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[German version] As a stone monument with or without inscription, the cippus was used in particular for territorial delineation. Made as a free-standing sculpture, it marked burial sites and was linked as reference to the dead to magical ideas and should not be confused with steles. The basic form was phallic, 30-50 cm high and it was represented in diverse ways especially in Etruria ( Etruscan Archaeology). Mostly onions, spheres or eggs top a pillar or cylinder. Special regional types in the 6th…

[German version] I. General remarks By the modern definition, a portrait is a rendering of an individual person's appearance. Typological and physiognomic characterizations serve this end. However, portraits recognizable as portraits only through their intention or by furnishing a name lack such characteristics. A typological portrait uses canonical features to indicate that its subject belongs to a certain group. A physiognomic portrait guarantees the identification of its subject by reproducing phy…

[German version] Hermai (ἕρμαι/ hérmai, ‘Hermes heads’), also hermádion (‘small Hermes’), schêma tetrágōnon, tetráglōchis, describes in Graeco-Roman art a special form of anthropoid freestanding sculpture. The herm consists of a pillar with a head, mostly with wooden lateral beam stumps instead of arms ( cheîres, cunei) and a male sexual organ attached at the front that is always ithyphallic in early herms. Double herms bear two heads turned away from each other. Three- and four-fold herms on one pillar are also to be found. In Arcadian he…

[German version] Sculptor from Naxos. He signed a grave stele from Orchomenus to be dated around 500-490 BC, which shows the deceased in a standing pose with his dog. Neudecker, Richard (Rome) Bibliography LSAG, 292 pl. 55 Lippold, 114 G. Richter, Archaic Greek Art, 1949, fig. 255.

[German version] (Σμῖλις/ Smîlis). Son of Euclides, a sculptor from Aegina, probably 6th cent. BC. Pausanias (5,17,1) saw S.' enthroned Horae in the temple of Hera at Olympia and gives an account of his cult image of Hera in Samos (7,4,4). A late source (Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis 17,4 Schoedel) ascribes to S. a cult image of Hera in Argos. Ancient tradition places him among the mythical artists of the period of Daedalus [1]; Plin. HN 36,90 ascribes architectural marvels to him. His name can be derived from  σμίλη ( smílē, ‘chisel’). Speculation on S.' technical inventions …

[German version] Bronze sculptor from Eleutherae, son and pupil of Myron. According to written tradition, he created a votive offering in Olympia with single combats from the Trojan War (Achilles and Memnon, among others) and an Argonaut group. Notes about a boy with a votive water vessel, a puer sufflans and a statue of the pancratiast Autolycus ( Pankration) have been too damaged to allow for identification. From the Athenian Acropolis an autographed plinth for equestrian statues is extant, which is dated historically to around 430-420 BC. Neudecker, Richard (Rome) Bibliography Over…

[German version] (also Boidas). Sculptor, son and pupil of  Lysippus. He worked in Byzantium around 300 BC. Pliny was aware of his fame but mentioned only the statue in Rome of a worshipper. For a long time the statue of the so-called ‘Praying boy’ from Rhodes in Berlin (PM) was erroneously identified with it. Neudecker, Richard (Rome) Bibliography R. Kabus-Preisshofen, Der ‘Betende Knabe’ in Berlin, in: AA 1988, 679-699 Overbeck, no.1516. 1521 (sources) B. S. Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture, 1, 1990, 227-228.

(Πραξιτέλης/ Praxitélēs). [German version] I. Biography Sculptor from Athens, active c. 370-320 BC. Since Timarchus and Cephisodotus [5] were P.’ sons, Cephisodotus [4] is assumed to be his father. By using later namesakes, a family of sculptors can be pieced together extending into the 1st cent. BC. However, this is just as controversial as the suppositions about the wealth and political influence of the family in the 4th cent. P.’ anecdotal biography and fame sound a note of caution with regard to c. 55 named works. Even so, the abundance of sources has led to many, often i…

[German version] The term introduced by J. Lange in 1892 as in the ‘law of frontality’ originally referred to a pre-Greek mode of portrayal, which, developed from the plane, displays all the essential individual forms paratactically in front view. Frontality was a label for an allegedly primitive form, which in evolutionary statements on style also seemed applicable to the early, pre-classical portrayal of people in Greek sculpture. In archaic statues frontality was supposedly expressed by mirror-…

[German version] Bronze sculptor in Athens. Preserved are his initials of the memorial statues for the Thracian kings Raskouporis (around 13 BC) and Kotys. Making statues of philosophers and athletes, an A. mentioned in Pliny is more likely to be a sculptor of the 4th cent. BC when taking a dated base into account. Neudecker, Richard (Rome) Bibliography Loewy, no.314-316 s. v. A., EAA Suppl. 61.

