Lysippus

Greek sculptor

• Born: c. 390 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Sicyon, Greece
• Died: c. 300 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Unknown

A sculptor whose career spanned virtually the entire fourth century b.c.e., Lysippus was not only a major transitional figure between classical and Hellenistic styles but the most renowned portraitist of the century as well.

Early Life

Though relatively little contemporary evidence survives about the man or his life, a considerable amount is known about the era in which Lysippus (li-SIHP-uhs) produced his art and about the key events and a number of the significant individuals that helped shape his career. Lysippus was born in Sicyon, in southern Greece. His early work is said to have reflected certain values and preoccupations of the fifth century b.c.e., when Greek civilization, led by Athens, defined for the West the essence of the classical in art. With the work of his later career, Lysippus’s artistic concerns show dramatic change, as he established himself as perhaps the most renowned portraitist of antiquity, defining forever in sculpture the essence of Alexander the Great. There is perhaps no other ancient artist whose style evolved more dramatically or whose work more clearly reflects the significant changes of an era.

Subsequent to the great wars with Persia (490-478 b.c.e.), the Greek city-states, though independent political units, fell generally under the influence of either Sparta or Athens. These two city-states had achieved their ascendancy chiefly by force of arms; Sparta had been the dominant military power in Greece since at least the sixth century b.c.e., and Athens had converted an alliance of coastal and island states in the early fifth century b.c.e. into a naval empire. Although it eventually fell to Sparta in 404, Athens for the last half of the fifth century was the cultural and intellectual center of all Greece. Here was defined the classical in the arts, notably in architecture (chiefly by the Parthenon) and in sculpture.

The fourth century witnessed in its early decades a series of attempts by different city-states to repeat the fifth century achievements of Athens and Sparta. Internally divided and weakened by constant warfare, the city-states by the mid-fourth century began to be pressured by the ambitions of outsiders, including Mausalus, dynast of Caria in Asia Minor, Jason of Pherae in Thessaly, and finally, Philip of Macedonia. Abruptly and decisively, the uncertainties of the mid-fourth century Greek world were brought to an end in 338, when Philip and his eighteen-year-old son, Alexander, overwhelmed a Greek allied army at Chaeronea in central Greece. With defeat, the states of Greece were obliged to follow the lead of Macedonia, and during the next sixteen years stood, cowed and helpless, as Alexander succeeded his father and marched east, conquering by the time of his death in 323 most of the then-known world. By the time of his death, Alexander had been formally acknowledged a god by the Greeks, though his kingdom quickly suffered irreparable division at the hands of his successors. All of this Lysippus witnessed, from the attempts early in the century to replicate the achievements of the classical era to the partitioning of Alexander’s empire in the last decades of the century. What Lysippus witnessed is reflected in his art.

Life’s Work

While Lysippus is said to have been especially prolific during the course of his long career—it is claimed that he produced as many as fifteen hundred pieces—none of his works is known in fact to have survived, a consequence in part of his having worked primarily in bronze. What has survived is written testimony about a number of his more important pieces—mainly in the work of the first century c.e. Roman encyclopedist Pliny the Elder —and some stone copies, which in subject matter and manner of execution seem consistent with what is known of Lysippus’s work.

Lysippus’s style early in his career is said to have been influenced by the work of Polyclitus, also a southern Greek and unquestionably one of the most important sculptors of the fifth century b.c.e. Polyclitus in his sculpture is said to have sought to express a sense of the good and the beautiful; that is, he attempted to represent in sculpture abstract values. It was Polyclitus’s belief that there existed an underlying order in the universe and that this order could be understood in terms of mathematical ratios, much as the order of music can be understood. Polyclitus wrote a treatise (now lost) detailing his views and executed a piece that was to embody them, titled the Doryphorus (c. 450-440 b.c.e.; Spear Bearer). This statue of an athlete standing, poised with spear held over his left shoulder, of which only stone copies survive, was so sculpted that each element stood in what Polyclitus judged to be a perfect ratio to every other element. Thus it possessed a perfect order and expressed Polyclitus’s ideal of the good and the beautiful. Such preoccupation with form, with principles of organization, and with effecting a tension between the abstract and the concrete, the universal and the individual, became central characteristics of fifth century Greek classical style.

As he matured, Lysippus moved away from conformity to the classical norms of Polyclitus. Though no copies of his earlier works survive, those copies that survive of works from the middle part of his career mark a turning from the abstract and universal toward a more explicit expression of the individual, the concrete, and the momentary. Not only is the statue of the athlete scraping himself with a strigil (called the Apoxyomenos and dated c. 330) executed in proportions more elongated (and thus visually more realistic) than those of the Doryphorus, but the statue is also fully three-dimensional: The arms are outstretched and actually intrude into the viewer’s space and thus make more immediate the relationship between figure and viewer. Indeed, the action of the figure, cleansing after exercise, is intimate and private. Here, then, in the uncertainty of the mid-fourth century, the confidence that had been expressed by classical form gives way to the exploration of the momentary and transient.

