Hellenistic Sculpture Research Articles

The Invitation to the Dance. An intertextual reassessment

With its original manifestation generally dated to c. 150 BC, the Invitation to the Dance is a textbook example of Hellenistic sculpture. But despite much scholarly attention there is still no consensus as to what motif the sculpture group depicts. Inspired by intertextual theory, this study catalogues and re-examines 35 sculptures of the female figure and 34 sculptures of the satyr. The article focuses on preserved sculptures, rather than a reconstructed model image. Variations of the repeated forms are highlighted as significant for the interpretation of the types. The reading of the Invitation to the Dance thus put forward suggests that the group composition displays the moment after the satyr has pulled the female’s garment down from her upper body. It is furthermore emphasized that both satyr and female figure were at times—perhaps even predominately—displayed as solitary figures. The satyr’s foot-clapper is suggested to have been included primarily in instances where the satyr was displayed on his own. Sculptures of the female figure fending off —though not touching—an intrusive companion could have been paired with other Dionysian figures as well, a practice that might be reflected in sculptures that show this female type in other group compositions.

أسالیب تصویر شخصیة الراقصة المتّشحة فی فن النحت الهلینستی وعلاقتها بمدرسة فن النحت السکندری Representation Styles of the Mantled Dancer Figure in Hellenistic Sculpture and its Relationship with Alexandrian Sculpture School

يهدف هذا البحث إلى إلقاء الضوء على أساليب تصوير نموذج المتشحة The Mantled Dancer في فن النحت الهلينستي. حيث يعتبر نموذج الراقصة المرتدية الوشاح أحد النماذج المتميزة في الفن اليوناني بشکل عام، بالإضافة لکونه شاهدا على بعض سمات فن النحت في العصرين الکلاسيکي والهلينستي. هذا، ويرکز البحث على توضيح الصلة المباشرة لهذا النوع من التماثيل وارتباطه بالعامة من الناس، إضافة إلى توضيح مدي علاقته بتغير بعض المفاهيم المجتمعية حول ارتداء المرأة الوشاح في ذلک الوقت. کما يطرح البحث الآراء والتفسيرات المتعددة التي أدت إلى ظهور هذا النوع من التماثيل واستخداماتها المختلفة، کما يتطرق إلى توضيح مدى انتمائها لمدرسة فن النحت السکندري في مصر خلال العصر الهلينستي من. علاوة على ذلک، يعرض البحث عدة نماذج من التماثيل الصغيرة المصنوعة من التيراکوتا والبرونز التي تمثل الراقصات المتشحات، وذلک مما تم العثور عليه من تلک التماثيل داخل مصر من جانب، وفي مناطق أخرى من بلاد اليونان وآسيا الصغرى وحوض البحر الأبيض المتوسط، وإيطاليا أيضا من جانب آخر. This paper aims to highlight the artistic styles used in representing The Mantled Dancer figure in Hellenistic sculpture. Generally, The Mantled Dancer figure considered a distinctive type in Art, in addition to being a witness to some of the features of the Hellenistic Sculpture in particular. Moreover, this paper focuses on clarifying the direct link of this type of statuettes to the public, and its relevance to changing some social concepts about women wearing the veil at the time. The paper also presents the multiple interpretations and different point of views on the reasons that led to the emergence of this figure and its uses, besides how it relates to the Alexandrian Sculpture School. In addition to the aforementioned, the paper presents several models of terracotta and bronze statuettes of the Mantled Dancers, which were found in Egypt, and in other areas, especially in ancient Greece, the Mediterranean basin, Libya and Italy.

Carol L. Lawton. The Athenian Agora XXXVIII: Votive Reliefs. pp. 248, with 12 col. ills, 3 col. and b/w plans, 60 plates. ISBN: 978-0-87661-238-5, hardcover £130.

This beautiful volume is more than up to the high standard of Agora sculpture publications, first set by Evelyn Harrison’s study of Roman portraits (Agora v.1, 1953), which appeared some 66 years ago. This, the latest volume to appear in the Agora series, is the fourth devoted to sculpture, following Harrison’s on Archaic and Archaistic Sculpture (v.11, 1965) and that on Funerary Sculpture (v.35, 2013) by Laura Grossman. The Classical and Hellenistic sculpture is currently under intensive study by Andrew Stewart, who has produced a series of stimulating articles in Hesperia on free-standing and especially architectural sculpture, adding to our understanding of the Hephaisteion and, currently, bringing lesser-known buildings like the Temple of Ares to life by identifying substantial portions of its sculptured adornment.