[German version] (Τεκταῖος; Tektaîos). Greek sculptor of the mid-6th century BC. Like his brother Angelion, T. is supposed to have been a pupil of Dipoenus and Scyllis and teacher of Calon [1] (Paus. 2,32,5). He and Angelion created a cult statue of Apollo on Delos; on the basis of  literary (Plut. Mor. 1136a; Paus. 9,35,3) and pictorial evidence of seals and reliefs Apollo was represented as a kouros with Charites on one hand and a Sphinx. A later account (Athenagoras, Legatio pro Christianis 17,4 Schoedel) of an Artemis by T. in Delos is of doubtful veracity. Neudecker, Richard (Rome) Bibl…

[German version] Compound hoards composed predominantly of ancient silver objects. As treasure these were hidden to protect them from theft or plundering (known as hoarding). As grave goods or thesauroi in sanctuaries or church treasures the treasure was collected and deposited in fact or ideally as an investment. In the private domain at all times and generally it acted simultaneously as both house contents and an investment. SH were predominantly composed of valuable eating and drinking utensils. Their importance to schol…

[German version] According to Pliny (HN 35,114), the name for caricature depictions in painting since Antiphilus [4] of Alexandria represented a certain Gryllus in that way. Originally these were dancers with grotesque physical proportions and contortions. As gryllographeîn and grylloeídēs later generally referred to ridiculously proportioned bodies, small-format free-standing sculpture representations can also be described as grylloi. Today the genre is no longer attributed to Alexandrian art only. To cover all animal caricatures and monstrous figur…

[German version] Crystalline limestone marble was the preferred stone material in Graeco-Roman sculpture. Marble was partially painted or gilded, otherwise impregnated with a coating of wax and oil ( gánōsis). Coloured marble was used to match the colour of clothing and hair; painted effects were achieved by adding metals to jewellery, weapons, hairpieces and eyes. The term akrolithon is used for elaborate mixed techniques. Stucco was often added to economize with material or time. The proportions of the blocks often called…

[German version] (Bρύαξις; Brýaxis) Sculptor of Carian descent. The traditional list of his works implies such a long period of creative activity, that even in antiquity, his works were divided between two homonymous artists. A signed relief base in Athens (NM) is dated to c. 350 BC. Also assigned to the same period is the collaboration of B. on the Mausoleum of  Halicarnassus (351 BC: death of Mausolus); however, there are also valid arguments for dating this after 333 BC. The allocation of sculpture fragments -- none of which were found in situ (today London, BM) -- to the north side…

[German version] Bronze sculptor from Sicyon, pupil of  Naucydes. By collaboration on the Delphic monument of the Spartans after Aegospotami (‘Lysander-anathema’, 405 BC,  Delphi), he is categorized under the so-called Polyclitus succession. Signature and base with traces of its support are preserved. Identifications of the four victors' statues by A., as seen by Pausanias in Olympia, are hypothetical. Neudecker, Richard (Rome) Bibliography D. Arnold, Die Polykletnachfolge, JDAI supplement 25, 1969, 84-85, 187-188 J. Marcadé, Recueil des signatures de sculpteurs gr…

[German version] (Ζηνᾶς/ Zēnâs). Sculptor's name on two Roman portrait busts from the early 2nd cent. AD. The addition to the signature of the father's name Alexander (IG XIV 1241) in the one case and of β in the other (IG XIV 1242) suggests two different sculptors. The name points to a connection with sculptors from Aphrodisias (Aphrodisias [1], sculptors' school). Neudecker, Richard (Rome) Bibliography Loewy, Nr. 383 a-b P. Moreno, s. v. Z., EAA 7, 1247 f.

[German version] Greek sculptor; ancient sources praise his horses and female figures, refer to him as the sculptor who made the transition to the classical period. He endowed his works with both ‘hardness’ and ‘grace’. He is linked with  Onatas,  Praxiteles and  Scopas. Many researchers have tried to solve the chronological contradictions by assuming that there were numerous sculptors of the same name with various surviving works ascribed to them. Since no work can be sufficiently proven to originate from C., the extent of his work is not known. From the famous C. originated a stat…

[German version] (Πασιτέλης; Pasitélēs). Sculptor, from Magna Graecia, Roman citizen probably from 89 BC and according to the sources active there at the time of Cn. Pompeius Magnus in the middle of the 1st cent. BC. Of P.'s work nothing has survived apart from one signature on the base of a statue, but his significance in the artistic expression of late Republican Rome seems to have been great, not in the least because of his treatise on opera nobilia (mirabilia) totius orbis ('noble (wonderful) works of the whole world'), which is not preserved. Since P. is mentioned as t…

[German version] Bronze sculptor from Cyprus in the 5th century BC. He was famous for his statue of a splanchnoptes (Plin. HN 34,19,81), a slave who blows on the fire to roast the entrails at a sacrifice. It was erected on the orders of Pericles [1] as a votive offering after his slave was injured during the building of a temple and miraculously healed. The work does not survive. Neudecker, Richard (Rome) Bibliography Overbeck, Nr. 868-869  P. Moreno, s. v. S., EAA 7, 1966, 535-536.