portraiture of the contemporary, rather than idealized character studies of the dead, was another gift of the fourth century to
western art.
Praxiteles was an Athenian, but Scopas was of Paros, the marble island, and Lysippus of Sicyon. Greece no longer had a
dominant school or showplace. The masterpieces of the fourth-century artists are lost to us, and even the Praxitelean
Hermes at Olympia no better than an excellent copy. We have to judge minor arts (minor in size only), or works
commissioned for the barbarians such as the tomb of Mausolus in Caria with its colossal figures and relief friezes, or in
areas where conditions of burial have ensured survival, as in Philip II's tomb at Vergina in Macedonia. The last provides the
clue to the new patronage which dictated the future of Greek art.
Patronage, Private and Public
In Egypt and the East most works of art were commissioned for temples, palaces, or royal tombs. Decorative arts for the
pleasure of most of the populace were thinly spread, though there was some elegant furnishing in the Levant, and engraved
seals or scarabs and similar trinkets were fairly common (plate facing p. 279). In Greece there was no palace society in our
period, but there were many state or religious projects to occupy the artist. A very high proportion of what survives was
designed for the use of a wide spectrum of society. Many painted vases served the symposion, the drinking-party feast
which played as important a social role as it did an entertaining or nourishing one. Others were used in ritual, often
domestic, or were destined fox dedication or grave furnishing. Most, in fact, survive thanks to the brisk export trade to
Etruria and to Etruscan burial customs which guaranteed the preservation of so many intact. A private person could
commission a dedication, paying for it with a tithe from some successful transaction or as a thanks-offering for some
benefits thought to be divinely bestowed. If not a painted vase, there could be a bronze vessel of types which also served as
prizes and might be dedicated after success in games or in the theatre. For poorer folk clay or wooden figures sufficed. At
best a statue or group might be commissioned, like the athlete statues at Olympia, and a statue or relief for a grave
monument.