Myron (sculptor)

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Myron ( ancient Greek Μύρων Mýrōn ; * around 500 BC or soon after in Eleutherai ; † after around 440 BC) was one of the most important Greek sculptors of ancient Greece . His main creative period spanned the years from about 480 BC. BC to 440 BC In which he created numerous bronze statues that were celebrated centuries after his death. With his main work he stood at the transition from the early to the high class of Greek art. No originals of his work have survived. In the rich inventory of Roman marble copies based on Greek models, however, three statues that can be connected with Myron's work could be identified more or less with certainty: the discobol and Athena and Marsyas, a two-figure group of statues.

Myron was born in Eleutherai, a border town of Boeotia and Attica , which was founded at the end of the 6th century BC. BC voluntarily gave up its own sovereignty in favor of Attic citizenship. His artist signature seems to have identified him as an Athenian.

His teacher is said to have been Ageladas , who also trained Phidias and Polyklet . As for Polyklet, Pliny also passed on the 90th Olympiad as Akme for Myron , that is, the year 420 BC. The statement is problematic and Pliny must be wrong here. Myron was considered a versatile artist, wood carver, ore caster and chaser. He created statues of gods as well as images of heroes and athletes, which were mostly set up in the great sanctuaries such as Delphi and Olympia . Among them the most famous were the statues of the Ladas runner and the Discobolos , which was often copied in marble in Roman times.

Myron's most famous work, along with the runner, the discobol, and the Athena Marsyas group , was a bronze cow that stood on the Acropolis and was later brought to Rome. In general, according to ancient judgment, he seems to have been most convincing in depicting animals, while a certain harshness was recognized in his images of man, and in his work a transition style to the great masters of the 5th century.

On the part of the Roman art scholars, Myron is attested that he was the first to reproduce the truth, although he was still raw in the depiction of pubic and head hair as in earlier art. However, he has not (yet) reproduced the feeling or mood of the soul; nevertheless he had been more varied and more careful in establishing his symmetry than Polyklet. That before the 5th century BC In the ancient understanding of the word, Symmetria means the proportion in which different aspects of one and the same thing are related to one another, and can mean “moist” - “dry”, “warm” - “cold”, but also to parts of buildings and structural members be related to the limbs of a body. In contrast to asymmetria, symmetria is always the “good and correct” proportion. In Myron's work, perhaps not until his later work, the symmetria is so well developed that even Polyklet could not reach it. At the same time he lacked the expressiveness of the soul. Quintilian praises Myron for the agility of his statues, with which he overcame the rigidity of earlier times with their hanging arms and closed feet - meaning archaic kouroi or koren - and defends Myron's work, because in art “it is precisely the difficult and New ones especially commendable. "

A reconstruction of the Athena Marsyas group is in front of the Liebieghaus in Frankfurt am Main , another in the Botanical Garden in Copenhagen .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Pliny , Naturalis historia 34, 57-58.
  2. ^ Pausanias 6: 2, 2.
  3. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 34, 58; Quintilian 12, 10, 7.
  4. ↑ Hildebrecht Hommel : Symmetry in the mirror image of antiquity. Meeting reports of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, Philosophical-Historical Class, 5th report, 1986, p. 21 f. Note 32.
  5. ↑ Quintilian, institutio oratoria 13.8.

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personal data
SURNAME Myron
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Greek sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH 5th century BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH 5th century BC Chr.