if we have before us the highest representative of power, then his superiority and the exclusivity of the position he occupies are emphasized.

And here he is, the main ruler - Diadokh. His bronze statue (Rome, Museum of Baths) is the brightest example of Hellenistic art. We do not know who this ruler is, but at first glance it is clear to us that this is not a generalized image, but a portrait. Characteristic, sharply individual features, slightly narrowed eyes, and by no means an ideal physique. This man is captured by the artist in all the originality of his personal traits, filled with the consciousness of his power. He was probably a skillful ruler, able to act according to circumstances, it seems that he was unyielding in the pursuit of an intended goal, perhaps cruel, but perhaps sometimes generous, quite complex in character and ruled in the infinitely complex Hellenistic world, where the primacy of Greek culture had to be combined with respect for ancient local cultures.

He is completely naked, like an ancient hero or god. The turn of the head, so natural, completely liberated, and the high raised hand resting on the spear, give the figure a proud majesty. Sharp realism and deification. The deification is not of an ideal hero, but the most specific, individual deification of an earthly ruler given to people... by fate.

The general direction of the art of the late classics lies at the very basis of Hellenistic art. It sometimes successfully develops this direction, even deepens it, but, as we have seen, sometimes it crushes it or takes it to the extreme, losing the blessed sense of proportion and impeccable artistic taste that marked all Greek art of the classical era.

Alexandria, where the trade routes of the Hellenistic world crossed, is the center of the entire Hellenistic culture, the “new Athens.”

In this huge city at that time with a population of half a million, founded by Alexander at the mouth of the Nile, science, literature and art flourished, patronized by the Ptolemies. They founded the “Museum,” which became the center of artistic and scientific life for many centuries, the famous library, the largest in the ancient world, containing more than seven hundred thousand scrolls of papyrus and parchment. One hundred and twenty meters Alexandrian lighthouse with a tower lined with marble, the eight sides of which were located in the directions of the main winds, with weather vane statues, with a dome topped with a bronze statue of the lord of the seas Poseidon, had a system of mirrors that intensified the light of the fire lit in the dome, so that it was seen at a distance of sixty kilometers. This lighthouse was considered one of the “seven wonders of the world.” We know it from images on ancient coins and from a detailed description of an Arab traveler who visited Alexandria in the 13th century: a hundred years later, the lighthouse was destroyed by an earthquake. It is clear that only exceptional advances in precise knowledge made it possible to erect this grandiose structure, which required the most complex calculations. After all, Alexandria, where Euclid taught, was the cradle of geometry named after him.

Alexandrian art is extremely diverse. The statues of Aphrodite go back to Praxiteles (his two sons worked as sculptors in Alexandria), but they are less majestic than their prototypes and are emphatically graceful. On the Gonzaga cameo there are generalized images inspired by the classical canons. But completely different trends appear in the statues of old people: bright Greek realism here turns into almost frank naturalism with the most ruthless rendering of flabby, wrinkled skin, swollen veins, everything irreparable that old age brings to the human appearance. Caricature flourishes, funny but sometimes stinging. The everyday genre (sometimes with a bias toward the grotesque) and portraiture are becoming increasingly widespread. Reliefs appear with cheerful bucolic scenes, charming images of children, sometimes enlivening a grandiose allegorical statue with a regally reclining husband, similar to Zeus and personifying the Nile.

Diversity, but also the loss of the internal unity of art, the integrity of the artistic ideal, which often reduces the significance of the image. Ancient Egypt did not die.

Experienced in the politics of government, the Ptolemies emphasized their respect for its culture, borrowed many Egyptian customs, erected temples to Egyptian deities and... themselves included themselves in the host of these deities.

And Egyptian artists did not betray their ancient artistic ideal, their ancient canons, even in the images of the new, foreign rulers of their country.

A remarkable monument of art of Ptolemaic Egypt is a statue made of black basalt of Queen Arsinoe II. Saved by her ambition and beauty, Arsinoe, whom, according to Egyptian royal custom, her brother Ptolemy Philadelphus married. Also an idealized portrait, but not in the classical Greek, but in the Egyptian way. This image goes back to the monuments of the funeral cult of the pharaohs, and not to the statues of the beautiful goddesses of Hellas. Arsinoe is also beautiful, but her figure, constrained by ancient tradition, is frontal and seems frozen, as in the portrait sculptures of all three Egyptian kingdoms; this constraint naturally harmonizes with the internal content of the image, completely different from that in the Greek classics.

