docx - Course of lectures. History of sculpture

Imagine a sculpture of Alexander the Great. Represented? So he is depicted on all known sculptures. It is known that the Macedonian king Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) had a special head position: his chin was raised, his face was turned to the right, and his head and neck were tilted to the left. This characteristic feature of the great emperor is described in detail by Plutarch. He notes that Alexander's personal sculptor, Lysippus, created statues of the king with a face turned to heaven. This was also pointed out by other, later authors. Thus, the Tzetzes (12th century) claimed that Alexander preferred the sculptures of Lysippus to those of Stasicrates of Bithynia, who portrayed the emperor with a flawlessly straight neck, apparently out of flattery. Archaeological finds, which are probably copies of lost copper statues created by Lysippus, also show a characteristic turn of the head and neck. The first of these statues was found by Chevalier Azara in Tivoli in 1797 and presented as a gift to Napoleon. It is currently kept in the Louvre.

During excavations in Virginia, where the ancient capital of Macedonia was located, an ivory statue was found in 1977, in which these features of the emperor are especially emphasized. It is noteworthy that this statue was created during the lifetime of Alexander and must have been approved by him. Some researchers, in particular E. Schwarzenberg, supported the version that Lysippus in his works rather emphasized certain character traits of the emperor, namely pride and unbending will, than his physical features. Kiilerich suggested that Aristotle himself was instructing Lysippus how to depict Alexander in sculpture in order to best represent the greatest living man. Leibach, on the other hand, believes that Lysippus' work was the most realistic. And Schreiber and Stewart, after a detailed study of the problem, even came to the conclusion that the sculptor was hiding some (congenital or acquired) defects in his model. There are several medical explanations for the incorrect fit of Alexander's head. Dechambre believed he had orthopedic torticollis; Schachermayer suggested that the curvature of the neck was due to kyphosis resulting from trauma. The first of these assumptions seems to be the most plausible. The author of this theory made a thorough anatomical study of the statue discovered by Chevalier Azara. This made it possible to identify facial hemiatrophy, which is typical for orthopedic torticollis. However, the most logical and, therefore, probable is the explanation of this feature of the emperor from an ophthalmological point of view. A compensatory change in the position of the head is noted in various ophthalmic pathologies - paralysis, limitation of eye movements, bilateral ptosis, etc. The position of Alexander's head can be explained either by unilateral paralysis of the left lower oblique muscle of the eye, or by Brown's syndrome. These conditions are usually congenital but may also result from injury to the orbit. Alexander fought in battle from an early age and his biographers point to multiple wounds, one of which resulted in temporary loss of vision. And although Dechambre revealed hemiatrophy of the face, it was still not as pronounced as the hemiatrophy that is usually noted in orthopedic torticollis. In addition, in the study of the statue of Azar, as well as others, there was no thickening or tension of the sternocleidomastoid muscle. There is another argument in favor of torticollis - complete freedom of movement of the head and neck. In orthopedic torticollis, in contrast, sternocleidomastoid stiffness results in a permanent change in head and neck position that cannot be passively or actively corrected. This condition makes any military activity, especially horseback riding, impossible.

Thus, most likely, the abnormal position of Alexander's head, presented in the sculptures and described by his biographers, is due to ocular torticollis resulting from paralysis of the inferior oblique muscle of the left eye or Brown's syndrome.

Lysippus is considered the last sculptor of the ancient Greek classics. His work is still admired. Little is known about the artist himself. However, contemporaries knew that the only teacher recognized by the great Greek was nature.

How did the great sculptor start?

At the dawn of his career, Lysippus worked as an ordinary coppersmith. The sculptor, of course, dreamed of becoming someone great, but he had no money for a teacher.

Perhaps the sculptor would have remained an unknown person who lived in the 4th century BC, if one day he had not heard the speech of a painter named Evlomp. He assured that the best teacher can only be nature, and not man. The artist, after listening to this speech, drew conclusions for himself and went to observe nature.

It was Lysippus who at one time learned to create more believable sculptures. He made his characters' legs longer and their heads smaller. In addition, like Scopas, the artist worked on the transmission of movements in his works.

By the way, these great sculptors - Skopas, Lysippus - are the last representatives of the ancient Greek classical era.