Exploration of the individual in sculpture is effected most naturally through portraiture. In his later career, Lysippus became the master of this medium. An example that has survived, though again only in stone copies, is the statue of the seated Socrates. There is nothing in this statue to suggest the idealization of the human form. The philosopher, balding, eyes bulging, with satyrlike features and an exposed upper torso exhibiting the physical softening brought on by old age, sits gazing ahead in reflection or in mid-dialogue. The effect of realism is genuine and remarkable, especially because Socrates had been tried and executed in Athens in 399 b.c.e. and thus would never have been seen by Lysippus. As illustrated by this statue, Lysippus’s portraiture sought to capture the essence of the subject. Like Polyclitus, Lysippus explored beneath the surface of things, but whereas Polyclitus sought with his art to define the ideal, Lysippus sought to define the real.

Such became the reputation of Lysippus that he was retained by the Macedonian court and later in his career served as the official sculptor of Alexander the Great. So prized was Lysippus’s ability to capture Alexander’s character that the young Macedonian king is alleged to have allowed no one else to render a likeness of him. Again, stone copies constitute the only visual evidence, but these are suggestive. Consistently in these copies, Alexander’s head is turned to the side, tilted slightly upward, eyes deep-set and gazing, and hair folded back in waves. The essence captured is of a man in search, looking longingly beyond the present—an attitude attributed to Alexander by the historian Arrian. Lysippus would have seen Alexander, and thus there is reason to believe the likeness truer to the person than is the portrait of Socrates. Confirmation comes from a story told by the ancient biographer Plutarch, who notes that Alexander’s former rival and successor, Cassander, while walking in the sanctuary at Delphi, encountered a statue of Alexander, presumably by Lysippus, and was seized by a shuddering and trembling from which he barely recovered.

The realism of Lysippus’s work was heightened, so it seems, by the attention he devoted to detail. He was recognized throughout his career as an especially skilled craftsman. In fact, Pliny notes that Lysippus was said to have been a student of no one but originally to have been a coppersmith. Other of his works known from copies are the Agias of Pharsalus, the copy of which is nearly contemporary with the original; a series of works on Heracles, who, like Alexander, attained the status of a divinity as a consequence of his heroic exploits; as well as depictions of a satyr; the god Eros; and Kairos (Fortune) made a divinity. Of Lysippus’s other works, only written testimony survives.

Significance

With the death of Alexander the Great in 323 b.c.e., a new era dawned in the eastern Mediterranean region. Alexander’s kingdom, lacking a designated heir, quickly was divided among his generals and companions into a series of rival monarchies and remained so until absorbed by Rome in the second century b.c.e. With the defeat at Chaeronea, the city-states of Greece had ceased to exercise internationally significant political or military influence. Greek culture, on the other hand, during this so-called Hellenistic era was suffused throughout the entire Mediterranean. Much that was characteristic of Hellenistic visual art had been anticipated by Lysippus in the fourth century. In brief, Hellenistic sculpture explored the unique and the individual; it investigated internal emotional states and sought to extend the appreciation of form beyond the canons of the classical. Beyond the particular achievements of his own career, Lysippus may also be regarded as one of the significant transitional figures in the history of art.

Bibliography

Beazley, J. D., and Bernard Ashmole. Greek Sculpture and Painting to the End of the Hellenistic Period. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1966. This is a standard, scholarly handbook on Greek sculpture and painting from the early archaic period to the Hellenistic era. The text is concise; the illustrations are numerous and of excellent quality. There is a separate chapter on the sculpture of the fourth century.

Boardman, John. Greek Art. 4th ed. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996. The volume surveys systematically and with numerous illustrations the arts of Greece, major and minor, from the post-Mycenaean through the Hellenistic eras. Lysippus is examined in two chapters, one on classical sculpture and architecture, the other on Hellenistic art.

Carpenter, Rhys. Greek Sculpture: A Critical Review. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960. Although a survey of sculpture from the archaic to the Hellenistic eras, the work also focuses on the evolution of style in sculpture. Consequently, it makes no claim to completeness. The plates are excellent, though there are none of Lysippus’s work.

Hammond, N. G. L. A History of Greece to 322 B.C. 3d ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. An excellent standard survey, detailed and clearly written, of ancient Greek history: political, military, and cultural. Lysippus is noted in a chapter on the intellectual background of the fourth century.

Johnson, Franklin P. Lysippos. 1927. Reprint. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. This remains among the most complete works on Lysippus available, though it is somewhat dated. The appendix is especially valuable, because it preserves all the ancient notices on Lysippus with English translations. Includes numerous plates.

Pliny the Elder. The Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art. Translated by K. Jex-Blake. Chicago: Ares, 1992. Pliny is the principal ancient source on Lysippus.

Pollitt, J. J. Art and Experience in Classical Greece. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. This is an excellent analysis of Greek classical art, chiefly sculpture and architecture, and the intellectual and cultural context in which it was produced. Lysippus is examined in some detail. The plates are numerous and of a high quality.

Richter, Gisela Marie Augusta. The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks. 4th ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970. This remains the standard volume on Greek sculpture from the early archaic through the late Hellenistic eras. As the title suggests, there are two main sections, one on sculpture, the other on known sculptors, including Lysippus. Includes three hundred pages of plates.