Lysippus
(
Λύσιππος). A native of Sicyon, and one of the most famous
Greek artists, a contemporary of Alexander the Great. He was originally a worker in metal, and
taught himself the art of the sculptor by studying nature and the
canon
of
Polyclitus (q.v.). His works, which were said
to amount to 1500, were all statues in bronze, and were remarkable for their lifelike
characterization and their careful and accurate execution, shown particularly in the treatment
of the hair. He aimed at representing the beauty and harmony more especially of the male human
body; and substituted for the proportions of Polyclitus a new ideal, which kept in view the
effect produced, by giving the body a more slender and elegant shape, and by making the head
smaller in comparison with the trunk, than is the case with the actual average man. The most
famous among his statues of gods
|
Marble Copy of the Apoxyomenos of Lysippus. (Vatican Museum, Rome.)
|
were the colossal forms of Zeus and Heracles, at Tarentum of which the former was
second in size only to that at Rhodes, while the latter was afterwards brought to the
Capitol at Rome, and then to the Hippodrome at Constantinople, where it was melted down in
A.D. 1022; and, lastly, the sun-god on the four-horse chariot at Rhodes (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xxxiv. 40, 63).
The first example of pure allegory in Greek art was his
Καιρός, the “Favourable Moment”—a delicate youth
with modest look standing on a ball, with his foot winged, and holding shears and a balance in
his hands. The hair hung down in front, while it was so short behind that it could not be
grasped (
Anthol. Gr. ii. 49, 13; Callist.
Statuae, 6).
By far the greater number of his statues were portraits. Of these the various
representations of Alexander the Great from boyhood onwards were of marked excellence (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xxxiv. 64). Indeed, the king
would have no sculptor but Lysippus to represent him, even as he would have no other painter
than Apelles (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. vii. 125;
Epist. ii. 1, 240;
Ad Fam. v. 12, 13).
Among his large groups were Craterus saving the life of Alexander chasing the lion (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xxxiv. 64), and the portraits of
twenty-five horsemen and nine foot soldiers who fell at the first assault in the battle of the
Granicus (Arrian,
Anab. i. 16.7;
Plut. Alex.
16). The excellent copy in marble, at the Vatican, of the
Apoxyomenos, a
youth removing the dust of the palaestra with a strigil, affords an idea of his skill in
representing beautiful and perfectly developed bodies of delicate elasticity and graceful
suppleness (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xxxiv. 62).
See Perry's
Greek and Roman Sculpture, pp. 478-488.