Scops
Scopas (Greek: Σκόπας, Skópas) (c. 380–330 BCE) was a famous classical Greek sculptor and architect of the 4th century BCE. C. Praxiteles, Lysippus and Scopas are the three great representative sculptors of the second phase of classicism.
Biography
He was born on the island of Paros, in the Cyclades. He worked the marble from the famous quarries of his native island. Scopas was very active in the period from 395 B.C. C. to 350 B.C. C. and worked almost exclusively in Greece. He intervened in the Halicarnassus mausoleum. He was in charge of the reconstruction of the Temple of Athena Alea in Tegea (Arcadia), destroyed by fire in 395 BC. C. Pausanias estimates that the building "exceeds by far all the temples of the Peloponnese for its arrangement and in particular for its size" (VIII, 45, 4). Among the mythological themes addressed are the hunt for the Calydonian boar (facade pediment) and Achilles' fight against Telephos (rear pediment). He also intervened in the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. He collaborated with Praxiteles, Leocares, Briaxis and Timoteo.
Style and influence
He is considered an artist to be included among the greats of sculpture, an innovator and a teacher. According to historians of ancient Greek sculpture, Scopas was the inventor of the pathetic style, so called from pathos (feeling), well defined by the mournful expression with the one that was usual to characterize the face of the statues themselves. His works are very similar, in the construction of the compositions, to the style of Phidias, although they seem very rigorous in form, in which the recourse to Polykleitos is noticeable.
Unlike Phidias, however, Scopas's sculpture lacks the interpretive nature of human identity but is compensated by a particular feeling of pain, a tragedy, a pathos of living the condition human with all the drama of pain and suffering. Scopas exalts the pathetic expression, the anguish, the tragic feeling, with characteristic half-open mouths, bodies that move in a spiral and sunken eyes. ajar.
He was surely the first sculptor of the human mind, almost a sculptor-psychologist, an artist capable of stealing the feelings, anguish, and expression of his subjects in order to infuse them into marble. He was not content with representing the exterior of the subject but he wanted at all costs to enter the folds of the soul and discover all the hidden secrets: pain, sadness, disappointment. The example of the Maenad illuminates and is tragic at the same time; the expressiveness of the woman's face, the movement of her, the drama of her features, is contagious and disturbing and moving at the same time.
Another work that is particularly significant of Scopas' style and emotional interpretation of sculpture is the head of Heracles, which once formed part of the west pediment of the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea. Also in this case you can notice the lack of refinement of the work, but in it the reflection of feeling, soul, pathos is lived intensely. The somatic features are slightly deformed, but with a great expressive charge, in the position of the half-open mouth: almost a muffled cry, with the marks of the wrinkles that arch the forehead, the eyes and the look, almost imploring, as if waiting., turned towards the sky, the depth of the gaze further accentuated by the empty orbits that contrast with the excessive protuberance of the eyebrows.
While in Phidias everything is built with his own precise spatial architecture, which never leaves gaps, Scopas fights with space, contrasts it, defeats it, imposes itself on it by force, taming it and shaping it into his own artistic genius. This particular interpretation is exemplified in the dancing Maenad (bacchante), where everything is movement, projection, dynamism, search for infinity: basically, a true leap into the future. Even in less revolutionary works, such as the statue of Pothos, where movement is less accentuated, it is the play of light, the chiaroscuro, that give life to a sensation of static movement.
Another characteristic of Escopas is not polishing his works, not finishing them off, not refining them. His sculptures, which have reached the present day only through Roman copies from the imperial era, always maintained strong contrasts of light and shadow. It can be considered that they are the predecessors of Michelangelo's prisoners where life, the soul of the works, already lives inside the block of marble; even barely sketched, the figure, the character, the vitality of the work comes out in all its energy, its vitality.
He influenced Lysippus and Hellenistic sculpture with his representations of Dionysian characteristics (passion, movement and violence).
Works
He made a part of the mausoleum of Halicarnassus (today Budrum), built around 350 B.C. C., taking care in particular of the bas-reliefs and sculpting the east side of the structure.
He also directs the tasks for the construction of the new building of the Temple of Athena Alea in Tegea, in Arcadia, where he worked personally and in particular on the pediments that are united today. Various buildings that were part of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods of Samothrace are attributed to him.
He is attributed:
- One Menade Furiosato which many epigrams of the Greek anthology pay tribute;
- Meleagro of the Vatican;
- statues of Asclepius and Hygiene in the temple of Asclepius in Gortina, in Arcadia;
- a statue of Aphrodite Pandemos in Elis;
- a statue of Hécate in Argos;
- two Eriniahs of the temple of the Augustas Diosas in Athens;
- a Heracles in Sition;
- a Apollo in Ramnunte, which will be found in the temple of Apollo in the Palatine, in Rome, sung by Propercio (II, 31).
Works by Escopas are exhibited in the following museums:
- British Museum of London (low reliefs)
- National Archaeological Museum of Athens (Fragments of the Athena Alea temple in Tegea)
- The celebrated Ares Ludovisi at the Palazzo Altemps, Rome
- A statue of Pothos restored as Apollo with host in the Capitoline Museums, Rome
- A statue of Meleagro at the Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gallery
Meleagro. Marble, Roman copy of the imperial era, according to an original Greek from the fourth century B.C., possibly Escopas. Pio-Clementino Museum, Rome.
Statue of Pothos, restored as Apolo kitharoidos (tocador de citara). Marble, Roman copy of an original Greek Escopas, about 300 B.C. Col. Albani, Capitoline Museums, Palazzo Nuovo, Rome.
Pothos, god of longing, longing and desire. Marble, Roman copy of the 1st century according to a Greek original of the 4th century BC that was in the temple of Aphrodite in Megara. Louvre Museum, Paris, France.
