Polykleitos

Polycletus, Doryphoros, Roman copy in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples

Polycletus (490 B.C.E. – 420 B.C.E.), ancient Greek sculptor, bronze worker and theorist.

Quotes about Polykleitos:

• Famous work of a great contemporary master of Phidias, of Argive Polycletus, is the so-called doryphorus, i.e. the statue of a winning athlete holding a spear in his left hand. In this figure the movement of the trunk is shown as it follows from that of the legs: the body gravitates on the right leg and therefore, precisely as anatomy requires, the side of the right side rises, the shoulder descends, and from this general movement results minor shifts in the intermediate parts of the trunk. No one could describe this attitude as awkward; the figure, although firm, moves freely, articulated, lightly. And with this art can boast of an acquired capital. [...] [Polycletus] was the first to fully satisfy the postulates of anatomical truth. (Emanuel Löwy)
• He was the first to establish single-legged figures; he was the first to determine the proportions with a book on symmetry, and with a statue entirely in conformity with his precepts, which he named the Canon or the Regulus. For this work the architects regarded him as a legislator; and therefore it probably follows that the Greek statues, as ^[sic] reflects, appear to have almost all been created with the same fundamental laws, and emerged, so to speak, from the same school. (Luigi Antonio Lanzi)
• Polycletus is, after Phidias, the most respected name in the history of ^[sic]. In the idea of ​​beauty and diligence he is placed before anyone else by Quintilian and Strabo. Measuring his talent with that of Phidias, he did not dare compete with him in the most sublime character: he occupied himself with forming youthful simulacrums. Some among Quintilian believed that under his ^[sic] men grew in beauty; but the Gods diminished. (Luigi Antonio Lanzi)
• Polycletus was a sublime poet in his art, and tried to surpass the beauty of nature itself in his figures: therefore his imagination was mainly concerned with youthful forms, so he will undoubtedly be better able to express the softness of a Bacchus, or the flourishing youth of an Apollo, than the robustness of a Hercules, or the mature age of an Aesculapius. For this reason those who wanted to blame him said that they wanted greater expression in his figures, that is, that the parts were more strongly indicated. (Johann Joachim Winckelmann)

Works:

• Statue of Zeus in Olympia

Related entries:

• Parthenon