Above the queen's forehead are sacred cobras. And perhaps the soft roundness of the forms of her slender young body, which seems completely naked under a light, transparent robe, somehow reflects, perhaps, the warming breath of Hellenism with its hidden bliss.

The city of Pergamon, the capital of the vast Hellenistic state of Asia Minor, was famous, like Alexandria, for its rich library (parchment, in Greek “Pergamum skin” - a Pergamon invention), its artistic treasures, high culture and pomp. Pergamon sculptors created wonderful statues of the slain Gauls. These statues trace their inspiration and style to Skopas. The frieze of the Pergamon Altar also goes back to Skopas, but this is in no way an academic work, but a monument of art, marking a new great flap of wings.

The fragments of the frieze were discovered in the last quarter of the 19th century by German archaeologists and brought to Berlin. In 1945, they were taken by the Soviet Army from burning Berlin, then stored in the Hermitage, and in 1958 they returned to Berlin and are now exhibited there in the Pergamon Museum.

A hundred and twenty meters long sculptural frieze bordered the base of the white marble altar with light Ionic columns and wide steps rising in the middle of the huge U-shaped structure.

The theme of the sculptures is “gigantomachy”: the battle of gods with giants, allegorically depicting the battle of the Hellenes with the barbarians. This is a very high relief, almost circular sculpture.

We know that a group of sculptors worked on the frieze, among whom were not only Pergamonians. But the unity of plan is obvious.

We can say without reservation: in all of Greek sculpture there has never been such a grandiose picture of a battle. A terrible, merciless battle for life and death. A battle that is truly titanic - both because the giants who rebelled against the gods, and the gods themselves who defeat them, are of superhuman stature, and because the entire composition is titanic in its pathos and scope.

The perfection of form, the amazing play of light and shadow, the harmonious combination of the sharpest contrasts, the inexhaustible dynamism of each figure, each group and the entire composition are consonant with the art of Skopas, equivalent to the highest plastic achievements of the 4th century. This is great Greek art in all its glory.

But the spirit of these statues sometimes takes us away from Hellas. Lessing's words that the Greek artist tamed the manifestations of passions in order to create calmly beautiful images do not apply to them in any way. True, this principle has already been violated in late classics. However, even as if filled with the most violent impulse, the figures of warriors and Amazons in the frieze of the tomb of Mausolus seem to us restrained in comparison with the figures of the Pergamon “gigantomachy”.

The true theme of the Pergamon frieze is not the victory of the bright beginning over the darkness of the underworld, from where the giants escaped. We see the triumph of the gods, Zeus and Athena, but we are shocked by something else that involuntarily captures us when we look at this whole storm. The rapture of battle, wild, selfless - this is what glorifies the marble of the Pergamon frieze. In this rapture, the gigantic figures of the combatants frantically grapple with each other. Their faces are distorted, and it seems to us that we hear their screams, furious or jubilant roars, deafening screams and groans.

It’s as if some elemental force was reflected here in the marble, an untamed and indomitable force that loves to sow horror and death. Isn’t it the one that since ancient times has appeared to man in the terrible image of the Beast? It seemed that it was finished with him in Hellas, but now he is clearly resurrected here, in Hellenistic Pergamon. Not only in his spirit, but also in his appearance. We see lion faces, giants with writhing snakes instead of legs, monsters as if generated by a heated imagination from awakened horror of the unknown.

To the first Christians, the Pergamon altar seemed like the “throne of Satan”!..

Did Asian craftsmen, still subject to the visions, dreams and fears of the Ancient East, participate in the creation of the frieze? Or did the Greek masters themselves become imbued with them on this earth? The latter assumption seems more likely.

And this is the interweaving of the Hellenic ideal of a harmonious perfect form, conveying the visible world in its majestic beauty, the ideal of a person who realized himself as the crown of nature, with a completely different worldview, which we recognize in the paintings of Paleolithic caves, forever capturing the formidable bull power, and in the unsolved faces of stone idols of Mesopotamia, and in Scythian “animal” plaques, finds, perhaps for the first time, such a complete, organic embodiment in the tragic images of the Pergamon altar.

These images do not console, like the images of the Parthenon, but in subsequent centuries their restless pathos will be consonant with many of the highest works of art.