Features of the work

On the one hand, the artist did not reject classical works. Heroism was traced in the works of Lysippus. On the other hand, the innovator enlivened him to be more dynamic, even dramatic, and his faces resembled those of his contemporaries.

His favorite material was bronze. Unfortunately, this copper alloy was often remelted. If not for the Romans, today no one would have known who the sculptor Lysippus was. His works can be studied only by copies. It is believed that Roman artists were more truthfully able to recreate the sculpture of the athlete Apoxyomenes.

Returning to the features of the artist's works, it is worth noting that he depicted people not as they are, but as Lysippus himself represented them. The sculptor of Ancient Greece most of all liked to work on characters. In addition, this is the first artist who broke the human body into planes. Thanks to this, his works began to look lighter and livelier than, say, the monumental statues of Polikleitos.

Sculptures of Lysippus

It is difficult to fully understand what the artist's works looked like during his lifetime. Perhaps Lysippus the sculptor himself would have been surprised at the Roman copies. His works, however, today are divided into more and less successful.

The most popular include:

Statue of Apoxyomenos. This composition has won recognition all over the world. Although the motive of the work is quite simple: after the competition, the athlete cleans his body with a scraper.
Sculptures depicting Hercules. All the exploits of the hero were immortalized. Today in the Hermitage you can admire the very first of them. There is a copy of the sculpture "Hercules fighting a lion."
"Resting Hermes". God Lysippus is very similar to an ordinary person.
"Eros". Image of a proportional child's figure.
Colossal in Tarentum. The work reached 20 meters in height.

In addition, it is believed that Lysippus was also the first to turn to the portrait genre. The sculptor mainly worked on recreating the image of Alexander the Great. He is also credited with portraits of Socrates and the seven wise men.

The famous "Apoxiomen"

The statue of "Apoxiomen" is considered the most famous work that the great Lysippus left us as a legacy. The sculptor, the photo confirms this, not only created a statue, but also managed to convey all the experiences of a tired athlete.

Even the illustration shows that Apoxyomenes is a young man who is still aroused after the fight. He seems to be stepping from foot to foot, and his hair, pulled to the side with his hand, makes it possible to guess that the athlete was sweating. It can be seen from the open mouth that the athlete has not yet had time to catch his breath, and in the sunken eyes - fatigue.

At the same time, art historians are sure that the marble copy could not convey the full depth of Lysippus' work. Moreover, when in the 19th century the sculpture came to the Roman restorer Tenerani, the artist suggested that Apoxyomenes was in the hand. Soon, archaeologists found evidence that in the original, the athlete simply cleans himself with a scraper. The dice was removed from the work.

Diverse "Hercules"

Almost every ancient Greek author had his favorite mythical hero. Lysippus at one time chose Hercules. Art critics believe that the artist saw his patron hero in him. And they wonder what qualities of Hercules were emphasized by the ancient sculptor Lysippus?

In some works, the hero is fighting, other sculptures show a tired demigod, in others, the son of Zeus simply rests from the earthly hardships of life. You can trace the evolution of the Greek hero in three works of the author.

"Hercules fighting a lion".

They say that if you go around the sculpture from four sides, then you can live the well-known feat of the hero with him. Frontally, the viewer will appreciate the beginning of the fight. Hercules and the lion are ready to fight, both are sure of victory. When viewed from the right side, it looks like the demigod is about to lose his balance. From the back it becomes noticeable that the strength is on the side of the hero. On the left - the beast is almost slain.

Resting Hercules.

Here is a hero after a feat. He is tired and inactive. It seems that if the demigod had not leaned on a club covered with a lion's skin, he would have fallen exhausted.

"Young Hercules feasting on Olympus" (statuette).

The hero has already accomplished all his feats, finished his earthly journey, and finally got to Olympus. He is careless, not in a hurry, but simply enjoys the feast.

According to historians, it was the third statuette that Lysippus presented to Alexander the Great. The ruler liked the work so much that he did not part with it until his death.

Gods in the works of Lysippus

The great sculptor Lysippus also paid much attention. His works, on the one hand, make the inhabitants of Olympus more alive and close to people, on the other hand, it is immediately clear that they are celestials.

For example, "Resting Hermes". and eloquence sits on the edge of a cliff. He is tired, breathing heavily, it seems that this is an ordinary man who will now continue the difficult path. However, the buckles on his feet betray God, you can’t walk in them - you can only fly.

