An Athenian of the fourth century
Pliny the Elder, who arranged Greek sculptors by Olympiads, places Praxiteles in the 104th, the years 364-361 BCE, in the Late Classical period. His son Kephisodotos, Pliny says, inherited his talent and made a celebrated group of wrestlers at Pergamon. Pliny also notes that Praxiteles worked in bronze, but excelled most in marble and owed his fame to it.
The Aphrodite of Knidos
His most famous work had a story attached from the start. Praxiteles made two statues of Aphrodite and offered both for sale. The people of Kos, who had first choice, took the draped one, for reasons of propriety. The people of Knidos bought the nude one, and it made their city famous. People sailed to Knidos just to see it; later King Nicomedes offered to pay off the city’s whole public debt in exchange for it, and the Knidians refused. The statue stood in a small temple open on all sides, so it could be seen from every angle.
The statue is lost, but Roman copies preserve the type, and its importance is clear. Until then, Greek sculptors had shown clothed any female figure, goddess or mortal. Praxiteles broke one of the most stubborn conventions in Greek art. Pliny does mention a naked Venus by Skopas that was earlier still, but it was the Knidian statue that became famous, and the slender proportions and distinctive contrapposto of his Aphrodite became hallmarks of fourth-century sculpture.
Other works
Pliny lists many more. In marble, there was an Eros at Thespiai that drew visitors to the town and later stood in Rome, and another Eros at Parium on the Propontis, said to be as fine as the Knidian Aphrodite. In bronze, Praxiteles made, among others, a celebrated satyr, a figure of Drunkenness and a young Apollo aiming an arrow at a lizard creeping towards him, known as the Sauroktonos, “lizard-killer”. Pliny also mentions a pair of statues with opposite emotions, a weeping matron and a laughing courtesan.
Some well-known Roman statues are attributed to him by modern scholars. The Apollo Lykeios in the Metropolitan Museum, a god resting with his right arm on his head, copies a famous bronze of the mid-fourth century BCE often attributed to Praxiteles; the attribution is not certain.
The Hermes of Olympia
One marble may be an original. The travel writer Pausanias saw in the temple of Hera at Olympia “a marble Hermes carrying the baby Dionysus, a work of Praxiteles”. In 1877 excavators found a statue of exactly that subject in the ruins of the Heraion, and it is now in the museum at Olympia. Whether it is by Praxiteles himself is still debated.
Why he matters
Praxiteles did not invent the ideal body; Polykleitos and Pheidias had defined it a century earlier. What he changed was its mood. His gods rest, take aim at a lizard or carry a baby, and his Aphrodite is nude. The nude Aphrodite became one of the most popular images of the Hellenistic age that followed.
Where to see his work
The Hermes carrying the infant Dionysos is in the Archaeological Museum of Olympia. Roman copies of the Knidian Aphrodite are in many museums, among them the Vatican Museums and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which also has the Apollo Lykeios. Check opening times before you go.
Sources
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 34.50, 34.69-70 and 36.20-24, trans. J. Bostock and H. T. Riley (Perseus Digital Library).
- Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.17.3, trans. W. H. S. Jones (Perseus Digital Library).
- C. Hemingway and S. Hemingway, “The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480-323 B.C.)”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2008).
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection records 52.11.5 and 03.12.15.
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