Lysippus

thumb|Lysippos, Eros with the bow, Roman copy in the Capitoline Museums Lysippos (Ancient Greek: Λύσιππος, Lýsippos; c. 390 – c. 300 BC), was a Greek sculptor and bronze worker, considered one of the greatest of the Classical era. Quotes about Lysippos Lysippum Sicyonium Duris negat ullius fuisse discipulum, sed primo aerarium fabrum audendi rationem cepisse pictoris Eupompi responso. eum enim interrogatum, quem sequeretur antecedentium, dixisse monstrata hominum multitudine, naturam ipsam imitandam esse, non artificem. Lysippus of Sicyon is said by Duris not to have been the pupil of anybody, but to have been originally a copper-smith and to have first got the idea of venturing on sculpture from the reply given by the painter Eupompus when asked which of his predecessors he took for his model; he pointed to a crowd of people and said that it was Nature herself, not an artist, whom one ought to imitate. (tr. H. Rackham, 1952) Pliny the Elder, Natural History, XXIV.61 The ancients magnified in him the elegance, the extreme finesse of the execution; and in fact we still find something surprising in the best copies, such as that of the apoxyomenos. But beyond this we noticed another characteristic trait: the common movement, as a hereditary temperament, to all figures even when the situation does not require it. Well: in this movement, in its peculiar manifestation, it represents a substantial progress in the development of sculpture. Emanuel Löwy, Die griechische Plastik, Bd. 1 (Leipzig, 1911), p. 107 The art of Lysippus presents itself as a kind of Doric reaction against Attic art, which tended to lay an increasing stress on sentiment, and might be thought to incline to effeminacy and sensuality. Lysippus modified the Canon of Polycletus, that is to say, the classic tradition of the fifth century, by a more marked tendency to elegance, making his bodies nearly eight times the lenght of the head (instead of seven times), and emphasising the joints and muscles at the expense of their fleshy covering. His heads express neither reverie nor passion; they are content to be merely nervous and refined. Salomon Reinach, Apollo, tr. F. Simmonds (New York, 1935), p. 60 Lysippos was considered for the human figure as the creator of a canon opposite to that of Polycletus. He, while remaining faithful to symmetry, that is to a rule of proportions between the various parts of the body, modified the firm and square stature of the Polycletian type and, by making the head smaller and the body more frail and drier, he created figures that appeared of greater slenderness. This is the appearance of Apoxyomenos and Agias. Alessandro Della Seta, I monumenti dell'antichità classica. I. - Grecia (Naples, 1925), p. XLIV External links Q192222 Category:Ancient Greek sculptors