Illustrations of Greek Drama

Abstract

It is a weakness in our understanding of Hellenistic art that plausible accounts of stylistic development can be offered which lead to very diverse results. As regards painting, the author attempts to deduce from Pliny that realism and perspective had been perfected in early Hellenistic times; the difficulty here seems to be that the criteria used by the ancient art critics were crude, and Pliny's best sources perhaps gave out on him too soon. A further difficulty with using Campanian paintings as evidence for early Hellenistic backgrounds is the variation of treatment seen in the different 'Pompeian styles'. In sculpture the author accepts Carpenter's second-century Classic Renascence, with its access of vigour and novel handling of the third dimension. The Mausolus and consort and the Demeter of Cnidus (with how much else ?) are transferred to this milieu. This does seem difficult. The face of Mausolus, when seen in profile view, has a calmness and simplicity of planes that looks thoroughly classical; and the author herself concedes that 'the head inserted in the body of the Demeter is almost indistinguishable from a Praxitelean prototype'. But what makes the down-dating impossible is the non-Hellenic appearance of the Mausoleum dynast. In the mid fourth century Halicarnassus was the seat of a Carian satrap on the fringe of the Greek world. In the second it was in the very heart of the Hellenistic world, and a dynasty in which native sentiment was recrudescent is virtually unthinkable there. The scheme of development which puts these statues in the second century must therefore be at fault. On the other hand, the distinction of two concurrent styles in some late Hellenistic reliefs, with greater space, perspective, and illusion in the human realm than in the divine, is of great interest and merits more detailed investigation. As has become evident, the introductions to the different sections handle controversial issues, and though full of interest they will not convince everyone. But the description and discussion of the pieces illustrated constitute the major part of the text, and here the author has made an exceptional contribution to our understanding of Hellenistic art.