Statue of a Satyr. The face of this horned god resembles an old man. He is bearded, his forehead is deeply wrinkled, his eyes are narrowed. The forest god stood up on tiptoe and seemed to be rushing somewhere. But if you look closely, you can see that he is dancing his Bacchic dance, only restrained.

Poseidon in the works of Lysippus looks majestic, as befits a ruler. At the same time, the artist was able to depict the underwater king as part of the sea. Folds on the forehead, curls on the head, hand movements - everything resembles waves.

Zeus Lysippus stands out very strongly against the background of the images of the main Olympic god in the works of other authors. His Zeus is not just the ruler of the world, but also a very tragic and even tired character. God, on whose shoulders lies a huge responsibility.

An attempt to depict a child's figure in sculpture

As you know, artists did not immediately learn how to depict children. Usually they took the face and figure of an adult as a basis and simply “reduced” it. Lysippus was the first in ancient Greece to break this tradition. The sculptor portrayed the young Eros like a child.

The body turned out to be tender, not yet developed. The head is larger than that of an adult, plump lips, a small mouth and cheeks - everything suggests that God is still very young.

At the same time, it is clear that Eros is tense. The boy tries to pull the string, but it is given to him with great difficulty. Now he bent over, stretched out his arms and turned his head.

And here you can trace the find of the sculptor - the author depicts a figure in different planes. What gives the statue depth and space.

Court painter of Macedon

Contemporaries appreciated and admired the works of the nugget. Alexander the Great himself could not pass by. The sculptor Lysippus was honored to become Macedonian's personal artist.

Unfortunately, in our time it is impossible to appreciate the works of the sculptor, depicting the commander in full growth. They, like other works, have not survived to this day. The Romans also made good copies of them.

They say the most famous was the sculpture "Alexander with a spear." On it, the commander looked towards the left shoulder, while with his left hand he leaned on a spear, while his right hand was on his side. Later, artists often borrowed the motif of this work, depicting kings and generals in the same pose. All the great rulers wanted to be like the Macedonian.

Today you can see the "Alexander with a spear" in the Hermitage. There is a copy of the great statue, however, its size does not exceed a few centimeters.

portrait genre

More fortunate portraits Almost the founder of portrait sculpture in ancient Greece was Lysippus. The sculptor depicted the commander so skillfully that Macedonian did not allow anyone else to make his portraits.

In his works, Lysippus depicted the great king, on the one hand, as a strong personality, on the other hand, as a person who had lost his peace and confidence. Often the commander looks like a person who has experienced a lot and is rather tired of life.

The sculptor did not idealize his ruler. He portrayed a man, not a classical hero.

Art critics believe that Lysippus at one time made portraits of Socrates, the seven wise men and Euripides. These were works not from nature, but made according to memoirs, descriptions and early painted portraits.

There is also reason to believe that the found Roman bronze head, a portrait of an unknown athlete, belonged to the hand of a great sculptor. Moreover, it is probably a self-portrait. Here the author showed a simple man with a rude face.

last years of life

It is difficult for our contemporaries to understand what kind of person the great sculptor Lysippus was. The biography of the artist is practically unknown.

At the same time, historians are sure that his students, assistants and sons worked with him in the workshop. Therefore, it is difficult to talk about the exact cause of Lysippus' death.

Another legend says that after each successfully sold work, the great Greek set aside a gold coin for himself. After his death, it turned out that there were more than 1500 coins.

The multifaceted work of the artist brought him fame outside of ancient Greece. Then they began to compare him with the greatest classic - Phidias.

The sculptor's contribution to world culture

Summing up, we can say that the artist "with light movements of the hands" created a revolution in the art world. He:

changed the proportions of the body in sculpture, lengthened the arms, reduced the head;
learned in the movements of his characters to depict their inner impulses;
tried to depict life itself with its anxieties and doubts in sculpture;
in his works, young heroes look like children in face and body;
paved the way for portrait sculpture;
created the ideal of a person - depicted the characters not as they are, but as the artist imagined them.

Lysippus was the most famous sculptor of antiquity. In each work, the artist tried to depict the restless nature of his era. And he did it.

(4th century BC)

Lysippus was the greatest Greek sculptor of the 4th century BC. He managed to raise Greek art to even greater heights. Not much is known about the life of Lysippos.

