Lysippus

Lysippos (Ancient Greek Λύσιππος, Sicyon, Peloponnese, c. 390 BC-c. 318 BC) was a classical Greek sculptor. Lysippos, Scopas and Praxiteles are considered the three great sculptors of the second phase of classicism (4th century BC), a period of transition between the classical Greek era and Hellenism. The student of his work is faced with a series of methodical problems: Lysippos' large workshop, the demand for reproductions of his work while he was still alive, and later among Hellenistic and Roman aficionados, the number of disciples directly in his circle. and the survival of his works only in copies. He was also the reformer of the Polykleitos canon and a great innovator with respect to inherited conventions.

Biography

He was born in Sicyon around 390 B.C. A bronze worker in his youth, he taught himself the art of sculpture, and later became a leader of the school of Argon and Sicyon.

He lived in the heyday of Alexander the Great, whose favorite artist and official portrait painter he was. He has portrayed it on many occasions in numerous works scattered today. The description of some of them has reached our days through the writings of Greek historians and philosophers.

Bust of Alexander the Great, Roman marble that copies an original of Lisipo (Museum of the Louvre).

In particular, Lysippos portrayed Alexander in the act and with the brave gesture of hunting a lion, in combat and in various heroic postures, and sometimes in deified poses. A recently discovered epigram of Posidippus, in the anthology depicted in the Milan papyrus, was inspired by a bronze portrait of Alexander:

Lysipo, sculptor of Sition, bold hand, learned craftsman,

Your bronze statue has the look of fire in her eyes,

that you did in the form of Alexander. Persians don't deserve

reproaches. We must forgive the sheep that flee before a lion.

Due to Lysippos for the typical depiction of Alexander as an inspired, godlike figure, with tousled hair, parted lips, and upward gaze; a prime example, an Imperial-era Roman copy found at Tivoli, and is preserved in the Louvre Museum.

He worked in Sicione, Olympia, Corinth, Rhodes, Delphi, Athens, Rome, and Taranto.

For his contemporaries, he was considered the successor of the famous sculptor Polykleitos. They highlighted his grace and elegance, the symmetry or coherent balance of his figures, with heads smaller than Polykleitos's canon, which gave the impression of greater height. He was famous for his attention to detail in eyelashes and toenails.

The production

Lysippos was very prolific. Tradition speaks, regarding his works, of an enormous production, estimated by some sources at around 1500 statues (says Pliny the Elder), most of which were made in bronze. There are many statues of the victorious athletes in the Greek Olympics at Olympia, and there are numerous chariots in marble and bronze. In the last years of his life, he erected in Taranto a tall statue of about 17 meters of Zeus, represented in an erect position next to a pilaster with an eagle and in the act of hurling thunderbolts.

Of this immense work, no original has survived to this day, but only Roman copies.

Apoxyomenos

Apoxiomeno.

His most important work is the Apoxyomeno, of which a Roman marble copy is preserved, while the original was in bronze. It represents a young Greek athlete in a vulgar position. He is removing the sand stuck to his body due to sweat with a strigile, an instrument of the time, made of metal, iron or bronze (which the Romans called strigilis ), which was only used by men and, mainly, athletes: similar to a scraper, it was used to clean off dust, sweat and excess oil that spread on the skin before competitions. It is of slender proportions and has a flexible body.

Agrippa's baths were decorated with two statues of Lysippos; that of Apoxyomenos and that of a recumbent lion.

The work is kept in the Museo Pío-Clementino, in Vatican City.

Artistic renewal and perspective

Lysippus, along with Praxiteles, Scopas, and Apelles, was one of the absolute protagonists of the art of the late classical Greek period.

With Lysippus, sculpture became more stylized, as it lengthened the canon of sculptures and emphasized realistic individualization in portraits. Indeed, one of its greatest merits was to modify and renew, first of all, the canon of proportion for the representation of the human body, which had previously been set by Polykleitos, in relation 1:7. Lysippos revised the canon by increasing it to seven and a half heads.

In addition, he created a new school of sculpture, that of the physiognomic and individual portrait which, by reproducing the external appearance of the subject, also suggests psychological and emotional implications. His renewal started, however, from the Greek tradition.

His work is a synthesis of the charis of Praxiteles and the pathos of Scopas. He was the teacher of many Hellenistic sculptors.

