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Lysippos
Head of Heracles wearing a kausia; Roman marble copy (135–150 CE) of Greek original (330–310 BC) attributed to Lysippos. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain.
Born	c. 390 BC Sicyon, Greece
Died	c. 300 BC (aged around 90) Sicyon, Greece
Occupation	sculptor
Relatives	Lysistratus (brother)

Lysippos (/laɪˈsɪpɒs/; Greek: Λύσιππος)^[1] 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. Problems confront the study of Lysippos because of the difficulty in identifying his style in the copies which survive. Not only did he have a large workshop and many disciples in his immediate circle,^[2] but there is understood to have been a market for replicas of his work, supplied from outside his circle, both in his lifetime and later in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.^[3] The Victorious Youth or Getty bronze, which resurfaced around 1972, has been associated with him.

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[MUSIC PLAYING] DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: In ancient Greece, people did not use soap and water to wash, they used oil. And we're seeing a sculpture called the "Scraper" or the "Apoxyomenos" by Lysippos, which shows just that. This is an athlete whose body is now covered with perspiration and dust. And what he's doing is he's washing himself, first by covering his body with oil, and then using a strigil to scrape all the grime off with the oil. DR. BETH HARRIS: Lysippos was one of the most famous sculptors from the fourth century BCE. But, of course, we're not looking at the actual work by Lysippos of the Apoxyomenos. We're looking at an ancient Roman copy of marble of what was a Greek bronze original. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: But even though it's a copy, it can give us a tremendous amount of information. Lysippos is known for having changed the proportional canon that we associate with the High Classical tradition in Greece. This is the fourth century, and what Lysippos has done is to elongate the body and to reduce the size of the head. DR. BETH HARRIS: And it's very obvious, when you compare this with a fifth-century sculpture of the Classical period by Polycleitus, who was the sculptor who established that canon. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: In the Doryphoros, if you look at Polycleitus' sculpture, and you measure the size of the head, the length of the body is seven heads tall. But Lysippos has added a full head's worth of length. So, if you were to measure this, this is eight head lengths tall. And because the head is smaller, and the body is taller, it gives us a sense of, as we look up at this sculpture on a podium, that the figure is even taller than he is. DR. BETH HARRIS: And Lysippos has done some other view things. He's reached the figure's arm into space, where the figure is scraping the oil from his body. And by doing that, he breaks out of the frontal orientation of Classical sculpture and makes us want to move around the figure so can see it from different directions. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. There is, perhaps, a fairly ideal position to view this sculpture from, his front left. But, nevertheless, I can't see his chest. And so I do want to move around. Now, this was a bronze originally. So that tree trunk was not there in the original sculpture. It wasn't necessary. Bronze has enough tensile strength, so you don't need that. And you can see that there's actually a fragment of a couple of bridges that were meant to first support the marble arms, which have broken and then been repaired. But, nevertheless, even in the original bronze, I would have wanted to walk around this. DR. BETH HARRIS: No question. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: But even though Lysippos is introducing these very new innovations-- again, this change of the proportion of the body, this breaking of the frontal plane of the sculpture-- he's still very much embedded in the great Greek tradition of representing the nude athlete, this idealized human body. DR. BETH HARRIS: And, of course, Lysippos' figure stands in contrapposto, which was invented by the Greeks in the Classical period. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: It's such a gorgeous example of contrapposto, and of the body as a whole. Look at the musculature. We really feel the power of this athlete, even though it's presumably now after his exercises. DR. BETH HARRIS: From sources, we hear that Lysippos was associated with Alexander the Great, the great military leader that conquered Greece and spread Greek ideas throughout the Mediterranean. And he's said to have sculpted Alexander. Too bad none of those sculptures survive. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: We're seeing the sculpture in the Vatican, because antiquities were treasured by Renaissance popes, and subsequently. But, of course, we're looking at a structure that is pagan, and pagan in its celebration of human achievement, in human beauty, as opposed to the spiritual. But it is striking to see this sculpture in such a religious institution. DR. BETH HARRIS: And so many ancient Greek and Roman sculptures all around us here in the Vatican museum. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: One last detail, which is the room in which the sculpture is displayed apparently was a room that Leonardo da Vinci occupied briefly. Leonardo, of course, this stepping stone back to this reverence for the body, even within the Catholic tradition. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Biography

