Julie M Allen
ART 101
Dr M Felter
6 October 2017
Polykleitos and Lysippos
Polykleitos was an ancient Greek sculptor in bronze of the 5th century BCE. He is the author of The Canon of Polykleitos and the artist of the sculpture of the same name. The Canon is the first document we have showing proportions and rules for scuplture and was written during the late fifth century B.C. The Canon is the most well-known ancient writing about proportion rules in art, and because so much of it has been preserved from ancient times to now, we have some idea of its content. “The aim of the Canon, was not merely to describe a statue but also to achieve to kallos, ‘the beautiful’ and to eu (the perfect or the good) in it. Polykleitos was fascinated with producing a formula for the production of statues of the human form. The mystery of achieving to kallos and to eu were found in the understanding of symmetria, the perfect ‘commensurability’ of all portions of the statue to one another and to the whole,” (Farber). Polykleitos’s Canon is both a literary work and the name of a sculpture proving and demonstrating the information
…show more content…
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “[Lysippos was] a worker in metal. He taught himself the art of sculpture by studying nature and the Doryphoros (“Spearbearer”) of Polyclitus [sic.], whose canon of ideal male proportions he modified by creating a smaller head and slimmer body that increased his figures’ apparent height.” Lysippos's work is easily identifiable because it features lifelike realistic bodies and slender proportions. Lysippos is known for his work in extending the boundaries of marble sculpture. His work features a new sense of movement in the the head, limbs, and torso. These all face in different directions (contrapposto), indicating a sudden change of action when compared to the work of