Polykleitos
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Polykleitos (; ) was an ancient Greek sculptor, active in the 5th century BCE. Alongside the
Athenian Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...
sculptors Pheidias, Myron and Praxiteles, he is considered as one of the most important sculptors of
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. The 4th century BCE catalogue attributed to
Xenocrates Xenocrates (; ; c. 396/5314/3 BC) of Chalcedon was a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and leader ( scholarch) of the Platonic Academy from 339/8 to 314/3 BC. His teachings followed those of Plato, which he attempted to define more closely, of ...
(the "Xenocratic catalogue"), which was Pliny's guide in matters of art, ranked him between Pheidias and Myron. He is particularly known for his lost treatise, the ''
Canon of Polykleitos Polykleitos (; ) was an ancient Greek sculptor, active in the 5th century BCE. Alongside the Athens, Athenian sculptors Pheidias, Myron and Praxiteles, he is considered as one of the most important sculptors of classical antiquity. The 4th centu ...
'' (a canon of body proportions), which set out his mathematical basis of an idealised male body shape. None of his original sculptures are known to survive, but many marble works, mostly Roman, are believed to be later copies.


Name

His Greek name was traditionally Latinized ''Polycletus'', but is also transliterated ''Polycleitus'' (, Classical Greek , "much-renowned") and, due to
iotacism Iotacism (, ''iotakismos'') or itacism is the process of vowel shift by which a number of vowels and diphthongs converged towards the pronunciation in post-classical Greek and Modern Greek. The term "iotacism" refers to the letter iota, the orig ...
in the transition from Ancient to Modern Greek, ''Polyklitos'' or ''Polyclitus''. He is called Sicyonius (lit. "The Sicyonian", usually translated as "of Sicyon") by Latin authors including
Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...
and
Cicero Marcus Tullius Cicero ( ; ; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, orator, writer and Academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises tha ...
, and Ἀργεῖος (lit. "The Argive", trans. "of Argos") by others like
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
and Pausanias. He is sometimes called the Elder, in cases where it is necessary to distinguish him from his son, who is regarded as a major architect but a minor sculptor.


Early life and training

As noted above, Polykleitos is called "The Sicyonian" by some authors, all writing in Latin, and who modern scholars view as relying on an error of Pliny the Elder in conflating another more minor sculptor from Sikyon, a disciple of Phidias, with Polykleitos of Argos. Pausanias is adamant that they were not the same person, and that Polykleitos was from Argos, in which
city state A city-state is an independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory. They have existed in many parts of the world throughout history, including cities such as Rome, ...
he must have received his early training, and a contemporary of
Phidias Phidias or Pheidias (; , ''Pheidias''; ) was an Ancient Greek sculptor, painter, and architect, active in the 5th century BC. His Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Phidias also designed the statues of ...
(possibly also taught by Ageladas).


Works

Polykleitos's figure of an
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for
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was admired, while his colossal gold and ivory statue of
Hera In ancient Greek religion, Hera (; ; in Ionic Greek, Ionic and Homeric Greek) is the goddess of marriage, women, and family, and the protector of women during childbirth. In Greek mythology, she is queen of the twelve Olympians and Mount Oly ...
which stood in her temple—the
Heraion of Argos The Heraion of Argos () is an ancient sanctuary in the Argolid, Greece, dedicated to Hera, whose epithet "Argive Hera" (Ἥρη Ἀργείη ''Here Argeie'') appears in Homer's works. Hera herself claims to be the protector of Ancient Argos, A ...
—was favourably compared with the Olympian
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by Pheidias. He also sculpted a famous
bronze Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals (such as phosphorus) or metalloid ...
male nude known as the '' Doryphoros'' ("Spear Bearer"), which survives in the form of numerous Roman
marble Marble is a metamorphic rock consisting of carbonate minerals (most commonly calcite (CaCO3) or Dolomite (mineral), dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2) that have recrystallized under the influence of heat and pressure. It has a crystalline texture, and is ty ...
copies. Further sculptures attributed to Polykleitos are the '' Discophoros'' (" Discus-bearer"), '' Diadumenos'' ("Youth tying a headband") and a
Hermes Hermes (; ) is an Olympian deity in ancient Greek religion and mythology considered the herald of the gods. He is also widely considered the protector of human heralds, travelers, thieves, merchants, and orators. He is able to move quic ...
at one time placed, according to Pliny, in Lysimachia (Thrace). Polykleitos's ''Astragalizontes'' ("Boys Playing at Knuckle-bones") was claimed by the Emperor
Titus Titus Caesar Vespasianus ( ; 30 December 39 – 13 September AD 81) was Roman emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, becoming the first Roman emperor ever to succeed h ...
and set in a place of honour in his atrium. Pliny also mentions that Polykleitos was one of the five major sculptors who competed in the fifth century B.C. to make a wounded Amazon for the temple of Artemis; marble copies associated with the competition survive.


