Ancient Greek Art: Hermes and Dionysus

Moving into the late classical period now, this statue is called Hermes and Dionysus, that's the infant Dionysus in Hermes' hand and it's dated to 340 BC and it was found inside the Temple of Hera at Olympia. Its sculptor was a man called Praxiteles and in terms of whether this is original marble or not that we're looking at, well that's debated, just to give you some arguments for and against. So in terms of it being an original it's very, very high quality but on the other hand people have a look at the struts supporting the marble and also the fact that part of it is unfinished, a strap on the sandal and the back is still very rough and they think that wouldn't have been something that a sculptor like Praxiteles would have done. So it's just worth being aware that the debate exists. Now some of what we can see with the style of this statue is borrowed from Polykleitos who made the Doryphoros or the spear bearer. So for example you should be able to see the trailing foot and also that the statue is in contrapposto and just a reminder that the contrapposto is where we have got the hips and the shoulders that are bent in opposite directions, there we go. However Praxiteles is very innovative in his own right so he adapts it and takes some of that posture further. So for example the raised arm accentuates the contrapposto, it kind of tilts those shoulders even further and what it does is it creates an effect in the body known as the S bend which from the back is even more pronounced. As well as that Praxiteles also integrates supports into his narrative so he makes them part of the story and we can see that drapery that's hanging down from his arm is probably the baby's cloak or even perhaps his traveller's cloak but either way it's of relevance to the story and we're going to see more statues from Praxiteles where he has done that. On top of that he really likes to humanise the gods, if we think back to the early classical period with gods like Zeus of Artemisium they were much more kind of fear evoking. However this time Hermes looks quite approachable and there's a variety of things that Praxiteles has done to give this impression of. First of all the activity that he's doing is very humanised, he's babysitting and that's relatable. On top of that his expression is known as dreamy not severe and his hair is more naturalistic known as tousled hair. He's also got much softer smoother muscles, much more so than the gods or even mortals for that matter in the early classical and high classical period where it was all about exaggeration and kind of showing strength and those idealistic bodies. So they're softer leaner muscles here as well as the fact that his head to body ratio is one to eight so his head's slightly smaller and overall a more elegant appearance to the statue. Again feels like he is more humanised as a god and therefore relatable. As well as that the fact that his arm would have been holding grapes to tease the baby Dionysus that also adds a little bit of light humour to the scene. So we're looking at gods in a very different way in this late classical period but it's worth noting certain types of gods Zeus is still to be feared.