By the end of the 1st century. BC. Rome asserts its dominance in the Hellenistic world. But it is difficult to define, even conditionally, the final facet of Hellenism. In any case, in its impact on the culture of other peoples. Rome adopted the culture of Hellas in its own way and itself became Hellenized. The radiance of Hellas did not fade either under Roman rule or after the fall of Rome.

In the field of art for the Middle East, especially for Byzantium, the heritage of antiquity was largely Greek, not Roman. But that's not all. The spirit of Hellas shines in ancient Russian painting. And this spirit illuminates in the West great era Renaissance.

ROMAN SCULPTURE

Without the foundation laid by Greece and Rome, there would be no modern Europe.

Both the Greeks and the Romans had their own historical vocation - they complemented each other, and the foundation of modern Europe is their common cause.

The artistic heritage of Rome meant a lot in the cultural foundation of Europe. Moreover, this legacy was almost decisive for European art.

In conquered Greece, the Romans initially behaved like barbarians. In one of his satires, Juvenal shows us a rude Roman warrior of those times, “who did not know how to appreciate the art of the Greeks,” who “as usual” broke “cups made by famous artists” into small pieces in order to decorate his shield or armor with them.

And when the Romans heard about the value of works of art, the destruction gave way to robbery - wholesale, apparently, without any selection. The Romans took five hundred statues from Epirus in Greece, and having defeated the Etruscans even before that, they took two thousand from Veii. It is unlikely that these were all masterpieces.

It is generally accepted that the fall of Corinth in 146 BC. The actual Greek period of ancient history ends. This blooming city on the shore Ionian Sea, one of the main centers of Greek culture, was razed to the ground by the soldiers of the Roman consul Mummius. Consular ships removed countless artistic treasures from the burned palaces and temples, so that, as Pliny writes, literally the whole of Rome was filled with statues.

The Romans not only brought a great variety of Greek statues (in addition, they brought Egyptian obelisks), but copied Greek originals on a wide scale. And for this alone we should be grateful to them. What, however, was the actual Roman contribution to the art of sculpture? Around the trunk of Trajan's Column, erected at the beginning of the 2nd century. BC e. in the Forum of Trajan, above the very grave of this emperor, a relief curls like a wide ribbon, glorifying his victories over the Dacians, whose kingdom (present-day Romania) was finally conquered by the Romans. The artists who created this relief were undoubtedly not only talented, but also well acquainted with the techniques of Hellenistic masters. And yet this is a typical Roman work.

Before us is the most detailed and conscientious narration. It is a narrative, not a generalized image. In Greek relief, the story of real events was presented allegorically, usually intertwined with mythology. In the Roman relief, since the times of the Republic, the desire to be as accurate as possible is clearly visible, more specifically convey the course of events in its logical sequence, along with the characteristic features of the persons participating in them. In the relief of Trajan's Column we see Roman and barbarian camps, preparations for a campaign, assaults on fortresses, crossings, and merciless battles. Everything seems to be really very accurate: the types of Roman soldiers and Dacians, their weapons and clothing, the type of fortifications - so this relief can serve as a kind of sculptural encyclopedia of the military life of that time. In its general design, the entire composition rather resembles the already familiar relief narratives of the abusive exploits of the Assyrian kings, but with less pictorial power, although with better knowledge of anatomy and the ability, coming from the Greeks, to more freely arrange figures in space. The low relief, without any plastic identification of the figures, may have been inspired by unpreserved paintings. Images of Trajan himself are repeated at least ninety times, the faces of the warriors are extremely expressive.

It is this same concreteness and expressiveness that constitute the distinctive feature of all Roman portrait sculpture, in which, perhaps, the originality of the Roman artistic genius was most clearly manifested.

The purely Roman share included in the treasury of world culture is perfectly defined (precisely in connection with the Roman portrait) by the greatest connoisseur of ancient art O.F. Waldhauer: “...Rome exists as an individual; Rome exists in those strict forms in which ancient images were revived under its rule; Rome is in that great organism that spread the seeds of ancient culture, giving them the opportunity to fertilize new, still barbarian peoples, and, finally, Rome is in the creation of a civilized world on the basis of cultural Hellenic elements and, modifying them in accordance with new tasks, only Rome and could create... a great era of portrait sculpture...".

The Roman portrait has a complex backstory. Its connection with the Etruscan portrait is obvious, as well as with the Hellenistic one. The Roman root is also quite clear: the first Roman portraiture in marble or bronze was simply an exact reproduction of a wax mask taken from the face of the deceased. This is not art in the usual sense.