Born at Sicyon around 390 BC, Lysippos was a worker in bronze in his youth. He taught himself the art of sculpture, later becoming head of the school of Argos and Sicyon. According to Pliny, he produced more than 1,500 works, all of them in bronze. Commentators noted his grace and elegance, and the symmetria, or coherent balance, of his figures, which were leaner than the ideal represented by Polykleitos and with proportionately smaller heads, giving them the impression of greater height. He was famous for his attention to the details of eyelids and toenails.

His pupil, Chares of Lindos, constructed the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. As this statue does not exist today, debate continues as to whether its sections were cast in bronze or hammered of sheet bronze.

*Hermes of Atalante*, a Roman marble copy of a lost bronze attributed to Lysippos (National Archaeological Museum of Athens)

Career and legacy

Lysippos was successor in contemporary repute to the famous sculptor Polykleitos. Among the works attributed to him are the so-called Horses of Saint Mark, Eros Stringing the Bow (of which various copies exist, the best in the British Museum), Agias (known through the marble copy found and preserved in Delphi), the similar Oil Pourer (Dresden and Munich), the Farnese Hercules (which was originally placed in the Baths of Caracalla, although the surviving marble copy lies in the Naples National Archaeological Museum) and Apoxyomenos (or The Scraper, known from a Roman marble copy in the Vatican Museums). Lysippos was also famous for his bronze colossal sculptures of Zeus, 17 metres tall, and Herakles, seven meters seated, both from the city of Taras. The only remaining version of one such statue is a Roman copy of The Weary Herakles (Farnese Hercules), by Glykon, ^[4] with heavy musculature typical of early third century Rome.

Canon of Lysippos

Lysippos developed a more gracile style than his predecessor Polykleitos and this has become known as the Canon of Lysippos.^[5] In his Historia Naturalis, Pliny the elder wrote that Lysippos introduced a new canon into art: capita minora faciendo quam antiqui, corpora graciliora siccioraque, per qum proceritas signorum major videretur,^[6]^[a] signifying "a canon of bodily proportions essentially different from that of Polykleitos".^[8] Lysippos is credited with having established the 'eight heads high' canon of body proportions.^[9]

Lysippos and Alexander

During his lifetime, Lysippos was personal sculptor to Alexander the Great; indeed, he was the only artist whom the conqueror saw fit to represent him.^[10] An epigram by Posidippus, previously only known from the Anthology of Planudes (APl 119), but also found on the recently discovered Milan Papyrus (65 Austin-Bastianini), takes as its inspiration a bronze portrait of Alexander:

Lysippus, sculptor of Sicyon, bold hand,
cunning craftsman, fire is in the glance of the bronze,
which you made in the form of Alexander. In no way can one blame
the Persians: cattle may be forgiven for flying before a lion.^[11]

And similarly, an epigram by Asclepiades (APl 120):

Lysippus modelled Alexander's daring and his whole form.
How great is the power of this bronze! The brazen king
seems to be gazing at Zeus and about to say:
"I set Earth under my feet; thyself, Zeus, possess Olympus."^[12]

Lysippos has been credited with the stock representation of an inspired, godlike Alexander with tousled hair and lips parted, looking upward^[13] in what came to be known as the 'Lysippean gaze'. One fine example, an early Imperial Roman copy found at Tivoli, is conserved at the Louvre.

