Polykleitos

Polykleitos (Πολύκλειτος), also spelled Polyclitus or Polycletus, worked in bronze during the second half of the 5th century BC, roughly between 450 and 420 BC. Plato and Pausanias call him an Argive. Latin writers such as Pliny and Cicero call him a Sicyonian, a label modern scholars usually treat as a confusion. He led an Argive workshop whose pupils and successors carried its methods into the 4th century BC. He should be distinguished from Polykleitos the Younger, a later artist of the same tradition, to whom modern scholars usually assign the theatre at Epidaurus that Pausanias credits to “Polykleitos”.

Almost nothing personal is recorded about him. His career is reconstructed from works and from testimony written long afterwards. No original bronze by him is known to survive, so his statues are studied through Roman and late Hellenistic marble copies, inscribed bases and descriptions by authors such as Pausanias, Pliny and Galen. At Olympia, excavators found an inscribed base for a statue of the boy victor Kyniskos of Mantineia, which scholars link to the Westmacott Athlete type in the British Museum; the link is probable rather than certain. After the old temple of Hera near Argos burned in 423 BC, Polykleitos made the new seated cult statue of gold and ivory, according to Pausanias.

The Κανών (Canon) was a written treatise, now lost. Its title means a measuring rule or standard. Galen, writing in the 2nd century AD, reports the view that beauty lies in the commensurability, συμμετρία (symmetria), of the parts: finger to finger, fingers to hand, and so on to the whole body, as written in the Canon of Polykleitos. He also mentions a praised statue that was itself called the Canon. Ancient writers do not preserve the actual numbers, and modern reconstructions of the system remain hypotheses. Whether the statue called the Canon is the Δορυφόρος (Doryphoros, Spear-bearer) is traditionally assumed but debated.

The Doryphoros and the Διαδούμενος (Diadoumenos, a youth tying a victor’s band round his head, probably about 430 BC) show the pose most associated with him. The figure rests its weight on one leg while the other is relaxed, and the chest and pelvis tilt in opposite directions; the Metropolitan Museum calls this calculated pose a standard formula found in almost all works attributed to him. Pliny reports that Polykleitos won a contest among sculptors for an Amazon at Ephesus, though which surviving Amazon type copies his statue is still disputed. Pausanias describes his Hera at Argos: seated, crowned with Graces and Seasons, holding a pomegranate and a sceptre topped by a cuckoo.

In Greece, the over-life-size Diadoumenos found on Delos, a marble copy of about 100 BC, stands in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens; the ruins of the Argive Heraion lie near Argos. Try this with the Metropolitan Museum’s Diadoumenos, whose photograph is public domain. Its head, arms, lower legs and tree trunk are ancient; the rest is a cast taken from the Delos copy. Describe it in three Greek sentences: Στηρίζεται στο δεξί πόδι (He rests on his right leg), Το αριστερό πόδι μένει χαλαρό (The left leg stays relaxed), Σηκώνει τα χέρια για να δέσει την ταινία (He raises his arms to tie the band). Then add a fourth sentence saying what you see is a copy, not the lost bronze original.

• Ancient writers disagreed about his home: Plato and Pausanias call him an Argive, Pliny a Sicyonian.
• Galen mentions a praised statue that was itself called the Canon, like the treatise.
• The Metropolitan Museum’s Diadoumenos combines ancient marble parts with a cast of the Delos copy in Athens.
• Plutarch reports his remark that the work is hardest when the clay reaches the nail; its exact meaning is debated.