Polyclitus

, Polycleitus, Polycletus

5th-century bc. Greek sculptor, noted particularly for his idealized bronze sculptures of the male nude, such as the Doryphoros

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Polyclitus

(also Polyclitus of Argos; Polycleitus), ancient Greek sculptor and art theorist of the late fifth century B.C.

Polyclitus was one of the leading representatives of high classicism. His statues, executed mainly in bronze, have been lost and are known only from copies and from descriptions by writers of antiquity. Two fragments have been preserved from the artist’s canon of proportions. Influenced by Pythagoreanism, Polyclitus sought to substantiate and put into practice the law of ideal proportions, which he expressed as the proportions between various parts of the beautiful, harmoniously formed human body.

The statue Doryphorus (Spear Bearer, c. 440 B.C.) is the embodiment of the sculptor’s artistic principles. The Doryphorus represents a balance between the plastically opposite states of external serenity, hidden movement, and inner tension. Similar principles characterize Polyclitus’ later works, including the Wounded Amazon (c. 440–430 B.C.) and Diadumenos (Youth Wearing a Fillet of Victory, c. 420–410 B.C.). The latter work, which is more free in composition, may have been influenced by Phidias. Polyclitus also produced colossal chryselephantine statues, for example, the one of Hera for the Temple of Hera near Argos.

Possible historical authenticity and mythological idealization are combined so organically in Polyclitus’ work that the actual subject of his statues are unclear in many ways. Some scholars identify the Doryphorus as Achilles and the Diadumenos as Apollo or Paris. Polyclitus had many pupils and followers up to the period of the Roman Empire. Lysippus considered himself to be a student of Polyclitus.

REFERENCES

Nedovich, D. S. Poliklet. Moscow-Leningrad, 1939.
Miron i Poliklet. [Album. Introductory article by G. Sokolov.] Moscow, 1961.
Lorenz, T. Polyklet. Wiesbaden, 1972.

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References in periodicals archive

Among extant Greek-style Roman sculptures, the knife-wielder is second in number only to Polykleitos's Spearbearer, a highly significant comparison.

Knife-wielding women of the Bacchanalia

The art historian Kenneth Clark (1956:35) comments on the manner in which Polykleitos accentuated the system of rendering the male torso, as exemplified by the Kritios Boy and other earlier works: "Polycletus' control of muscle-architecture was evidently far more rigorous, and from that derives that standard schematisation of the torso known in French as the cuirasse esthetique (Fig.

In creating the Doryphoros, a name probably not of the artist's devising (Stewart 1997:88), Polykleitos gave expression to a type of male physique, that was to inspire three generations of his pupils and influence sculptors of the Roman empire too (Quintilian Inst.

Reading between the loins:a curious anomaly in the portrayal of the male physique in Greek sculpture

The great prowess of Phidias and Polykleitos showed that through you sculpture could equal Nature; It was from you that Lysippos and the others achieved renown.

Donatello's Gattamelata and its humanist audience *

In the court of the Pompeii palaestra, a marble replica of the Doryphoros by Polykleitos stood on a base over one meter high, sufficient enough to prove the sculpture's new stature of oeuvre d'art(20); at Herculaneum, in the small square peristyle of the so-called Villa of the Pisones, a bronze herm of the work stood beside a bust of one of the Amazons, also by one of the great masters of the fifth century; and a marble herm of the same Doryphoros also came from Herculaneum.

Greek Statuary, Roman Portraits

From Diskophoros of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek in Copenhagen and other sculptures of a similar kind, she endeavors to show that it is vain to want to return to a single prototype of Polykleitos, emphasizing the richness brought about by associations invented by Roman sculptors, who, unwilling to copy, adapted Greek models according to need, to iconographies, to materials, or to diverse commonplaces.

Sculpture and its Reproductions

As sort of equally visual and didactic dimostratione of these essential counterpositional principles (somewhat in the manner of Polykleitos's "Doryphoros-Canon," a celebrated fifth-century B.C.

52 Although the extensive text originally belonging to Polykleitos's Canon is now lost, I am assured that the best surviving paraphrase is to be found in Vitruvius's famous treatise, De Architectura 3:1, ii - which is immediately followed by a statement (3:1, iii-iv) that Leonardo copied in his own Italian translation as a sort of extended caption to his famous drawing known as the "Vitruvian Figure."

An exemplary humanist hybrid: Vasari's "Fraude" with reference to Bronzino's "Sphinx." (Giorgio Vasari and Agnolo di Cosimo a.k.a. Bronzino)

We are told much about these classical masters: Pheidias who was famous for his colossal gold- and ivory-clad cult-images but also cast bronzes; Polykleitos who theorised about ideal proportions in his treatise called the Canon; Myron who was particularly eulogised for his life-like statues of athletes; and the prolific Lysippos, who worked for Alexander the Great and accomplished a wide range of subjects that included the Apoxyomenos (an athlete scraping oil from his skin) and the intriguingly named 'Intoxicated Flute-Girl' (temulenta tibicina).

Some of the most famous classical bronzes such as the Doryphoros ('Spear Bearer') by Polykleitos and the Diskobolos ('Discus Thrower') by Myron were identified in Roman copies.

Legacies of loss

One of the more difficult is Diadoumenos, the name for the Classical Greek statue by Polykleitos and a word that explains exactly what the sculpture depicts-a young man tying his victory fillet around his head after winning an athletic contest.

Singing the survey

Hallett, 'Kopienkritik and the works of Polykleitos', in W.

Giant questions: dining with Polyphemus at Sperlonga and Baiae