Rhodes and Hellenistic Sculpture

Abstract

The importance of Rhodes as an art centre in Hellenistic times has led to a theory that its sculpture was different in character from that of other places. My aim in this paper is to collect the more important objects of Rhodian provenance and to see if they support this view.The fourth-century work from the island is in no way distinctive, as is shown by two female heads in Boston, which date from the middle and the third quarter of the century. The latter so closely resembles Attic grave-stelae that Caskey suspects it of belonging to one: this is quite likely, since we know that these stelae were exported (e. g., the fragment in the Argos Museum which bears the head of a boy with his name Kephisodotos written above in Athenian lettering), and the mention of five colossal statues by Bryaxis and a Helios and quadriga by Lysippos proves that foreign artists were already employed for Rhodes. The influence of Lysippos may be traced in a colossal head of Helios in the collection of Hiller von Gaertringen, in another Alexandroid head of no great merit, and in the colossal head from Ialysos in New York (Pl. VIII, 1). This came from a high relief and is remarkably like the heads on the Alexander Sarcophagus (cf. Pl. IX); it may be significant that both are of Pentelic marble instead of the customary Parian.