Gunvor Lindström. “The Portrait of a Hellenistic Ruler in the National Museum of Iran”

The bronzes accidentally found at Shami are very well-known to archaeologists. Among other findings, the remains of a portrait of a Hellenistic ruler now in the National Museum of Iran stands out as one of the rare examples of Hellenistic sculpture in Iran. It shows what remains of the face of a beardless sovereign with short hairs larger than life-size. It can be likely dated to the 3rd-2nd cent. BCE, and its importance rests on the fact that it was dedicated in what is seen as one of the mo...

François Queyrel. La Sculpture hellénistique I: forms, themes et fonctions.

Queyrel’s latest tome is a big, richly-illustrated one: the first of two dedicated to Hellenistic sculpture projected for Picard’s Les Manuels d’art et d’archéologie antiques. The series, which already includes volumes on the Bronze Age, on Classical Greek sculpture (by †Claude Rolley, one of the persons to whom this volume is dedicated), and on Greek architecture, has become an essential tool for scholars, teachers, and students.

3D Applications in Conservation and Connoisseurship: Investigating and Supplementing the Scholarly Catalogues of the Red Faun

Focusing on the Capitoline Red Faun, this paper concerns the 3-dimensional digital model (3DDM) and its potential utility in creating accurate conservation condition reports. Tradition condition reports verbally express information about the state of a work of art, such as its preservation or past restorations, and are often supplemented with photographs or drawings. The various historical catalogues that have appraised the condition of the Capitoline Red Faun, more aptly referred to as “scholarly catalogues” demonstrate the potential for ambiguity within this practice; of the five accounts appraising the state of the Red Faun, no two agree on which parts are ancient and which belong to the eighteenth-century restorations of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi and Clemente Bianchi. Given that this sculpture is included within the art historical canon of Hellenistic sculpture, a new condition report is timely. This paper undertakes an exhaustive analysis of the various joins and offers another condition report, this one illustrated with an interactive, annotated 3DDM. When served to the public and scholars alike, these interactive condition reports can act as a critical tool, garnering interest in and facilitating re-appraisals of status such as the Capitoline Red Faun.

The New York Sleeping Eros: A Hellenistic Statue and Its Ancient Restoration

The Bronze Statue of Sleeping Eros in the Metropolitan Museum has long been recognized as one of the finest bronze statues to survive from antiquity. It was first published by Gisela Richter as an original Hellenistic sculpture or very close replica dated between 250 and 150 B.C. Many subsequent scholars tend to agree with Richter’s assessment although not her precise dating. Others believe it to be a very fine Roman copy of one of the most popular sculptures ever made in Roman Imperial times known from hundreds of copies, variants and adaptations. This article presents a new assessment based on careful scientific and technical examinations of the statue itself and a close study of other existing sculptures of this type. The research supports Richter’s identification of the statue as a Hellenistic work, but also makes apparent that it was restored in antiquity, most likely in the Early Imperial period. Consideration of the cult and mythology of Eros, other major Late Classical and Hellenistic sculptures, as well as the different meanings of the Sleeping Eros in later periods, enable a more cogent understanding of the original display of the Metropolitan Museum’s bronze statue of Sleeping Eros and its significance in antiquity.

Hellenistic Sculpture from the Athenian Agora, Part 4: The East Pediment and Akroteria of the Temple of Apollo Patroos

Hellenistic Sculpture from the Athenian Agora, Part 4: The East Pediment and Akroteria of the Temple of Apollo Patroos

Five Recent Books on Hellenistic and Roman Sculptures from the Greek East and Italy

Five Recent Books on Hellenistic and Roman Sculptures from the Greek East and Italy

HELLENISTIC FREESTANDING SCULPTURE FROM THE ATHENIAN AGORA, PART 1: Aphrodite

Author(s): Stewart, A | Abstract: This study, the frst in a series of articles on freestanding Hellenistic sculpture from the Athenian Agora, publishes 20 certain, probable, and possible Hellenistic marble sculptures of Aphrodite, against the background of the genre's evolution from ca. 450 B.C. through the Early Roman period. The statuettes among them probably were intended for domestic use, the others as dedications. An over-life-size example is identifed as the cult statue of Aphrodite Hegemone of the Demos. The author explores the debt of these works to Classical Athenian originals and to neoclassical Athenian aesthetics, and argues that after the Sullan sack of 86 B.C., a preference for fully draped fgures in this genre changed to one for seminude or nude statues and statuettes, often made for export. © The American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Book Review of The Female Portrait Statue in the Greek World, by Sheila Dillon

In her introduction to The Female Portrait Statue in the Greek World, Sheila Dillon is careful to acknowledge that most of the material in the volume has been previously published. She is equally courteous when she recognizes the three studies—a short section in Smiths famous Hellenistic Sculpture (New York 1991); Eules new dissertation on images of women in Hellenistic Turkey (Hellenistische Bürgerinnen aus Kleinasien [Istabul 2001]); and Connellys important Portrait of a Priestess (Princeton 2007)—that each provide some measure of context for her own work.

