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Two Fourth Century Children's Heads
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
It is commonly supposed that the treatment of children in the finest period of Greek sculpture is a subject that can be very lightly dismissed. Children, it is said, are not represented in Greek art before Hellenistic times—not represented, that is to say, with any truth to nature or reproduction of the characteristics of childhood. Of course it is never denied that young children appear in statues or reliefs of the fifth or fourth centuries; but when they so appear, they are said to be treated carelessly, conventionally, with no regard to their proper forms or proportions, but just as men on a smaller scale. This assertion is on the whole a correct one. Of careless treatment the infant Dionysus carried by the Hermes of Praxiteles is an example; the child is regarded merely as an accessory, and the execution is in marked contrast to the extreme finish and delicacy of work which we see in the Hermes himself. Even where there is no such contrast in the execution, a conventional treatment may often be seen, as in the case of children on grave-monuments and elsewhere. Nor are one or two children in sculptural groups belonging in origin to the fourth century to be regarded as exceptions (for instance, the infant Plutus carried by the Eirene of Cephisodotus); for these only survive in later copies, and in them the child is modified to suit the requirements of a later period, when children had been studied with as much care as had been spent upon the mature figure by the sculptor of the original group.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1890
References
page 102 note 1 I may add that Dr. Waldstein and Professor Furtwängler expressed their opinion that the head from Paphos belonged to the fourth century, before seeing my new evidence from the stela of Cephisodotus.
page 102 note 2 Dr. Brückner tells me there is another head of similar style on a fourth century stela at Constantinople. Mr.Evans, Arthur suggests as a parallel the gem of Phrygillus of late fifth century work published in the Jahrbuch d. d. Inst. 1888, p. 197Google Scholar, Pl. 8, 4. But though the forms of the body are boyish, the head there is, as Professor Furtwängler observes, of a more developed type.
page 102 note 3 I am glad to learn from M. Cabbadias that he hopes soon to transport it to Athens.
page 103 note 1 See J. H. S. 1888, p. 218.
page 103 note 2 Mittheil. d. d. Inst. Athen. 1879, p. 154.
page 103 note 3 Mittheil. d. d. Inst. Athen. 1883, p. 195, Pl. X.
page 104 note 1 In the Dionysus of Praxiteles the lower part is if anything larger than the upper—a strange inversion for so young a child, and a proof how little attention the artist gave to this part of the group.
page 106 note 1 Dr. Waldstein has remarked to me that, while the treatment above the forehead shows the character seen sometimes at the end of the fourth century and the beginning of the Hellenistic age, that on the top and back of the head shows a rough and sketchy blocking out such as is only seen in fourth century work.
page 108 note 1 See, for instance, the sarcophagi from Patras and Sparta, Baumeister, , Denkmäler, pp. 1552—3.Google Scholar