In subsequent times, accuracy remained at the core of Roman artistic portraiture. Precision inspired by creative inspiration and remarkable craftsmanship. The legacy of Greek art, of course, played a role here. But we can say without exaggeration: the art of a brightly individualized portrait, brought to perfection, completely revealing the inner world of a given person, is essentially a Roman achievement. In any case, in terms of the scope of creativity, the strength and depth of psychological penetration.

The Roman portrait reveals to us the spirit of Ancient Rome in all its aspects and contradictions. A Roman portrait is, as it were, the history of Rome itself, told in persons, the story of its unprecedented rise and tragic death: “The whole history of the Roman fall is expressed here in eyebrows, foreheads, lips” (Herzen).

Among the Roman emperors there were noble personalities, major statesmen, there were also greedy ambitious people, there were monsters, despots,

maddened by unlimited power, and in the consciousness that everything was permitted to them, who shed a sea of ​​blood, were the gloomy tyrants, who by the murder of their predecessor achieved the highest rank and therefore destroyed everyone who inspired them with the slightest suspicion. As we have seen, the morals born of the deified autocracy sometimes pushed even the most enlightened to the most cruel acts.

During the period of greatest power of the empire, a tightly organized slave-owning system, in which the life of a slave was considered nothing and he was treated like a work animal, left its mark on the morality and life of not only emperors and nobles, but also ordinary citizens. And at the same time, encouraged by the pathos of statehood, the desire to streamline social life throughout the empire in the Roman way increased, with full confidence that there could not be a more durable and beneficial system. But this confidence turned out to be unfounded.

Continuous wars, internecine strife, provincial uprisings, the flight of slaves, and the consciousness of lawlessness increasingly undermined the foundation of the “Roman world” with each passing century. The conquered provinces showed their will more and more decisively. And in the end they undermined the unifying power of Rome. The provinces destroyed Rome; Rome itself turned into a provincial city, similar to others, privileged, but no longer dominant, ceasing to be the center of a world empire... The Roman state turned into a gigantic complex machine solely for sucking the juices out of its subjects.

New trends coming from the East, new ideals, searches for new truth gave birth to new beliefs. The decline of Rome was coming, the decline of the ancient world with its ideology and social structure.

All this was reflected in Roman portrait sculpture.

During the republic, when morals were harsher and simpler, the documentary accuracy of the image, the so-called “verism” (from the word verus - true), was not yet balanced by the Greek ennobling influence. This influence manifested itself in the age of Augustus, sometimes even to the detriment of truthfulness.

The famous full-length statue of Augustus, where he is shown in all the pomp of imperial power and military glory (statue from Prima Porta, Rome, Vatican), as well as his image in the form of Jupiter himself (Hermitage), of course, idealized ceremonial portraits equating earthly ruler to the celestials. And yet, they reveal the individual traits of Augustus, the relative balance and undoubted significance of his personality.

Numerous portraits of his successor, Tiberius, are also idealized.

Let's look at sculptural portrait Tiberius in his youth (Copenhagen, Glyptothek). Ennobled image. And at the same time, of course, individual. Something unsympathetic, grumpily withdrawn appears in his features. Perhaps, placed in different conditions, this person would outwardly live his life quite decently. But eternal fear and unlimited power. And it seems to us that the artist captured in his image something that even the insightful Augustus did not recognize when appointing Tiberius as his successor.

But the portrait of Tiberius’s successor, Caligula (Copenhagen, Glyptothek), a murderer and torturer, who was ultimately stabbed to death by his confidant, is already completely revealing, for all its noble restraint. His gaze is terrible, and you feel that there can be no mercy from this very young ruler (he ended his terrible life at twenty-nine years old) with tightly compressed lips, who loved to remind him that he could do anything: and with anyone. Looking at the portrait of Caligula, we believe all the stories about his countless atrocities. “He forced fathers to be present at the execution of their sons,” writes Suetonius, “he sent a stretcher for one of them when he tried to evade due to ill health; the other, immediately after the spectacle of the execution, invited him to the table and with all sorts of pleasantries forced him to joke and have fun.” And another Roman historian, Dion, adds that when the father of one of those executed “asked if he could at least close his eyes, he ordered his father to be killed too.” And also from Suetonius: “When the price of cattle, which were used to fatten wild animals for spectacles, became more expensive, he ordered that criminals be thrown to them to be torn to pieces; and, going around the prisons for this, he did not look at who was to blame for what, but directly ordered, standing at the door, to take everyone away...” Ominous in its cruelty is the low-browed face of Nero, the most famous of the crowned monsters of Ancient Rome (marble, Rome, National Museum).