As Will Durant writes, “Lysippus of Sicyon started out as a modest coppersmith. He dreamed of being an artist, but he had no money for a teacher; he, however, plucked up courage when he heard the words of the painter Eupompus, who declared that it was best to imitate not artists, but nature. After that, Lysippus turned to the study of living beings and established a new canon of sculptural proportions, which replaced the strict charter of Polykleitos; he lengthened the legs and reduced the head, stretched the limbs into the third dimension and gave the figure more vitality and lightness.

The main achievement of the sculptor was that from the image of the typical, he moves to the transfer of the characteristic. Lysippus is primarily interested in the no longer constant, stable state of the phenomenon. On the contrary, he is most attracted to originality.

One of the most famous works of the sculptor is the statue of Apoxyomenes. G. I. Sokolov vividly tells about this work of Lysippus: “Lysippus managed to completely convey the excitement of a young man who has not yet cooled down after the struggle, moving, shifting from foot to foot. In the statue of Apoxyomenes there is not a single calm part of the body: the torso, legs, arms, neck cannot remain in the position in which the sculptor showed them for a long time. The head of Apoxyomenes is slightly tilted to one side, the hair is shown as if stuck together from sweat, one strand of them flew up. His mouth is parted in heavy breathing, a wrinkle cuts through his forehead, his eyes are deeply sunken with fatigue imprinted in them. The quivering nervousness of excitement, which the Roman copyist could not convey in the marble face of Apoxyomenes, was preserved by a bronze statue of Ephebe from Antikythera, made, perhaps, by some contemporary of Lysippus. Lysippus preferred to work in bronze, and in the original statue of Apoxyomenes there were no props, which, having appeared in a Roman marble copy, spoil the look of the statue and reduce the lightness and mobility of the figure. The reflections on the bronze original also created an additional impression of fragmentation of volumes and anxiety of the image.

Significantly complicates Lysippus and the setting of the body: the right leg is set aside and slightly back; hands are put forward, one is straight, the other is bent at the elbow. The conquest of space by the statue continues, begun by Scopas with the complex turn of the Maenad. Lysippus goes further than his predecessor: if Maenad was mobile within an imaginary cylinder, then Apoxyomenes breaks its invisible boundaries and seeks to enter the spatial environment where the viewer is located. So far, however, the master is limited only to the movement of the athlete's hand.

New, in comparison with the statues of Polikleitos, the proportions of the Lysippus sculptures are perceived: the figure of Apoxyomenes seems elongated, and the head is small. The professionalism of the character stands out clearly: here, more concretely than in the statue of Doryphoros, the athlete is represented. But if the Spearman concentrated in himself the qualities of not only an athlete, but also a hoplite, as well as an ideal, perfect Greek, then the image of Apoxyomenes is less multifaceted and holistic, although more dynamic and mobile.

The sculptor is already much more fully using the opportunity to show different states of man from different points of view. From the back, Apoxyomenos seems tired, from the front it is perceived as excited, other nuances are introduced into these states of his left and right, and other impressions are created by the master.

According to ancient writers, Lysippus sculpted for the city of Alisia in Acarnania (western part of central Greece) a series of sculptural groups depicting the main exploits of Hercules. Executed in life-size bronze, they were later transported to Rome. Numerous copies were made from them here.

Fighting the Nemean lion is the first and one of the most difficult feats of Hercules. In the Nemean Valley, Hercules waylaid a lion at the entrance to his cave. The arrow shot by Hercules did not harm the lion, entangled in thick wool. When the enraged beast rushed at Hercules, he first stunned the lion with a club, and then, grabbing him by the neck, entered into a mortal fight with him.

The composition of the group has the form of a pyramid formed by the figures of Hercules and the lion, which allows the group to be viewed from all sides.

G. D. Belov tells about the statue: “The hero's posture is stable - his legs are widely spaced, he feels a solid support under him. Hercules grabbed the lion by the neck with his hands and strangled him. The hands of Hercules are a gradually shrinking ring. Will the beast be able to break out of this deadly ring, will the lion be able to free himself from the strong embrace of Hercules?

