For a portrait artist, there’s always a tug of war between being truthful and being flattering.

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Luckily, in the wide history of art, totally faithful portraits aren’t that common. Plastered human skulls from 9000 years ago have been found in modern day Palestine - more info - and during the late Republican Period of Ancient Rome, there was a culture favouring faithful Bronze-cast portraits, sometimes even using a ‘lost wax’ casting technique in combination with death masks, for an almost entirely one to one likeness. But sadly in most cases written context is absent, parts might be missing, and individual detail as well as artistic intent is hard to pinpoint, so calling an object a "Portrait", especially something you've just pulled out of the ground, can be difficult to call.​​

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Some historians think that the “Veristic” trend of Late Republican Roman art aimed to exaggerate deep wrinkles that would have been seen as indicators of wizened experience for old, powerful men in the Roman Empire (12). Following a civil war in 69 AD, Emperor Vespasian may have even aimed to enhance his visual oddities as a kind of personal branding (13). The intent of an artist may be hard to pinpoint, but with paychecks on the line and a client breathing down your neck, it’s hard to believe they were ever impartial.

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Some of the oldest human shaped art around comes from Athens and Attica (14). The Greek Kouros statues are a remarkable example of this blurry line between portraiture and something a bit more ‘flattering’.

These 'Kouroi' are thought to be influenced by even earlier Egyptian stone figures, they both share a pretty stiff posture and a grid system which defined body proportions in two and three dimensional Egyptian art (15).

 

The left leg is raised, as if taking a step forwards. Kouroi mostly depicted boys (16) ranging from small handheld figures to life size, and were used as 'votive' funerary objects. These figures evolved and had several different functions over hundreds of years in Archaic Greece, but the Historian Herodotus writing from the 5th Century BCE tells a story which might give us a clue about what these figures actually meant to Greek citizens.

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So his story goes, in the 6th century BCE, King Solon, the ruler of Athens, goes to visit another wealthy ruler called Creosus who rules over Lydia in modern day Turkey. Croesus asks his guest Solon “Who is the happiest man you know?” As a man with a lot of money, Croesus reasonably expects to hear his own name in response. But to his shock, Solon replies that a man he knows called Tellus, who had a good family and died in battle, was actually the happiest that he knew. Croesus then asks pointedly, “well, who is the second happiest?” Solon then tells him about two brothers, Kleobis and Biton, who were decorated athletes, in the prime of their life, and their mother, who was a Priestess.

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Very soon, there would be a feast for Hera, Wife of Zeus and the Goddess of Mothers and Families, at the temple at Delphi. As a Priestess, Kleobis and Biton’s mother was urgently needed there. But their Oxen were not available to pull their carriage to the city, so the strong brothers committed to pull their mother through forty five miles of challenging terrain to get her to the feast on time. They lashed themselves to the carriage like beasts, and having sacrificed all their strength, the three arrive. Their proud mother asks Goddess Hera to bestow the highest gifts on her two sons. Hera hears her request, and rewards Kleobis and Biton, allowing them to die peacefully inside her temple. Now, this drama, two young men quite literally dying in a temple where people are celebrating strangely doesn’t hurt the vibe:​

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“For the Argive men came and stood around the young men, congratulating them on their strength, and the women congratulated the mother on the fine sons she had…The Argives made statues for them and dedicated them at Delphi, as of two men who were the best of all.”

Herodotus (17)

 

So why is this story important? Well in the late 19th century, statues of two men were found in the city of Delphi, dating back to around the same time period as Herodotus’s story. They are made in typical Kouros style, with serene, ‘archaic smiles’, fully nude, strong, but without any major features. It could have been made by the festival goers to thank the two brothers. Or a later response to the rousing story they left behind. Either way, the statues remained.

 

A similar life sized Kouros statue can be found further south in Attica - on its plinth there’s a complete inscription underneath, which talks about a soldier called Kroisos.

 

“Stay and mourn at the monument of dead Kroisos, whom furious Ares destroyed in the front ranks.” (18)

 

The instructive tone of this message hints that the statues were more than a simple piece of decoration, they could also have religious and political significance.

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Jeffrey Herwitt writes:

Naming was the purpose of these texts, and the voiced repetition of names part of their perpetuating power. (19)

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Who Kleobis and Biton, or Kroisos were as normal men clearly didn’t make too much impact on the artists who sculpted them. They’re archetypes of an ideal, sacrificial way for men to live and transition with dignity from service to death. In their pose, they seem to walk, naked into the afterlife, they’re freed from uncertainties and the hardships of their lives and their bodies by the purity of their actions in death.

 

It’s hard not to imagine these statues on the street in Delphi, with their messages, calling out from the dead, shaping the flow of crowds. Elevated only slightly above head height on their platforms, they were placed to face and mingle with the world, much different from other Greek art you can see on vases or stelai, flat surfaces with self contained narratives, which weren’t designed to address audiences directly (20).

 

Few in Greek society could fork out the cash for these heavy, impractical objects. Wealthy men might have had these made as philanthropic tools to regulate and educate the working men through the centuries. Being muscular, content, and non-specific in their features, they’re objects made for mourning, but they’re also aspirational, beautiful and virtuous.

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But as Greek statues changed over the years, to take on more natural body shapes, beauty as an aesthetic and as an embodiment of ‘Virtue’ “Aret”(21) was becoming a bit more complicated.

 

In the Classical period, Sculptor Polykleitos is renowned for his male nudes in a Contrapposto pose, which was a lot like Kouros type but with a much more considered attempt to simulate how our hips dip and our spines curve when we walk (22)(23). Polykleitos is said to have written a “Canon”(24) which defined beauty as a system of geometric relationships “through many numbers”(25).

 

Sadly, his canon was never found, and all of the statues credited to Polykleitos are later copies (26).

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But the ethics of bringing such alien ideas such as ‘perfect beauty’ to earth in the forms of humans and gods alike, was commented on during Olympic festivities at the Temple of Olympia, where Sophist Philosopher Dio Chrysostom argued the 41 foot tall statue of Zeus, was a:

 

“vessel to contain intelligence and rationality, … to indicate that which is invisible and unportrayable by means of something portrayable and visible.(27)”

Dio Chrysostom

 

Of course ‘intelligence and rationality’ are only two of many qualities a human can have, and natural looking sculpture is only one way of expressing what a person is. At what stage realism collides with ugliness, which is surely the opposite of beauty, would be hugely important to the sculptor, after all, their livelihood is on the line, and the client seems all too ready to pass the buck.

 

“In order that the form of an image may be brought fully and clearly before the mind, the imager should medi[t]ate; and his success will be proportionate to his meditation. No other way—not indeed seeing the object itself—will achieve his purpose.”

Coomaraswamy, A.K in 'Aesthetic of the Sukranitisara' (28)​​

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Preview of Pygmannequin: PART 3:

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References