The style of Roman sculptural portraits changed along with the general attitude of the era. Documentary truthfulness, pomp, reaching the point of deification, the most acute realism, the depth of psychological penetration alternately prevailed in him, and even complemented each other. But as long as the Roman idea was alive, his pictorial power did not dry out.

Emperor Hadrian earned the reputation of a wise ruler; it is known that he was an enlightened connoisseur of art, a zealous admirer of the classical heritage of Hellas. His features, carved in marble, his thoughtful gaze, along with a slight touch of sadness, complement our idea of ​​him, just as his portraits complement our idea of ​​Caracalla, truly capturing the quintessence of bestial cruelty, the most unbridled, violent power. But the true “philosopher on the throne,” a thinker filled with spiritual nobility, appears to be Marcus Aurelius, who preached stoicism and renunciation from earthly goods in his writings.

Truly unforgettable images in their expressiveness!

But the Roman portrait resurrects before us not only the images of emperors.

Let us stop in the Hermitage in front of a portrait of an unknown Roman, probably executed at the very end of the 1st century. This is an undoubted masterpiece in which Roman precision of the image is combined with traditional Hellenic craftsmanship, the documentary nature of the image with inner spirituality. We do not know who the author of the portrait is - whether a Greek, who gave his talent to Rome with its worldview and tastes, a Roman or another artist, an imperial subject, inspired by Greek models, but firmly rooted in Roman soil - just as the authors are unknown (mostly, probably, slaves) and other remarkable sculptures created in the Roman era.

Already captured in this image old man, who has seen a lot in his lifetime and experienced a lot, in whom you can guess some kind of aching suffering, perhaps from deep thoughts. The image is so real, truthful, snatched so tenaciously from the midst of humanity and so skillfully revealed in its essence that it seems to us that we have met this Roman, are familiar with him, that’s almost exactly the same - even if our comparison is unexpected - as we know, for example , heroes of Tolstoy's novels.

And the same persuasiveness is in another famous masterpiece from the Hermitage, a marble portrait of a young woman, conventionally named “Syrian” based on her face type.

This is already the second half of the 2nd century: the woman depicted is a contemporary of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.

We know that it was an era of revaluation of values, increased Eastern influences, new romantic moods, maturing mysticism, which foreshadowed the crisis of Roman great-power pride. “The time of human life is a moment,” wrote Marcus Aurelius, “its essence is an eternal flow; the feeling is vague; the structure of the whole body is perishable; soul is unstable; fate is mysterious; fame is unreliable."

The image of the “Syrian Woman” breathes with the melancholy contemplation characteristic of many portraits of this time. But her thoughtful dreaminess - we feel this - is deeply individual, and again she herself seems familiar to us for a long time, almost even dear, just as the sculptor’s vital chisel, with sophisticated work, extracted her enchanting and spiritual features from white marble with a delicate bluish tint.

And here is the emperor again, but a special emperor: Philip the Arab, who emerged at the height of the crisis of the 3rd century. - bloody “imperial leapfrog” - from the ranks of the provincial legion. This is his official portrait. The soldier’s severity of the image is all the more significant: that was the time when, in general ferment, the army became a stronghold of imperial power.

Furrowed brows. A menacing, wary look. Heavy, fleshy nose. Deep wrinkles on the cheeks, forming a triangle with a sharp horizontal line of thick lips. A powerful neck, and on the chest there is a wide transverse fold of the toga, finally giving the entire marble bust truly granite massiveness, laconic strength and integrity.

Here is what Waldhauer writes about this wonderful portrait, also kept in our Hermitage: “The technique is simplified to the extreme... The facial features are developed with deep, almost rough lines with a complete refusal of detailed surface modeling. The personality, as such, is characterized mercilessly, highlighting the most important features.”

A new style, a new way of achieving monumental expressiveness. Is this not the influence of the so-called barbarian periphery of the empire, increasingly penetrating through the provinces that have become rivals of Rome?

In the general style of the bust of Philip the Arab, Waldhauer recognizes features that will be fully developed in medieval sculptural portraits of French and German cathedrals.