Diadumenos

The statue of '' Diadumenos'', also known as ''Youth Tying a Headband'' is one of Polykleitos's sculptures known from many copies. The gesture of the boy tying his headband represents a victory, possibly from an athletic contest. "It is a first-century A.D. Roman copy of a Greek bronze original dated around 430 B.C." Polykleitos sculpted the outline of his muscles significantly to show that he is an athlete. "The thorax and pelvis of the Diadoumenos tilt in opposite directions, setting up rhythmic contrasts in the torso that create an impression of organic vitality. The position of the feet poised between standing and walking give a sense of potential movement. This rigorously calculated pose, which is found in almost all works attributed to Polykleitos, became a standard formula used in Greco-Roman and, later, western European art."


Doryphoros

Another statue created by Polykleitos is the '' Doryphoros'', also called the ''Spear bearer''. It is a typical Greek sculpture depicting the beauty of the male body. "Polykleitos sought to capture the ideal proportions of the human figure in his statues and developed a set of aesthetic principles governing these proportions that was known as the Canon or 'Rule'. He created the system based on mathematical ratios. "Though we do not know the exact details of Polykleitos’s formula, the end result, as manifested in the Doryphoros, was the perfect expression of what the Greeks called ''symmetria''. On this sculpture, it shows somewhat of a contrapposto pose; the body is leaning most on the right leg. The Doryphoros has an idealized body, contains less of naturalism. In his left hand, there was once a spear, but if so it has since been lost. The posture of the body shows that he is a warrior and a hero. Indeed, some have gone so far as to suggest that the figure depicted was Achilles, on his way to the Trojan War, as a similar depiction of Achilles carrying a shield is seen on a vase painted by the Achilles Painter at around the same time.


Style

Polykleitos, along with Phidias, created the Classical Greek style. Although none of his original works survive, literary sources identifying Roman marble copies of his work allow reconstructions to be made. Contrapposto, a pose that visualizes the shifting balance of the body as weight is placed on one leg, was a source of his fame. The refined detail of Polykleitos's models for casting executed in clay is revealed in a famous remark repeated in
Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...
's ''Moralia'', that "the work is hardest when the clay is under the fingernail".


The ''Canon of Polykleitos'' and "symmetria"

Polykleitos consciously created a new approach to sculpture, writing a treatise (an artistic canon () and designing a male nude exemplifying his theory of the mathematical basis of ideal proportions. Though his theoretical treatise is lost to history, he is quoted as saying, "Perfection ... comes about little by little () through many numbers". By this he meant that a statue should be composed of clearly definable parts, all related to one another through a system of ideal mathematical proportions and balance. Though his Canon was probably represented by his ''Doryphoros'', the original bronze statue has not survived, but later marble copies exist. References to the ''Kanon'' by other ancient writers imply that its main principle was expressed by the Greek words , the
Hippocratic Hippocrates of Kos (; ; ), also known as Hippocrates II, was a Greek physician and philosopher of the classical period who is considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine. He is traditionally referred to as the "Fat ...
principle of ("equilibrium"), and .
Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...
wrote that Polykleitos's ''Kanon'' "got its name because it had a precise commensurability (''symmetria'') of all the parts to one another." He also wrote that the ''Kanon'' defines beauty "in the proportions, not of the elements, but of the parts, that is to say, of finger to finger, and of all the fingers to the palm and the wrist, and of these to the forearm, and of the forearm to the upper arm, and of all the other parts to each other." The art historian
Kenneth Clark Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, Baron Clark (13 July 1903 – 21 May 1983) was a British art historian, museum director and broadcaster. His expertise covered a wide range of artists and periods, but he is particularly associated with Italian Renaissa ...
observed that " olykleitos'sgeneral aim was clarity, balance, and completeness; his sole medium of communication the naked body of an athlete, standing poised between movement and repose".Clark 1956:63.