The Victorious Youth

In 1972, the Victorious Youth, Getty Bronze, or Atleta di Fano to Italians, was discovered and at the urging of Paul Getty, bought by the Getty Museum. The bronze was pulled out of the sea and restored. Because of the amount of corrosion and the thick layer of incrustation that coated the statue when it was found, it can be assumed that it was beneath the water for centuries. This is less than surprising, as most of the classical bronze statues archeologists have found have been fished out of the Mediterranean Sea. It was not uncommon for a shipwreck to occur with something as precious as a sculpture on board. Without any way to find or retrieve them, these pieces were left to sit at the bottom of the ocean for centuries. The damaging corrosion can be removed by cleaning the surfaces mechanically with a scalpel.^[15]

The Getty Bronze is believed by some to be Lysippos's work, or at least a copy, because the detail on it is consistent with his style of work and his canon of proportions. Lysippos's work is described by ancient sources as naturalistic with slender and often lengthened proportions, often with exaggerated facial features.^[16] Those depicted in the works of Lysippos had smaller heads than those of his mentor Polykleitos because he used a one to eight scale for the head and the total height of the body.^[17]

Notes

^ 'he made the heads of his statues smaller than the ancients, and defined the hair especially, making the bodies more slender and sinewy by which the height of the figure seemed greater'^[7]

^ Latinized Lysippus (/laɪˈsɪpəs/) is less used today, even in English.
^ His son Euthyktates worked in his style, according to Pliny, and, in the next generation, Tysikrates produced sculpture scarcely to be distinguished from his. (Natural History xxxiv. 61-67).
^ The rediscovered Agias, dedicated by Daochos at Delphi, was a contemporary marble copy of a bronze. The original was at Farsala in Thessaly.
^ Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History: Ancient Art. Prentice Hall, 2011.
^ Charles Waldstein, PhD. (December 17, 1879). Praxiteles and the Hermes with the Dionysos-child from the Heraion in Olympia (PDF). p. 18. The canon of Polykleitos was heavy and square, his statues were quadrata signa, the canon of Lysippos was more slim, less fleshy
^ Pliny the Elder. "XXXIV 65". Historia Naturalis. cited in Waldstein (1879)
^ George Redford, FRCS. "Lysippos and Macedonian Art". A manual of ancient sculpture: Egyptian–Assyrian–Greek–Roman (PDF). p. 193.
^ Walter Woodburn Hyde (1921). Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art. Washington: the Carnegie Institution of Washington. p. 136.
^ "Hercules: The influence of works by Lysippos". Paris: The Louvre. Retrieved 4 October 2020. In the fourth century BCE, Lysippos drew up a canon of proportions for a more elongated figure that that defined by Polykleitos in the previous century. According to Lysippos, the height of the head should be one-eighth the height of the body, and not one-seventh, as Polykleitos recommended.
^ Plutarch, Life of Alexander, iv
^ Translation taken from C. Austin and G. Bastianini, Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt omnia, Milan 2002, p. 89.
^ Translation taken from W.R. Paton's Loeb edition, The Greek Anthology V, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1918, p. 227.
^ The Search for Alexander, a 1976 exhibition catalogue, illustrates several examples and traces the development of the type.
^ Frel, Jiří (1982). The Getty Bronze. California: The J Paul Getty Museum. p. 1. ISBN 0-89236-039-9.
^ Frel, Jiří (1982). The Getty Bronze. California: The J Paul Getty Museum. pp. 7–29. ISBN 0-89236-039-9.
^ "Lysippos: Ancient Greek Sculptor, Biography". www.visual-arts-cork.com. Retrieved 2015-11-19.
^ "Hercules". louvre.fr. Retrieved 4 October 2020. According to Lysippos, the height of the head should be one-eighth the height of the body, and not one-seventh, as Polykleitos recommended.

References

A. F. Stewart, "Lysippan Studies" 2. Agias and Oilpourer" American Journal of Archaeology 82.3 (Summer 1978), pp. 301–313.

Lysippos

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