He became famous for his high-profile deeds and achievements that surprised the world. Ancient Rome, but its decline was gloomy and painful.

An entire historical era was ending. The outdated system had to give way to a new, more advanced one; slave society - to degenerate into a feudal one.

In 313, long-persecuted Christianity was recognized as the state religion in the Roman Empire, which at the end of the 4th century. became dominant throughout the Roman Empire.

Christianity, with its preaching of humility, asceticism, with its dream of paradise not on earth, but in heaven, created a new mythology, the heroes of which, the devotees of the new faith, who accepted the crown of martyrdom for it, took the place that once belonged to the gods and goddesses who personified the life-affirming principle , earthly love and earthly joy. It spread gradually, and therefore, even before its legalized triumph, Christian teaching and the social sentiments that prepared it radically undermined the ideal of beauty that once shone with full light on the Athenian Acropolis and which was accepted and approved by Rome throughout the entire world under its control.

The Christian Church tried to put into concrete form unshakable religious beliefs a new worldview in which the East, with its fears of the unsolved forces of nature, the eternal struggle with the Beast, found a response among the disadvantaged of the entire ancient world. And although the ruling elite of this world hoped to solder the decrepit Roman power with a new universal religion, the worldview, born of the need for social transformation, undermined the unity of the empire along with the ancient culture from which Roman statehood arose.

Twilight of the ancient world, twilight of great ancient art. Throughout the empire, majestic palaces, forums, baths and triumphal arches are still being built, according to the old canons, but these are only repetitions of what was achieved in previous centuries.

The colossal head - about one and a half meters - from the statue of Emperor Constantine, who in 330 moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium, which became Constantinople - the “Second Rome” (Rome, Palazzo of the Conservatives). The face is built correctly, harmoniously, according to Greek models. But the main thing in this face is the eyes: it seems that if you closed them, there would be no face itself... What in the Fayum portraits or the Pompeian portrait of a young woman gave the image an inspired expression, here is taken to the extreme, exhausting the entire image. The ancient balance between spirit and body is clearly violated in favor of the former. Not a living human face, but a symbol. A symbol of power, imprinted in the gaze, power that subjugates everything earthly, impassive, unyielding and inaccessibly high. No, even if the image of the emperor retains portrait features, it is no longer a portrait sculpture.

The triumphal arch of Emperor Constantine in Rome is impressive. Its architectural composition is strictly maintained in the classical Roman style. But in the relief narrative glorifying the emperor, this style disappears almost without a trace. The relief is so low that the small figures appear flat, not sculptured, but scratched out. They line up monotonously, clinging to each other. We look at them with amazement: this is a world completely different from the world of Hellas and Rome. There is no revival - and the seemingly forever overcome frontality is resurrected!

A porphyry statue of the imperial co-rulers - the tetrarchs, who at that time ruled over individual parts of the empire. This sculptural group marks both an end and a beginning.

The end - because it has decisively ended with the Hellenic ideal of beauty, the smooth roundness of forms, the harmony of the human figure, the grace of composition, the softness of modeling. That roughness and simplicity, which gave special expressiveness to the Hermitage portrait of Philip the Arab, became here, as it were, an end in itself. Almost cubic, crudely carved heads. There is not even a hint of portraiture, as if human individuality is no longer worthy of depiction.

In 395, the Roman Empire broke up into the Western - Latin and Eastern - Greek. In 476, the Western Roman Empire fell under the blows of the Germans. A new historical era called the Middle Ages has arrived.

A new page has opened in the history of art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Britova N. N. Roman sculptural portrait: Essays. – M., 1985
2. Brunov N. I. Monuments Athens Acropolis. – M., 1973
3. Dmitrieva N. A. Short story arts – M., 1985
4. Lyubimov L.D. The Art of the Ancient World. – M., 2002
5. Chubova A.P. Ancient masters: Sculptors and painters. – L., 1986

There are many common features that related the art of various areas, from the 4th to the 1st century BC. In those ancient times, it embodied a new idea about the greatness of the world, which also found its manifestation in the sculpture of ancient Hellas.

By the end of the 4th century BC, ancient world, which contained internal contradictions, has actually outlived its usefulness. Borders, peoples and cultures changed - a new era was dawning. The times of ancient Hellas are known for their fantastic projects: mountains turned into cities, such giants as the copper Colossus of Rhodes appeared in the bay of the island of Rhodes. The desire to comprehend the world of the gods, to go beyond simple human understanding, is one of the most characteristic features of sculpture of that era.