Conjectured reconstruction

Illustration of the phalanges of a human hand In a 1975 paper, art historian Richard Tobin suggested that earlier work to reconstruct the Canon had failed because previous researchers had made a flawed assumption of a foundation in linear ratios rather than
area Area is the measure of a region's size on a surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an open surface or the boundary of a three-di ...
l proportion. He conjectured that the Canon begins from the length of the outermost part (the "
distal Standard anatomical terms of location are used to describe unambiguously the anatomy of humans and other animals. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. This position provi ...
phalange") of the little finger. The length of the diagonal of a square of this side (mathematically, , about 1.4142) gives the length of the middle phalange. Repeating the process gives the length of the proximal phalange; doing so again gives the length of the
metacarpal In human anatomy, the metacarpal bones or metacarpus, also known as the "palm bones", are the appendicular bones that form the intermediate part of the hand between the phalanges (fingers) and the carpal bones ( wrist bones), which articulate ...
plus the carpal bones the distance from knuckle to the head of the
ulna The ulna or ulnar bone (: ulnae or ulnas) is a long bone in the forearm stretching from the elbow to the wrist. It is on the same side of the forearm as the little finger, running parallel to the Radius (bone), radius, the forearm's other long ...
. Next, a square of side equal to the length of the hand from little finger to wrist yields a diagonal of length equal to that of the forearm. This "diagonal of a square" process gives the relative ratios of many other key reference distances in the human male body. The process would not require measurement of
square root In mathematics, a square root of a number is a number such that y^2 = x; in other words, a number whose ''square'' (the result of multiplying the number by itself, or y \cdot y) is . For example, 4 and −4 are square roots of 16 because 4 ...
s: the artist could take a long cord and make knots separated from each other by a distance which equals the diagonal of the square drawn on the preceding length. On the body proper, the process is repeated but the geometric progression is taken and retaken from the top of the head (rather than additively, as on the hand/arm): the head from crown to chin is the same size as the fore-arm; from crown to
clavicle The clavicle, collarbone, or keybone is a slender, S-shaped long bone approximately long that serves as a strut between the scapula, shoulder blade and the sternum (breastbone). There are two clavicles, one on each side of the body. The clavic ...
is as long as the upper arm; a diagonal on that square yields the distance from the crown to the line of the nipples. Tobin validated his calculation by comparing his theoretical model with a Roman copy of ''Doryphoros'' in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.


Followers

Polykleitos and Phidias were among the first generation of Greek sculptors to attract schools of followers. Polykleitos's school lasted for at least three generations, but it seems to have been most active in the late 4th century and early 3rd century BCE. The Roman writers Pliny and Pausanias noted the names of about twenty sculptors in Polykleitos's school, defined by their adherence to his principles of balance and definition. Skopas and Lysippus are among the best-known successors of Polykleitos, along with other, more obscure statuaries, such as Athenodoros of Cleitor and Asopodorus. Polykleitos's son, Polykleitos the Younger, worked in the 4th century BCE. Although the son was also a sculptor of athletes, his greatest fame was won as an architect. He designed the great theatre at
Epidaurus Epidaurus () was a small city (''polis'') in ancient Greece, on the Argolid Peninsula at the Saronic Gulf. Two modern towns bear the name Epidavros: ''Palaia Epidavros'' and ''Nea Epidavros''. Since 2010 they belong to the new municipality of Epi ...
.


Gallery


Notes


References


Sources

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External links

{{Authority control 5th-century BC Greek sculptors Ancient Argives Ancient Greek athletic art