Paros III. The Dresden Maenad and Skopas of Paros

Ντόρα Κατσωνοπούλου Πρόεδρος Ινστιτούτου Αρχαιολογίας Πάρου και Κυκλάδων

Andrew Stewart

Mέλος της Επιστημονικής Επιτροπής του Γ' Διεθνούς Συνεδρίου

PREFACE

The present volume (Paros III) is the third in a series of international conferences dedicated to the archaeology and culture of Paros and the Cyclades, organized by the Institute of Archaeology of Paros and the Cyclades (IAPK) and conducted at Paroikia on Paros at periodic intervals. This volume, entitled Skopas of Paros and His World, contains scholarly papers presented during the Third International Conference of Classical Archaeology on Paros and the Cyclades, which was organized in collaboration with the Municipality of Paros and the Archilochos of Paros Cultural Association, and took place in Paroikia from 11-14 June, 2010. The congress, the first ever held on the great ancient sculptor Skopas of Paros, attracted the interest of many scholars from Greece and abroad. It included papers on all evidence available to date on Skopas and his work as a sculptor and architect, from all the areas of the ancient Greek world where he traveled and worked.

This congress followed two previous ones on the archaeology of Paros and the Cyclades, also held in Paroikia, which were devoted to the island's well-known Parian marble (1997) The present volume on the third Congress (Paros III), also published by IAPK, and edited by Dora Katsonopoulou and Andrew Stewart, includes a total of thirty-four scholarly papers, divided into four parts. Part I, entitled "Skopas of Paros and Earlier Parian Sculpture", includes eight studies on the sculptor's personality and work, and the latter's relationship to the island and its previous sculptural output. Part II, entitled "Skopas the Architect", contains nine papers on the artist's architectural projects, and Part III, entitled "Skopas the Sculptor", includes twelve papers on his art and the statues he created for various cities over the course of his long career. Finally, Part IV, entitled "The Impact of Skopas' Work", contains five papers on the influence that his art exerted during the ancient world.

Part I begins with an overview of Skopas and his work, on the basis of the literary and recent archaeological evidence relevant to the investigation of his artistic personality (Stewart). Next, a link between the particular art of Skopas and Parian sculpture workshops is proposed, via the presentation of recent finds of sculpture from Paros and an analysis of the influence of the island's cultural environment and heritage upon his personality (Katsonopoulou). Specific elements that characterize Skopas' work as architect and sculptor are then considered as a standard in relation to the output of the later Messenian artist Damophon (Themelis); and the historical context of the era in which he executed his great artistic projects at the Artemision at Ephesos, the Maussoleion at Halikarnassos, Tegea, and Megara, is addressed (Tandy). Following this, we turn to the products of Parian sculpture workshops before Skopas' time, and to significant finds of the 6th and 5th centuries BC from the last few decades of excavation on Paros (Zafeiropoulou). These include the archaic temple of Apollo at Despotiko and its important cache of archaic kouroi and some korai (Kouragios), and -as a case study of the work of itinerant Parian artists before Skopas-the sculptor Aristion and his oeuvre (Barlou). Finally, the sculpture workshops identified in recent years in Paroikia are discussed and their output from Skopas' time until the Roman period is analyzed (Detoratou).

Part II investigates Skopas' architectural work, starting from his Parian roots and the construction of the city's Prytaneion and temple of Hestia (Ohnesorg). Next comes a presentation of recent data, including the question of Cycladic elements, concerning his most prominent architectural creation, the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea in Arkadia (Østby), and a discussion of the iconography, interpretation, and restoration of its pedimental compositions and akroteria (Mostratos). The Tegea temple's rôle as a model for others in the Peloponnese, such as those of Zeus at Nemea and of Ephesian Artemis at Alea in upper Argolis, is evaluated (Kousoulas). Skopas is also proposed as the architect-sculptor of another monument, the altar in the Tegean sanctuary, on the basis of both his prior experience with the sculptural embellishment of the Maussolleion at Halikarnassos and the Hecatomnid rulers' association with the sanctuary of Athena Alea (Leventi). The role of Skopas as architect, master sculptor, and cult statue maker at Samothrace is critically reviewed via a reevaluation of the plan and elevation of the Hall of Choral Dancers and its links with northern Greek and Macedonian architecture (Wescoat). Finally, Skopas' architectural work in Asia Minor and mainland Greece is examined for possible interactions with local traditions (Pedersen), with particular attention to exploring his responsibility for the altar of the late classical Artemision at Ephesos (Bammer) and the friezes of the Maussolleion at Halikarnassos (Schmid).

To introduce Part III, which is devoted to Skopas' work as a sculptor and cult-statue maker, the only known copy of one of the Parian artist's most famous works, the Dresden Maenad, is revisited and a new reconstruction of its unusual twisting pose is proposed (Barr-Sharrar); and an interpretation of its movement in a Dionysiac context is advanced in relation to earlier and later works in this vein (Wolf). The evocative description of the statue by Kallistratos (Statuarum descriptiones 2) is discussed as an ekphrasis comparable to that of the shield of Achilles in Book 18 of the Iliad (Petropoulos). Alternatively, what if the so-called Berlin Dancer actually copies this masterpiece of Skopas, instead of the Dresden Maenad (Geominy)? Next, the famous group of Aphrodite and Pothos created for the sanctuary of the Great Gods at Samothrace is discussed in relation to the extant literary and archaeological evidence (Marconi); its statue of Aphrodite is sought in the naked Anadyomene type, welcomed here by Pothos and Phaethon (Delivorrias); the Pothos itself is explored in the light of new information (Lopes); and two hitherto unrecognized intaglio versions of it in the Thorvaldsen Collection are presented (Kluge). The statue of Eros Thunderbolt-Bearer erected in the late Classical period probably in Athens and later taken to Rome is examined and its attribution to Skopas revived (Corso), and all the sculptor's statues in Rome listed by Pliny are analyzed, shedding new light on his influence upon Roman art and culture (Calcani). Lastly, Skopas' work in Knidos is investigated on the basis of fourth-century marbles from the site that clearly demonstrate the impact of his style (Özgan), and his presence and that of his workshop during the construction of the temple of Artemis at Ephesos are examined (Muss).

