Pythagoras (sculptor from Rhegion)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pythagoras ( Greek  Πυθαγόρας ) was an ancient Greek sculptor from Rhegion who worked in the first half of the 5th century BC. Worked. Pliny and Diogenes Laertios explicitly differentiated him from the sculptor and painter Pythagoras from Samos .

Pythagoras received his training from Klearchus, a sculptor of the highly archaic times of the 6th century BC. From Rhegion. His birth should be scheduled accordingly early. On the other hand, Pliny lists him as a contemporary of Myron and dates his Akme to the 90th Olympiad , i.e. around 420 BC. Both statements are mutually exclusive.

Pythagoras' oldest works include victorious statues from the Zeus sanctuary at Olympia , such as Astylos of Croton , who played at the Olympic Games from 488 to 476 BC. BC was mostly victorious in several disciplines. Other datable works were the statues of Leontiskos from the Sicilian Messene , winner 456 and 452 BC. And of Mnaseas from Cyrene , victorious in 456 BC. For the son of Mnaseas, Kratisthenes, he also made a bronze statue with a team of four and Nike . For other victorious statues associated with the name, it cannot be decided to which Pythagoras they are to be assigned or when they are to be dated, as in the case of Protolaus.

In Delphi, in a victorious competition with Myron, he created the statue of a pankratiast , in Thebes the statue of Citharoden Cleon, which was stolen by Alexander the Great . In Taranto , even in Cicero's time, Europe was praised on the bull. On statues of gods he made an Apollo killing the python , on heroes a winged Perseus and a combat group with Polynices and Eteocles .

No earlier sculptor has so many works in the literary tradition as Pythagoras. At the same time, his work and his style are completely beyond judgment. No statue, no Roman copy can be convincingly related to his work. The Roman scholarship in art he was considered an innovator, because "he first expressed tendons and veins and treated the hair more carefully" than his predecessors. That Pythagoras was really the first in this regard is an ancient invention of the “invention”, because as early as 510 BC. The west gable of the temple of Aphaia in Aegina , which was created in the 4th century BC, shows the beginning of the vein depiction, which is clearly evident on the east gable, which is 15 years younger. But connecting the phenomenon with an artist personality was perhaps only with him.

According to Diogenes Laertios, Pythagoras was the first to devote his work to the problems of symmetria and rhythm . 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 and leads to e.g. B. to beauty. Rhythmos means in its basic meaning the regulated movement. However, this movement is not meant in the sense of moving, but rather as a joining of parts that is propagated within an order, a moving relationship of the parts to one another as a whole, which both depicts the human body and, for example, the relationship of the structural elements in the Architecture concerns.

In this sense, Pythagoras may have been an innovator, whose beginnings in this area sparked a fruitful discussion among his successors, especially with Polyklet .

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 34, 60.
  2. ↑ Diogenes Laertios 8:47.
  3. ^ Jerome Pollitt : The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990, pp. 43-46 considers both to be identical.
  4. ^ Pausanias 6: 4, 4.
  5. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 34, 49.
  6. ↑ Pausanias 6:13 , 1; Pliny, Naturalis historia 34, 59.
  7. ^ Pausanias 6:13 , 7.
  8. ↑ Pausanias 6:18 , 1.
  9. ↑ Pausanias 6: 6, 1.
  10. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 34, 59; Athenaios , Deipnosophistai 1, 19, B-C.
  11. ↑ Cicero, Gegen Verres 4, 60, 135; Varro , de lingua Latina 5, 31.
  12. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 34, 59.
  13. ↑ Dion Chrysostom 37:10.
  14. ^ Tatian , oratio ad Graecos 34, 1 (Whittaker).
  15. ↑ Pliny, Naturalis historia 34, 59.
  16. ↑ Diogenes Laertios 8:47
  17. ↑ 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.
  18. ↑ Hanna Philipp : On Polyklet's writing »Canon«. In: Herbert Beck, Peter C. Bol, Maraike Bückling (eds.): Polyklet. The sculptor of the Greek classical period. Exhibition in the Liebieghaus-Museum Alter Plastik Frankfurt am Main . Zabern, Mainz 1990, ISBN 3-8053-1175-3 , p. 141 f.
personal data
SURNAME Pythagoras
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pythagoras of Rhegion; Πυθαγόρας (Greek)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Sculptor of ancient Greece
DATE OF BIRTH 6th century BC Chr.
PLACE OF BIRTH Rhegion
DATE OF DEATH 5th century BC Chr.