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Praxiteles between history and myth

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Jordan Fass
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« on: August 24, 2007, 11:49:28 pm »

Original works on display

Numismatic evidence - examples of which are displayed first - points to Praxiteles' practice of attributing human features to the Olympian gods. Aphrodite, Eros and Dionysus, in particular, were treated by the sculptor as symbols of the joy of life, with Aphrodite shedding her garments and Dionysus assuming the expression of a carefree, smiling youth.

A silver tetradrachm from Athens shows an owl on an amphora next to a bow-holding Apollo Lykeios. Apparently, a large number of statues made in Praxiteles' workshop were depicted on the reverse side of coins, which were issued by many Greek cities.

"Among the original works on display," said Kaltsas," are the statue bases that bear the signature of Praxiteles [Praxiteles made] and those of his father and sons, as well as three marble relief slabs [one depicting the music contest between Apollo and the satyr Marsyas, the rest representing the Three Muses] found in Mantineia, Arcadia."

Based on the writings of travel-writer Pausanias, who visited Mantineia in the 2nd century AD, most scholars agree that the three slabs together with a fourth one, which is now lost, formed the revetment of a base for the statues of Leto, Apollo and Artemis in the temple of Leto. One of the signed statue bases was discovered during excavation work for the Athens Metro and is the most recent piece associated to Praxiteles.

Among the few highlights which have been attributed to Praxiteles' circle, the much-publicised bronze statue of the Marathon Boy (found by a fisherman in the Marathon Sea) never made it to the Louvre, despite high demand as it had been characterised as 'immovable'. Affixed to its base, the statue, whose feet have partly been restored, has not ventured out of the National Archaeological Museum for decades now.

"Had it been in another museum, the Marathon Boy would not have joined the Athens show," said Kaltsas. "We were very cautious as we transferred it together with its base from one museum hall to another."

An ivory statuette of Apollo Lykeios from the Ancient Agora consisting of over 200 fragments was another risky transfer, Kaltsas noted. "It was not possible for the piece to be packaged, even more so to travel. We carried it by hand a day before the show's opening."

The Marathon Boy was not the only point of controversy between the National Archaeological Museum and the Louvre. An original bronze sculpture of Apollo Sauroktonos (translates to "The Lizard Slayer"), owned by the Cleveland Museum of Art in the US, never made it to the Louvre - or Athens - following Greece's demand to have it excluded from the show as the work's provenance and legal ownership were strongly disputed.

The Cleveland Museum of Art claims that it legally acquired the sculpture - since 1935 in the possession of German collector Ernst-Ulrich Walter - from the private collection of Lebanese brothers Hicham and Ali Aboutaam. But Italian authorities combating the looting of antiquities advocate that Polaroid pictures prove that the work was retrieved by fishermen from the Ionian Sea in the early 1990s.

If not for the world-famous marble group of Hermes with the Infant Dionysus - discovered in ancient Olympia in 1877, permanently exhibited at the Olympia Archaeological Museum and represented at Praxiteles' Athens show by a plaster cast (the only modern copy on display) - just one more sculpture, the marble head of Artemis Brauronia, is beyond any doubt attributed to Praxiteles.

The head together with one marble slab from Mantineia, two statue bases bearing Praxiteles' signature, the base of a triangular marble tripod in relief and an Aphrodite head were among the works that travelled to the Louvre prior to their Athens display.


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