Scopas (; born in

Paros Paros (; ; ) is a Greek island in the central Aegean Sea. Part of the Cyclades island group, it lies to the west of Naxos (island), Naxos, from which it is separated by a channel about wide. It lies approximately south-east of Piraeus. The Co ...

, fl. 4th century BCE) was an

ancient Greek sculptor The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumenta ...

and architect, most famous for his statue of Meleager, the copper statue of

Aphrodite Aphrodite (, ) is an Greek mythology, ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretism, syncretised Roman counterpart , desire, Sexual intercourse, sex, fertility, prosperity, and ...

, and the head of goddess

Hygieia Hygieia is a goddess from Greek mythology (more commonly spelled Hygeia, sometimes Hygiea; ; or , or ). Hygieia is a goddess of health ( – ''hugieia''), cleanliness and hygiene. Her name is the source for the word "hygiene". Hygieia devel ...

, daughter of

Asclepius Asclepius (; ''Asklēpiós'' ; ) is a hero and god of medicine in ancient Religion in ancient Greece, Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology. He is the son of Apollo and Coronis (lover of Apollo), Coronis, or Arsinoe (Greek myth), Ars ...

Early life and family

Scopas was born on the island of

. His father was the sculptor Aristander of Paros. Skopas left Paros at an early age and travelled throughout the Hellenic world.

Career

Scopas worked with

Praxiteles Praxiteles (; ) of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue. While no indubitably attributable sculpture ...

, and he sculpted parts of the

Mausoleum of Halicarnassus The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus or Tomb of Mausolus (; ) was a tomb built between 353 and 351 BC in Halicarnassus (present Bodrum, Turkey) for Mausolus, an Anatolian from Caria and a satrap in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and his sister-wi ...

, especially the

relief Relief is a sculpture, sculptural method in which the sculpted pieces remain attached to a solid background of the same material. The term ''wikt:relief, relief'' is from the Latin verb , to raise (). To create a sculpture in relief is to give ...

s. He led the building of the new temple of

Athena Alea Alea (Ancient Greek: ) was an epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, prominent in Arcadian mythology, under which she was worshiped at Alea, Mantineia and Tegea. Alea was initially an independent goddess, but was eventually assimilated with At ...

Tegea Tegea (; ) was a settlement in ancient Arcadia, and it is also a former municipality in Arcadia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the Tripoli municipality, of which it is a municipal unit with an area o ...

. Similar to

Lysippus Lysippos (; ) was a Greek sculptor of the 4th century BC. Together with Scopas and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the three greatest sculptors of the Classical Greek era, bringing transition into the Hellenistic period In classical a ...

, Scopas is artistically a successor of the

Classical Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archa ...

sculptor

Polykleitos Polykleitos (; ) was an ancient Greek sculptor, active in the 5th century BCE. Alongside the Athenian sculptors Pheidias, Myron and Praxiteles, he is considered as one of the most important sculptors of classical antiquity. The 4th century B ...

. The faces of the heads are almost in

quadrat A quadrat is a frame used in ecology, geography, and biology to isolate a standard unit of area for study of the distribution of an item over a large area. Quadrats typically occupy an area of 0.25 m2 and are traditionally square, but modern quad ...

. The deeply sunken eyes and a slightly opened mouth are recognizable characteristics in the figures of Scopas. Works by Scopas are preserved in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

(reliefs) in London; fragments from the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea in the

National Archaeological Museum of Athens The National Archaeological Museum () in Athens houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the greatest museums in the world and ...

; the celebrated Ludovisi Ares in the

Palazzo Altemps The National Roman Museum (Italian: ''Museo Nazionale Romano'') is a museum, with several branches in separate buildings throughout the city of Rome, Italy. It shows exhibits from the pre- and early history of Rome, with a focus on archaeological ...

, Rome; a statue of Pothos restored as

Apollo Citharoedus An Apollo Citharoedus, or Apollo Citharede, is a statue or other image of Apollo with a cithara (lyre). Notable examples Vatican Among the best-known examples is the ''Apollo Citharoedus'', also known as Apollo Musagetes ("Apollo, Leader of the ...

in the

Capitoline Museum The Capitoline Museums () are a group of art and archaeological museums in Piazza del Campidoglio, on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, Italy. The historic seats of the museums are Palazzo dei Conservatori and Palazzo Nuovo, facing on the centr ...

, Rome; and his statue of Meleager, unmentioned in ancient literature but surviving in numerous replicas, perhaps best represented by a torso in the

Fogg Art Museum The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, ...

Pothos

''Pothos'', or ''Desire'', was a celebrated and much imitated statue by Scopas. Roman copies featured the human figure with a variety of props, such as musical instruments and fabrics as depicted here,Steven Lattimore, "Scopas and the Pothos", ''American Journal of Archaeology'' Vol.91 No.3 (July 1987), pages 411–42
journal preview
/ref> in an example that was in the collection of Cardinal Alessandro Albani.

Namesake

Scopas (crater) Scopas is a crater on Mercury, near the south pole. Its name was adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1976, after the ancient Greek sculptor and architect Scopas Scopas (; born in Paros, fl. 4th century BCE) was an ancient Gre ...

Gallery

File:Meleager Pio-Clementino Inv490.jpg, A Roman 1st-century AD marble ''

Meleager In Greek mythology, Meleager (, ) was a hero venerated in his '' temenos'' at Calydon in Aetolia. He was already famed as the host of the Calydonian boar hunt in the epic tradition that was reworked by Homer. Meleager is also mentioned as o ...

'' with

chlamys The chlamys (; genitive: ) was a type of ancient Greek cloak. It was worn by men for military and hunting purposes during the Classical, Hellenistic and later periods. By the time of the Byzantine Empire it was part of the state costume of the ...

, a free improvisation on Scopas's model, from the Fusconi-Pighini collection (

Museo Pio-Clementino The Vatican Museums (; ) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the best-known Roman sculptures and ...

, Rome) File:Archaeological museum, Athens (5615666772).jpg, Hunter stele by Scopas (National Archaeological Museum of Athens) File:Pothos Apollo Musei Capitolini MC649.jpg, One of many Roman copies of Pothos (Desire), a statue by Scopas, restored here as

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

Kitharoidos (Apollo, the

Cithara The kithara (), Latinized as cithara, was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the yoke lutes family. It was a seven-stringed professional version of the lyre, which was regarded as a rustic, or folk instrument, appropriate for teaching mus ...

-player) File:MarbleHeadsScopas.jpg, Two marble heads by Scopas, National Museum Athens

Literature

* Andreas Linfert: ''Von Polyklet zu Lysipp. Polyklets Schule und ihr Verhältnis zu Skopas v. Paros''. Diss. Freiburg i. B. 1965. * Andrew F. Stewart: ''Skopas of Paros''. Noyes Pr., Park Ridge, N.Y. 1977. * Andrew Stewart: ''Skopas in Malibu. The head of Achilles from Tegea and other sculptures by Skopas in the J. Paul Getty Museum'' J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Calif. 1982. * Skopas of Paros and his world, International Conference on the Archaeology of Paros and the Cyclades Paroikia, Paros, Greece), Katsōnopoulou, Dora., Stewart, Andrew F.

References

4th-century BC Greek sculptors Ancient Parians 4th-century BC architects Mausoleum at Halicarnassus {{Greece-sculptor-stub