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Marble
Sculpted of a fine-grained
tight white marble.
Condition: chipped and scratched,
the colour a light yellowish golden with limestone incrustation in places.
Missing: the head and part
of the neck, the right arm from the elbow down, the left arm from just
above the wrist, the right leg from below the knee and the left leg from
across the knee. In the stub of the left arm a hole c. 25 mm deep
and c. 6 mm in diameter, probably for an ancient repair.
The figure stands with his
weight on his left leg, the right upper leg forward and slightly bent back
at the knee. He wears a short chiton, visible across the chest just below
the collar-bones and with sleeves ending above the elbows, with two thick
overlaps at the waist surely girt by a belt. The tight-fitting chiton ends
below the buttocks around the upper thighs. A chlamys is draped over the
shoulders and falls in folds, it is fastened on the right with a circular
fibula. In archaic times the folds of his cloak would have been treated
differently: more schematically, spaced closer, sharper, more pointed and
drawn in straighter lines. Here, at the inception of the early Classical
period, they are softer and more natural.
This youthful figure, who
must be Hermes [1], epitomizes the miraculous
transition from the archaic to the classical, from aristocracy to democracy,
from static severity to natural movement, at the beginning of a transitional
period in sculpture called Early Classical or Severe Style. This sculpture
embodies this moment of spiritual and political transition with its feel
and awareness of the human body, when subject matter becomes more important
than type. Perhaps the first and one of the last extant great marble sculptures
that both announces and expresses the transition, for henceforth the artists
were to prefer bronze for its potential, a medium appropriate to the rendering
of naturalism and the new conception of man. It is because we have no large-scale
bronzes for this period but only the marbles of Olympia, that a clear
vision of the process of contemporary development in sculpture is difficult.
Further, regional differences that determined art before the Persian invasions,
had given place to a less differentiated sculptural output, a consequence
of the citizen's awareness of his individual importance (they rowed the
triremes at Salamis and carried the day), and a new national consensus
as many Greeks had contributed to repulsing
One senses his youthful assuredness
as he steps forward, his body still imbued with archaic purity about to
burst from the bonds of archaism to the reality of his natural self. The
subtlety of the planes and curves of the lower front tunic, is of a plastic
virtuosity unsurpassed in the writer's opinion in any sculpture of any
age.
Herein lies the Greek miracle,
when man was at the dawn of a new realization of self.
There are contrasts between
the different parts: the tunic, the thighs, the subtle volumes of the lower
neck and the upper part of the back where they join, and we feel life emerging
through the collar-bones. This miraculous moment of transition is in considerable
part expressed by the curves, folds and draping of the chiton and chlamys
over the body, the way it clings to it and hangs off it, and
outlines the nascent expression of life and movement.
In sculpture the style is
reputed to have started at Sicyon. Sicyon, somewhat in the shadow of Corinth,
had a long reputation for its prowess in sculpture and if one looks at
the Sicyonian treasury at Delphi, the metope with the Dioskouroi [2]
as they lead the cattle, one can understand the greatness and eminently
satisfying soberness of archaic sculpture at its best. This Hermes, though
embodying the birth of a new development, the greatest that humanity has
ever known, had his plastic roots in the past. The manner in which on the
Dioskouroi the chlamys falls over their shoulders with its folds ending
in a point in front, their waists belted, and their proud bearing are true
antecedents. The difference is naturalism, the modelling between the trapezia
and the clavicles, in the way the knees are represented; it is in the folds,
and above all it is in the incredibly subtly curved plane on the lower
front of the chlamys.
On view: Antikenmuseum, Basel:
1988-1992
Mentioned:
1
François Chamoux, on a visit 16 August 1994, questioned the date
c. 480 B.C. suggesting 470/460, within the sphere of the Olympia pediments,
because of the evolution of the drapery, the incredibly fine workmanship
(e.g. the right knee and the buttocks less salient than in earlier times)
and the attribution because of the refinement of the dress inappropriate
for Hermes/shepherd, and suggested maybe a funerary statue of a youthful
warrior of aristocratic background, possibly holding a spear. On a visit
the next day N. Himmelmann likewise thought the date too early by a decade,
but saw no objection to it being a Hermes.
2
Limestone metope c. 560 B.C.: Jeffery, L.H.: Archaic Greece.
The City-States c. 700-500 B.C. (London, 1976), ill. 24.
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Small 3-D 156K Large 3-D 440K
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