Hellenistic and Roman Ideal Sculpture: The Allure of the Classical by Rachel M. Kousser

Hellenistic and Roman Ideal Sculpture: The Allure of the Classical by Rachel M. Kousser

The Idol Body: Stars, Statuary and the Classical Epic

The Idol Body:Stars, Statuary and the Classical Epic Michael Williams This article explores the relationship between the male star body and the ancient world constructed through production design and star iconography. My primary case study is provided by M-G-M's 1925 production Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (Fred Niblo; henceforth Ben-Hur). The film influentially exploited the slippage between the star, Ramon Novarro, as a contemporary idol, and the diegetic hero he plays, who rises to become "the Idol of Rome." This historical interplay was achieved through extra-textual publicity that constructed Novarro as a rising "Apollo," and his on-screen performance of a contrapposto pose that referenced canonical sculptures of Hellenistic art. Equally important was Cedric Gibbons' production design (in particular his Circus Maximus set), replete with monumental sculptures that frame the action of the chariot race. Zack Snyder's 300 (2007) is the second film discussed in this essay, which I examine to interrogate the themes of the star body, 'frieze-framing' and monumentality in a contemporary context. In both cases I will draw upon archival research undertaken in both the United States and the United Kingdom, including studio production files, promotion and reception materials, and textual analyses of the films themselves. Contrapposto and the Historical Style Ben-Hur tells the story of the eponymous Jewish prince who is wrongly accused of attempting to assassinate a Roman Prefect by his old childhood friend, Messala, who has turned against him and his religion. After escaping life as a galley slave Ben-Hur reclaims his position and defeats Messala in a chariot race, his restoration with his family told in parallel to the story of Christ's crucifixion. The 1925 Ben-Hur production is infamous for its troubled production history, with most of the cast replaced (including George Walsh, who was exchanged for Novarro) after an already expensive shoot in Italy. Original scenario writer June Mathis and director Charles Brabin were also dismissed from the project.2 What an examination of some of the ensuing script and design changes reveals is a careful iconographic balancing act between M-G-M's upcoming star Novarro and the themes of sexuality and "pagan" / Christian idolatry and religion. One pivotal scene carefully constructs Ben-Hur's transformation from galley-slave to contrapposto "idol of Rome." Essential to this iconography, is the use of a contrapposto pose that consolidates many of the mythic and iconographic tensions within the film's narrative. Contrapposto is the technique developed in Hellenistic sculpture, in the Belvedere Apollo, for example, and rediscovered in the Renaissance, where the arms and shoulders of the body are turned out of direct alignment with the hips, usually with one leg slightly before the other; an implied movement of the body that dramatizes psychological aspects of the subject as well as the tension between animation and stasis. Such poses differentiate the individual from the crowd as Garry Wills discussion of the contrapposto pose of John Wayne indicates. Wills suggests that Wayne referenced the pose of both Michelangelo and Donatello's Davids in his films, adding an unusual [End Page 39] grace to his imposing figure, making: "each motion a statement of individualism, a balletic Declaration of Independence." Wills links Wayne's persona to his post-WWII and Cold War context, and "the sense of imperial burden" that came to America during this period, posing his counterpoised stance with and against the prevailing political mores of this period.3 To strike such poses is to stand at once in the past and present, as I hope to demonstrate below. In the scene in question, after rowing in the galley for two years, Ben-Hur is spotted by the Roman Quintus Arrius, who appears fascinated with him. After the ship is attacked and sunk by pirates, Ben-Hur saves Arrius from the water, finding himself officially adopted as his son when the men are rescued by a passing Roman ship. At the start of the sequence, in an addition to the original scenario by June Mathis, a nude male slave is prominent to the right of the frame, bound in the fashion of the crucifixion, as the camera takes in the...

The WhitbyGladiator

English Heritage has recently recreated a statue which is known to have stood in the centre of the walled and paved courtyard in front of the north range of Whitby Abbey House, built between 1671 and 1674. This article considers the evidence for the statue's form and location and concludes that it was a copy of the famous first-century BC Hellenistic sculpture known as the Borghese Gladiator, now in the Musée du Louvre. It records other copies in English gardens and considers the motives of Sir Hugh Cholmley, who set it up at Whitby.