The struggle has already reached its highest intensity. Hercules squeezes the lion's neck with great force. All his muscles swelled to the limit - on his chest, on his arms and legs, they acted as elastic bumps. Even on the back - and there all the muscles began to move; here the sculptor deliberately exaggerates them, but in reality they are less developed on the back and do not reach such dimensions. But the artist needed to show this excessive swelling of the muscles in order to express the tension that the struggle of two powerful opponents reached.

If the posture of Hercules is stable and confident, if the hero is still full of inexhaustible strength, then the position of the lion is completely different. With its front paws, the lion rests on Hercules, trying with all its might to break away from him, but the hind legs of the beast and the long torso give the impression of instability. It is unusual for a lion to stand on its hind legs, and even more so to fight in such a position. The intention of the lion was to jump with such force that, with a blow from his heavy body, he would overturn the enemy to the ground and bite him in a lying position. But the lion failed to do this - the enemy turned out to be strong enough to withstand the terrible blow of the lion, and not only withstand and stand on his feet, but also move from defense to active struggle. Hercules, having intercepted the lion's jump, forced him to enter into single combat in a position disadvantageous for the lion, this circumstance immediately affected the development of the struggle - the advantage in it was on the side of Hercules.

Another copy from the master's original has been preserved. A small figurine of Hercules depicts the hero sitting on a lion's skin thrown over a rock.

Young Hercules feasts on Olympus, among the gods, where he was miraculously transferred at the end of his earthly life.

The figurine was a gift from Lysippos to Alexander the Great. Tradition says that Alexander loved this statuette so much that he did not part with it even on campaigns, and being dying, he ordered to put it before his eyes.

The statue of the resting Hermes is attributed to the school of Lysippus. The latter is breathing heavily, sinking to the edge of the cliff. Probably, having rested, he will again continue to run fast. And only the sandals of Hermes with buckles on the feet, in which one cannot run, but one can only fly, indicate the divinity of the image.

In the same complex tense pose, he shows Lysippus and Eros, pulling the string of his bow. Here is how G. D. Belov describes this work: “Eros is depicted as a naked boy holding a bow in his hands, on which he is trying to pull a bowstring. To carry out this action, a very great effort was required, which determined the composition of the figure. Eros is strongly bent, his legs and torso are in the same plane, his arms are extended to the left side, and his head is turned in the same direction. Parallel lines intersect with the line of the legs and the plane of the torso, the lower part of the figure is directed forward, while the shoulders and torso are tilted to the right; some forces oppose others, all this gives the figure movement, makes it dynamic. In addition, built in different planes, the figure of Eros requires depth and space. The composition of the statue of Eros in some of its parts resembles the setting of the figure of Apoxyomenes.

The adolescent body of Eros is distinguished by characteristic features: it is not yet fully developed, tender, with a large head, with full cheeks, with full lips of a small mouth. Eros is one of the first attempts to depict a child figure in Greek art.

Having parted with the type for the sake of the individual, with convention for the sake of impressionism, Lysippus managed to make a breakthrough into new areas, almost becoming the founder of Greek portrait sculpture. Alexander the Great liked the busts of his work so much that he appointed Lysippos as his court sculptor, as he had previously granted the exclusive right to paint his portraits to Apelles and carve them on gems to Pyrgotel.

There are poems about the royal portraits of the sculptor:

Full of courage, the look of Alexander and his whole appearance
Poured from copper by Lysippus. As if this copper lives.
It seems, looking at Zeus, the statue says to him:
"I take the earth for myself, you own Olympus."

In the late copies that have come down to us, one can see a portrait of a strong man, whose consciousness was stirred up by inner turmoil and excitement. Anxiety emerges in the pathetic features of the commander. It is perceived either as a harbinger of the dramatic centuries of Hellenism, or as a flash of longing for the once characteristic of a classical person and now lost confidence and peace.

The artistic heritage of Lysippus was enormous in quantity. An ancient legend says that Lysippus set aside one gold coin from the payment received for each of his works. After his death, they counted 1500! And this despite the fact that some of the works of Lysippus were multi-figured. Such, for example, is the group of Alexander and his soldiers, participants in the battle of Granik - the first big battle with the Persians during Alexander's campaign in Asia. It depicts twenty horsemen. Some of the statues of Lysippus even reached colossal sizes: the statue of Zeus in Tarentum (in southern Italy) reached a height of over 20 meters.

