Praxiteles (440-330 BCE)Son of the sculptor Cephisodotos, Praxiteles was to be the most popular artists in the ancient world. Many of his sculpturs were copied: and his work is mainly known through ancient descriptions and Roman marble copies.One of his original statues, the Hermes statue in Olympia, with the god carrying a young Dionysos as a baby on his arm, has survived. Apollo, who used to be pictured as a serious and harsh avenger, was portraited as a youngster. For example, his statue Apollo Sauroktonos, the Lizardkiller, has the a young mans body, soft and beautiful. His statues were made to be watched from all angles.
Reproduction Statue Available
 life-sized ancient bronze sculpture of "Apollo Sauroktonos," sculpted by Praxiteles, one of the most influential Greek artists of the Classical period. The piece, measuring 150 centimeters tall, is of a young man, Apollo, raising his left hand, pointing an arrow aimed at a lizard. Although, the left hand and lizard are detached from the sculpture, these pieces do exist. David G. Mitten of Harvard University Art Museums describes it as, "... by far the most important work of Classical sculpture to come to light and be acquired by a North American art museum since World War II." "This magnificent sculpture has several stylistic and technical features that we associate with monumental Classical Greek bronzes, and ancient testimony attributing to Praxiteles an 'Apollo Sauroktono' in bronze greatly adds to the work's importance," says Michael Bennett, the museum's curator of Greek and Roman Art. Only two known life-size marble copies of the "Apollo Sauroktonos" exist, one at the Louvre and the other at the Vatican. Original in the Louvre.
 The sculptor began to create figures that interacted with their environment in all three dimensions: these figures could be viewed from any angle with equal effectiveness.
|