The Cilician God Sandas and the Greek Chimaera: Features of Near Eastern and Greek Mythology Concerning the Plague

AbstractA gem in the Museum of Castelvecchio (Verona) depicts the god Sandas of Tarsos with his terrible animal: the lion-goat. On the reverse side there is the inscription YOYO. The epigraphical and archaeological evidence from Anatolia, from Hittite to Hellenistic times, proves that Sandas was a underworld god protecting tombs and sending pestilences when angry. He was appeased by offerings to his terrible ministers, who were usually seven. Similarly Nergal or Erra (similar to Sandas) in Mesopotamia, and Sekhmet in Egypt had seven animal-headed terrible ministers, who were able to bring pestilences and death. A Hittite inscription mentions Yaya as Sandas' female partner. Her name is very similar to the Yoyo on the Verona gem. Sandas was identified with Heracles because of his relations with the underworld realms and his warlike features. The lion-goat of Tarsus was the model of Greek Chimaera. In fact the myth of Bellerophon took its place in Lycia and Cilicia. In Hellenistic age the original form of this monster was better known and therefore we find its typical features in Hellenistic and Roman sculptures and reliefs.

The Boy Strangling the Goose: Genre Figure or Mythological Symbol?

Kunze has suggested that Hellenistic sculpture depicting themes of everyday activities that are traditionally classified as genre subjects may carry very different meanings. This note argues that, in Graeco-Roman terms, the chubby personage in depictions of the Boy Strangling the Goose is not simply a child but the personification of Dionysos/Harpokrates; the goose is not a household pet but an evil spirit over which the Divine Child triumphs. The manner of the representation is Greek and can be read at a superficial level; the deeper content is Egyptian and contains a symbolic message of rebirth and victory.

ARIADNE AND THE RIPPLED NOSE: PORTRAIT LIKENESSES IN MIDDLEMARCH

LOOKING BACK to an earlier moment in its own cultural history, no Victorian novel works harder than Middlemarch at the integration of art and life, in terms of both the issues it addresses and its method of composition. Central to this effort is the art-related sequence (chapters 19–21) in which Will Ladislaw encounters the newly married Casaubons on their honeymoon in Rome. In the Belvedere Gallery of the Vatican with a painter friend, Will discovers Dorothea standing lost in thought near a famous Hellenistic sculpture of a sleeping, bare-breasted woman. Struck by the congruity of poses in two such different figures, Will's friend Naumann is on fire to paint Dorothea, and a few days later, rather in spite of himself, Will brings the Casaubons to Naumann's studio. Here, in one of the most broadly comic scenes in the novel, the painter persuades Casaubon to pose as Thomas Aquinas for a historical portrait, slyly securing his sketch of Dorothea during breaks in the sitting. Throughout the sequence, Will engages in aesthetic discourse first with Naumann, then with Dorothea, introducing her to the hugeness of art and, incidentally, to the smallness of her husband.

Caricature and the Grotesque in Hellenistic Sculpture

Caricature and the Grotesque in Hellenistic Sculpture

Hellenistic Sculpture. Vol. 2, the Styles of ca. 200–100 B. C. By Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway.

<i>Hellenistic Sculpture. Vol. 2, the Styles of ca. 200–100 B. C.</i> By Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway.

Comments on biological asymmetry

Gross forms of asymmetry of biological structure, hence of development, are generally considered abnormalities of conformation with “perfect” symmetry, whether bilateral or radial, being regarded as the “ideal” form. This notion, primarily a cultural deceit of neo-Platonic origin, can easily be shown to be wrong or at best only skin-deep by any student of anatomy or surgery who finds the heart not in the midline but, most of the time on the left, liver on the right, gut coiled and disposed in a certain direction with appendix in the right lower quadrant, and so forth. Indeed, since the beginning of Amphioxus, a major effect of evolutionary developmental modification has been the abolition of the visceral symmetry which characterized this cephalochordate with introduction of a specific pattern of asymmetry called laterality determination. This embryonic process, which is beginning to yield its universal molecular basis, is probably not responsible for another type of biological phenomenon designated fluctuating asymmetry well known to anthropologists (on the basis of quantitative studies of morphometric traits of teeth, appendicular skeleton, dermatoglyphics) and well-known to the ancients who in their most beautiful Hellenistic sculptures introduced deliberate asymmetries into facial structure and expression. Photographic images constructed of 2 right or 2 left facial halves may differ to a starling degree from the authentic face (Fig. 1). The relatively random nature of fluctuating asymmetry makes it less likely to be under strong natural selection. 1. Middle panel: Frontal view of face of a normal man. Left panel: “Artificial” face constructed out of two right halves of the same face. Right panel: Face constructed out of two left halves. A careful study of the right and left panels makes it easier to appreciate the actual degree of asymmetry present in the unaltered middle image/face. However, in addition to laterality determination and fluctuating asymmetry, there are additional forms of biological asymmetry which have other biological bases such as Lyonization, somatic/clonal mosaicism, mosaic aneuploidy/polyploidy, chimaerism, and developmental “resistance” seen with especial clarity in virtually every hereditary limb malformation. In this paper we will attempt to enumerate the causal forms and bases of biological asymmetry. © 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.