It is likely that the tradition exaggerates the number of Lysippus' works. His sons, assistants and students also worked in his workshop. But there is no doubt about the enormous creative energy of Lysippus. The same legend says: in an effort to finish his last work, the master brought himself to exhaustion, as a result of which he died.

The nature of Lysippus' creativity ensured his fame far beyond the borders of the Greek world. He was often compared to Phidias himself. Martial wrote in one of the epigrams:

I asked Vindex about Alkid:
"Whose hand is it made so well?"
As always, he smiled and winked:
“Don’t you know Greek, poet?
There is a name at the foot here.”
I read Lysippus, but I thought Phidias.

Ancient Greek sculptor.

Started as a foundry worker; studied the skill of the sculptor, studying the proportions of sculptures Polykleitos.

The bulk of his works were bronze statues depicting gods, Hercules, athletes and other contemporaries, as well as horses and dogs. His statues have not survived to us, but are known from the descriptions of ancient authors and Roman copies.

According to Pliny the Elder, depicted people not "as they are, but as they appear (to our feelings)".

“The list of sculptors of this century concludes the brilliant name of Lysippus. Researchers attribute it to the Argive school and assure that he had a completely different direction than in the Athenian school.
In essence, he was a direct follower of her, but, having accepted her traditions, he stepped further. In his youth, the artist Evpomp answered his question: “Which teacher to choose?” - answered, pointing to the crowd crowding on the mountain: "Here is the only teacher: nature."
These words sunk deep into the soul of a brilliant young man, and he, not trusting authority Polyclete's canon, took up the exact study of nature. Before him, people were sculpted in accordance with the principles of the canon, that is, in full confidence, then true beauty lies in the proportionality of all forms and in the proportion of people of average height. Lysippus preferred a tall, slender figure. His limbs became lighter, taller. Extraordinary fertility helped him create up to 1500 statues.
He carved and poured Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, heroes, demigods. Helios was especially famous for his chariot drawn by four horses.
Nero he even ordered to be gilded and thereby spoiled the group. Greater fame was acquired by his statue "opportunity". This is a very nice allegory. A young man, with just broken fluff, rolls on a ball. His legs are winged (the case is fleeting), in his hands are scales and a razor - after all, the luck of the case fluctuates, hangs on the razor's edge. He has a tuft of hair on his forehead, and the rest are cut short: the case must be caught by the hair on a grand scale, immediately, it will slip away - you won’t catch it.
Sometimes Lysippus made colossal groups.
By order Alexander the Great he made the "Battle of the Granicus", which consisted of thirty-five figures, of which 26 were mounted. Alexander allowed only him to sculpt busts from himself. The most excellent example of his modeling has come down to us in the statue of Apoxyomenes, an athlete who cleans dirt from himself after a fight with an iron comb.”

Gnedich P.P., World History of Arts, M., Sovremennik, 1996, p. 103-104.

"Established Polikletom the ideal of beauty dominated for almost a hundred years - until the time of Lysippus, the author of the portrait Alexander the Great and creator of a new canon.
The figures of Lysippus are slender, long-legged and small-headed. The proportions are easy. This is how Lysippus himself defined the difference between the ideal Polykleitos and with his canon: "Policletus portrayed people as they really are, and I as they seem."
This moment of illusoryness is associated with certain strivings for pathos. The personification of this ideal is the statue of Apoxyomenes, a young man scraping off a mixture of olive oil with sand and mud from his body with a spatula.
A marble Roman copy of a bronze original by Lysippus is in the Vatican Museum in Rome. According to the new canon, the head of the depicted figure fit the length of the statue 8,5 times."

Alicia Kuczynska, Beautiful. Myth and reality, M., Progress, 1977, p. 97-98.

The heyday of Lysippus' creativity falls on the period of the reign of Alexander the Great(336-323 BC), whose court painter he was. Alexander the Great, according to legend, did not allow anyone except Lysippus to portray himself ...

Pliny the Elder claimed that everything was created by Lysippus 1500 statues, but this number is exaggerated and is probably based on a legend according to which, when creating each statue, the sculptor put one precious stone in a chest, where after his death more than 1500 stones were found ...

Lysippus called his teacher Polykleitos. Among the many students of Lysippus were his three sons. His student, Hares of Lindos, created the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

(4th century BC)

Lysippus was the greatest Greek sculptor of the 4th century BC. He managed to raise Greek art to even greater heights. Not much is known about the life of Lysippos.

