his frail old age. Most remarkable of all, the hunter himself looks out
at the viewer, inviting sympathy and creating an emotional bridge
between the spectator and the artwork inconceivable in the art of the
High Classical period.
LYSIPPOSThe third great Late Classical sculptor,Lysippos of
Sikyon,won such renown that Alexander the Great selected him to
create his official portrait. (Alexander could afford to employ the
best. The Macedonian kingdom enjoyed vast wealth. King Philip
hired the leading thinker of his age, Aristotle, as the young Alexan-
der’s tutor.) Lysippos introduced a new canon of proportions in
which the bodies were more slender than those of Polykleitos—
whose own canon continued to exert enormous influence—and the
heads roughly one-eighth the height of the body rather than one-
seventh, as in the previous century. The new proportions are appar-
ent in one of Lysippos’s most famous works, a bronze statue of an
apoxyomenos (an athlete scraping oil from his body after exercising),
known, as usual, only from Roman copies in marble (FIG. 5-65). A
comparison with Polykleitos’s Doryphoros (FIG. 5-40) reveals more
than a change in physique. A nervous energy, lacking in the balanced
form of the Doryphoros,runs through Lysippos’s Apoxyomenos.The
strigil(scraper) is about to reach the end of the right arm, and at any
moment the athlete will switch it to the other hand so that he can
scrape his left arm. At the same time, he will shift his weight and
reverse the positions of his legs. Lysippos also began to break down
the dominance of the frontal view in statuary and encouraged the
observer to look at his athlete from multiple angles. Because Lysip-
pos represented the athlete with his right arm boldly thrust forward,
the figure breaks out of the shallow rectangular box that defined the
boundaries of earlier statues. To comprehend the action, the ob-
server must move to the side and view Lysippos’s work at a three-
quarter angle or in full profile.
To grasp the full meaning of another work of Lysippos, a colos-
sal statue (FIG. 5-66) depicting a weary Herakles, the viewer must
walk around it. Once again, the original is lost. The most impressive
of the surviving marble copies is nearly twice life-size and was exhib-
ited in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Like the marble copy of
Polykleitos’s Doryphoros (FIG. 5-40) from the Roman palaestra at5-65Lysippos,
Apoxyomenos
(Scraper). Roman
marble copy of a
bronze original of
ca. 330 bce, 6 9 high.
Musei Vaticani,
Rome.
Lysippos introduced
a new canon of
proportions and a
nervous energy to
his statues. He also
broke down the
dominance of the
frontal view and
encouraged viewing
his statues from
multiple angles.5-66Lysippos,Weary Herakles (Farnese Herakles). Roman marble
copy from Rome, Italy, signed by Glykon of Athens,of a bronze
original of ca. 320 bce, 10 5 high. Museo Archeologico Nazionale,
Naples.
Lysippos’s portrayal of Herakles after the hero obtained the golden
apples of the Hesperides ironically shows the mythological strong
man as so weary that he must lean on his club for support.1 ft.1 ft.Late Classical Period 139