The Hellenes, in their cultural development, followed an independent path, which is why the sculptural and architectural images they created were so sincere and sublime. The mythological basis of the sculpture of ancient Hellas was a close connection with the ordinary life of ordinary free citizens. It had an educational and ennobling orientation. Many masters of that time were excited by the thought of a perfect, beautiful, harmoniously developed person and his depiction in art. This is, first of all, felt in ancient sculptures created by one of the greatest masters - Polycletus from Argos. In the works of Polykleitos, the main stylistic features of the sculpture of ancient Hellas are truly embodied: peace, stability of poses, large planes, collected images.

In his works, Polykleitos is quite restrained. The images in his sculptures are intimate, slightly provincial. Such is his statue of Kinisk - the victorious young man Kinisk, frozen, putting the laurel wreath he received as a reward on his head. Such portrait compositions have something in common with philosophical reflections on the character of an ideal person. The sculptors of ancient Hellas expressed wisdom and perfection through plastic art. Polykleitos's talent was able to reveal itself more fully in the statue of Doryphoros the Spear-bearer. In the combined image of a warrior, athlete and simply a valiant citizen.

This one features a young man, the winner of the competition. He is depicted with a long spear on his shoulder in a calm standing pose. The sculpture does not contain the symmetry features of the ancient Apollos, who timidly stepped forward with their left foot. Realizing his strength and perfection, which became a strong support for him. A very mature, one might even say serial, work by Polykleitos conveys the ideas of high classicism in the sculpture of ancient Hellas. Turning to the then popular image of the winner in spear throwing, just like Myron in his sculpture of the Discus Thrower, he created a non-individualized portrait of the athlete. Despite the fact that in the image of Doryphoros the sculptor was based on the image of a very real person (an athlete who won a competition), he managed to create a typified monument carrying the idea of ​​victory.

Doryphoros became an example for many sculptors of ancient Hellas in depicting humans. While working on the sculpture, the master was able to reveal the proportionality of forms, which is characteristic of the structure of the male figure. It is believed that Polykleitos based the proportions of the spearman on a certain modular value, which was placed a certain number of times in various elements of the sculpture - arms, legs, head, torso. This module was either the phalanx of the spearman’s finger, or the width of his palm; no one can reliably establish this today. Thanks to the use of the module, Polycletus managed to create a sculpture with ideal proportions, according to his ancient contemporaries. Based on the Roman copies that have come down to us, this statue seems somewhat heavy, and sometimes even too stocky compared to Greek sculptures subsequent centuries. It was in this that the hand of the master of sculpture of ancient Hellas was manifested; in the ancient monuments left to us forever, the courage and physical perfection of man were emphasized.

One of the recognized masterpieces of ancient Hellas is the group of sculptures “Laocoon and His Sons”, created by three sculptors: Athenodorus, Agesander, and Polydorus. The gods sent two huge snakes. Laocoön tries to break his serpentine shackles, poison spreading throughout his body. The ancient sculpture was executed masterfully. The anatomy of the human body (the father) is conveyed carefully, it sometimes reaches the point of naturalism, and the figures of his offspring resemble pitiful adults.

Another masterpiece of the art of ancient Hellas is the sculpture of the goddess - this is Nike of Samothrace, created in the second century BC. The sculpture is depicted flying from a pedestal in the shape of the stern of a ship. Her beautiful body in wet clothes is shown in a half-turn, which was widely used at that time. The powerful wings of the goddess flutter, each feather is clearly carved with great care. By the poetry of the image, this ancient sculpture surpasses all previously created.

In addition to ideas about the greatness and grandeur of the world, the sculpture of ancient Hellas also developed in another direction. The best example of sculptures of this kind is the Venus de Milo, found on the territory of the modern Melos peninsula. The sculpture depicts a half-naked goddess, her clothes enveloping her legs and torso, her arms are shown in motion. In the era of ancient Hellas, Aphrodite was the most beloved goddess. She was portrayed as flirtatious, brooding, and sometimes even playful. Aphrodite from the island of Melos is strict and restrained, her hair is collected in a hairstyle with a clear parting, and the sculptor shows her beautiful face and figure in a rather general way. Her whole posture, facial expression and gaze evokes peace and tranquility.