As Will Durant writes, “Lysippus of Sicyon started out as a modest coppersmith. He dreamed of being an artist, but he had no money for a teacher; he, however, plucked up courage when he heard the speeches of the painter Eupompus, who declared that it was best to imitate not artists, but nature. After that, Lysippus turned to the study of living beings and established a new canon of sculptural proportions, which replaced the strict charter of Polykleitos; he lengthened the legs and reduced the head, stretched the limbs into the third dimension and gave the figure more vitality and lightness.

One of the most famous works of the sculptor is the statue of Apoxyomenes. G. I. Sokolov vividly talks about this work of Lysippus:

“Lysippus succeeded in plastically completely conveying the excitement of a young man who had not yet cooled down after the struggle, mobile, shifting from foot to foot. In the statue of Apoxyomenes there is not a single calm part of the body: the torso, legs, arms, neck cannot remain in the position in which the sculptor showed them for a long time. The head of Apoxyomenes is slightly tilted to one side, the hair is shown as if stuck together from sweat, one strand of them flew up. His mouth is parted in heavy breathing, a wrinkle cuts through his forehead, his eyes are deeply sunken with fatigue imprinted in them. The quivering nervousness of excitement, which the Roman copyist could not convey in the marble face of Apoxyomenes, was preserved by a bronze statue of Ephebe from Antikythera, made, perhaps, by some contemporary of Lysippus. Lysippus preferred to work in bronze, and in the original statue of Apoxyomenes there were no props, which, having appeared in a Roman marble copy, spoil the look of the statue and reduce the lightness and mobility of the figure. The glare on the bronze original also created an additional impression of the fragmentation of volumes and the restlessness of the image.

The sculptor is already much more fully using the opportunity to show different states of man from different points of view. From the back, Apoxyomenos seems tired, from the front it is perceived as excited, other nuances are introduced to the left and right in these states of his, and other impressions are created by the master.

Fighting the Nemean lion is the first and one of the most difficult feats of Hercules. In the Nemean Valley, Hercules ambushed a lion at the entrance to his cave. The arrow shot by Hercules did not harm the lion, entangled in thick wool. When the enraged beast rushed at Hercules, he first stunned the lion with a club, and then, grabbing him by the neck, entered into a mortal fight with him.

The composition of the group has the form of a pyramid formed by the figures of Hercules and the lion, which allows the group to be viewed from all sides.

G. D. Belov talks about the statue:

“The hero's posture is stable - his legs are widely spaced, he feels a solid support under him. Hercules grabbed the lion by the neck with his hands and strangled him. The hands of Hercules are a gradually shrinking ring. Will the beast be able to break out of this deadly ring, will the lion be able to free himself from the strong embrace of Hercules?

Another copy from the master's original has been preserved. A small figurine of Hercules depicts the hero sitting on a lion's skin thrown over a rock.

Young Hercules is feasting on Olympus, among the gods, where he was miraculously transferred at the end of his earthly life.

The figurine was a gift from Lysippos to Alexander the Great. The legend says that Alexander loved this figurine so much that he did not part with it even on campaigns, and being dying, he ordered to put it before his eyes.

In the same complex tense pose, he shows Lysippus and Eros, pulling the string of his bow. Here is how G. D. Belov describes this work:

“Eros is depicted as a naked boy holding a bow in his hands, on which he is trying to pull a bowstring. To carry out this action, a very great effort was required, which determined the composition of the figure. Eros is strongly bent, his legs and torso are in the same plane, his arms are extended to the left side, and his head is turned in the same direction. Parallel lines intersect with the line of the legs and the plane of the torso, the lower part of the figure is directed forward, while the shoulders and torso are tilted to the right; some forces oppose others, all this gives the figure movement, makes it dynamic. In addition, built in different planes, the figure of Eros requires depth and space. The composition of the statue of Eros in some of its parts resembles the setting of the figure of Apoxyomenes.

There are poems about the royal portraits of the sculptor:

Full of courage, the look of Alexander and his whole appearance

Poured from copper by Lysippus. As if this copper lives.

It seems, looking at Zeus, the statue says to him:

"I take the earth for myself, you own Olympus."