Lisippos was, perhaps more than others, exceptionally courageous in the volumetric production of the figure, giving an even more significant turn in the transition from classical art to the Hellenistic period.

The genius of Lysippos led him to break new ground in the sculpture of the time. He was the first to intuit the possibility of modeling the statue, based on a circular point of view, 360 degrees, and not from the perspective of a single, fixed point of view, as had been worked up to then, which, in terms mise-en-scène, it put the figure to sleep, making it lose strength, expression and vitality. His intuitions made him the most complete and modern sculptor of his time, thus being able to control the shape of his work, in every possible perspective and viewing angle.

The conquest of figurative harmony in space, in a circularity all around. It was above all thanks to this, that he was able, first to imagine, and then he was able to carry out, those works with great scenic effects and great visual, aesthetic and monumental impact. For these features, it was for the art of the Hellenistic period, a sure reference point, a beacon.

With the right balance between the proportions and the position of the body, he derived life and elegance for his statues. His intuitions transmitted a teaching that would then have a constant continuity, numerous and of sure value, in the following centuries.

Hellenism was characterized mainly by the change in the canons of aesthetic beauty, together with the sense of movement of the figure, typical of all the works that achieved it.

The intuitions of Lysippos, and his studies on the human figure, were followed by another great Greek artistic personality, in the field of sculpture, Apelles.

His student, Cares of Lindos, built the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. Since it is a statue that no longer exists today, it continues to be debated whether it was cast in bronze or covered in a bronze sheet.

Other disciples were Eutychides of Sicyon, and his three sons, especially Eutycrates.

The female figure

Venus de Capua, National Archaeological Museum, Naples.

The discovery of many statues and statuettes in bronze or marble, representing Aphrodite, (Venus), goddess of love, shows that in the Hellenistic period the female figure was used very frequently as an artistic subject.

A contribution of the artistic work of Lysippos is the representation of the gods as palpable beings and with more human gestures.

Lysippus had a brother, Lysistratus, also a sculptor, who renewed the art of portraiture with realistic intentions.

Already in Hellenistic art, the innovation of the ideas introduced by Lysippus and others such as Praxiteles, Scopas or Apelles, led to an exasperation of the subjects and subjects to be sculpted.

In fact, statues, works, were made with subjects that, at times, could be considered unpleasant, because the idea that the author, the artist, is the one who triumphs with his courage, his talent and his talent had been assimilated by all. genius, to give beauty, vitality and fascination to the work and not the beauty of the subject to condition the artist in the production of the work.

An example that has come down to us is the Roman copy of a Greek statue from that period: an old and ugly lady, and despite this beautifully interpreted in its emotional and psychological aspect that the sculptor knew how to obtain from marble.

The teacher and founder of this revolutionary theory was Lysippus, who intuited how the beauty of a work of art is relative. There is an aesthetic beauty of the subject, but it is fundamentally the courage of the artist who represents and interprets it that gives it the character of an artistic work.

There is no better example than the sculpture of Hercules by Lysippus himself, depicted in the effort to express all the strength and all the energy locked up in his exasperated, enormous muscular mass, of a unique beauty and fascination that emanates from the plasticity and vivacity of the figure, in the athletic gesture.

Work

Athalante Hermes, National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

• Apoxiomenos - Roman copy in marble, h. 200 cm. - The original was bronze, 330 BC - 320 BC. C. - Pío-Clementino Museum, Vatican City.
• Eros holding the bow. There are several copies, one is at the Capitol Museum in Rome; another is at the British Museum.
• Hermes Landsdowne
• Hercules Farnesio, marble copy of Glycon Ateniese, of the original in bronze of h. 320 a. C., about 317 cm; originally it was in the hot springs of Caracalla, although the marble copy that is preserved is found in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
• Alexander with spear
• Hermes at rest - (Bronce, h. 105 cm., 330 BC - 320 BC, Naples, National Archaeological Museum.)
• Silene and Dioniso - (Vatican Museums.)
• Agias, known through a marble copy that was found and preserved in the Delfos Museum.
• Ares Ludovisi - (Rome, - Museo Nacional Romano - Palacio Altemps.)
• Socrates - (Busto in marble that portrays the Socrates philosopher and is attributed to Lisipo)
• called Horses of Saint Mark.
• The Oil ServerDresden and Munich.