Finally, Part IV discusses the impact of Skopas' art upon various regions of mainland Greece, such as the Apollo sanctuary at Delphi, where a revival of Parian marble and workmanship during the fourth century BC has been documented by new discoveries (Partida), and also further north on Thasos, a Parian colony, on the basis of an unpublished marble sculpture in his manner discovered at Herakleion (Katsonopoulou and Korka). Sculptures (portraits and others) at Alexandria exhibiting Skopaic stylistic features are analyzed and the channels through which knowledge of his art infiltrated the city's historical and cultural fabric are investigated (Ghisellini). The influence of Skopas and his workshop in Egypt and Macedonia are studied through drawings on the Artemidoros Papyrus and finds from the Royal Tomb II at Vergina (Adornato). Finally, collections of ancient sculpture of the first half of the fourth century BC and Hellenistic period from the north Pontic region, where the influence of Skopas is particularly evident, are presented and analyzed (Trofimova).

We thank the City Council and the Mayor of Paros, Christos Vlachogiannis, for their support for the congress, and all members of the Board of the Archilochos of Paros Cultural Association for their help. Our special thanks go to archaeologist Ourania Psilou, Secretary of the Organizing Committee, for the congress' excellent secretarial support.

Dora Katsonopoulou President, The Paros and Cyclades Institute of Archaeology

Andrew Stewart Member, Scientific Committee of the Third International Conference

The Dresden Maenad and Skopas of Paros

When the maenad's left arm broke, it took fragments of the shoulder with it. According to conservator Richard Stone of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the nature of the fracture marks on the shoulder indicates that this arm, like the right one, was carved from the same block of marble as the body. The area of fracture on top of the shoulder can be seen clearly in the detail (Fig. 10). This observation is very important to the reconstruction of the original arm. Sometime after the loss of the original left arm, a break occurred that penetrated the entire upper part of the sculpture. It went through the initial losses on the shoulder -as seen clearly in the detail-and continued down around the back of the shoulder, breaking through the figure below the thick mass of hair that prevented the loss of the head. While the head was preserved, the occasion of this break is probably related to the severe abrasions on the face. The break continues up over the figure's right shoulder and across the thorax area just below the neck, then up through the fracture caused by the loss of the left arm, as stated (Figs. 1, 2). 7 At some point in the history of the statuette, before its discovery, a separately carved left arm must have been inserted into the visible mortise hole in an attempt at restoration (Figs. 3-4; detail, Fig. 11; Treu's drawing, Fig. 12). In order to be useful, the mortise hole would originally have been considerably deeper, so the break and loss of the left arm must have left a remnant, perhaps uneven, even oblique, but in any case larger than what remains today. In the opinion of Richard Stone, this restoration failed, and in a second attempt at repair, what remained of the arm stump was cut back and the lower edge cut off at the sharp right angle we see. At the same time, marble was crudely removed in the armpit, resulting in the clumsy, slightly splayed pointed chisel cuts in that area (Figs. 11-12). This was presumably undertaken in an effort to extend and prepare a surface area for the adherence of a new marble arm.

Figure 10

Figure 1

Figure 11

Figure 12

With the left arm of the statuette raised the position of the goat rises 15 (drawings, Figs. 19-20). The trace of the hoof on the figure's left shoulder suggests one foot of the goat rested there. Another foot must have rested on the maenad's arm. The goat is now well in line with the maenad's supporting right leg. Given the vulnerability of the animal's legs in this configuration, however, a more satisfactory solution is to cradle the head of the animal on the maenad's arm (drawing, Fig. 21). The weight of the goat is still in line with the vertical axis of the figure. For added support, some of the fabric from the maenad's loosened chiton is brought down to rest on the floor.

Beryl Barr-Sharrar

Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, USA It has been more than a century since Georg Treu published the well-known marble statue of a maenad in the Dresden Albertinum und Staatliche Kunstsammlung as a Roman copy, reduced in scale, of the famous Parian marble goat-carrying maenad by Skopas described in ancient literature. 1 While this identification has remained valid for many scholars, it is periodically challenged. Most recently, in the catalogue of an exhibition held in Madrid and Dresden in 2008-2009, the German scholar Christiane Vorster rejects a Skopaic identification, calling the statuette an original of the second half of the 1st century BC designed after a neo-Attic relief maenad holding a tympanon, which she dates to about 100 BC. 2 The Dresden Maenad was purchased by the Albertinum in 1901 from a collector in Prague who had acquired it in Rome. As it survives, with the arms broken off and both legs broken just below the knee, the figure is 45.5 cm high. Its original height must have been between 60-75 cm, about 2/5ths life-size. The white marble from which it is carved has the appearance of Parian, with an even grain and the translucence of that famous marble.

The dramatically complex posture of the Dresden statuette is its most remarkable feature (Figs. 1-6). In his discussion of the Skopaic prototype, Treu mentioned as a precursor the 85-cm high central akroterion from the Temple of Asklepios at Epidauros (380-370 BC) whose body moves in a graceful contraposto. Of greater pertinence today are some examples of torsion specific to maenads on artifacts from the late Classical period unknown to Treu in the early 20th century. This torsion is a double contraposto, coupled with the extreme arching of the back and the gesture of throwing back the head characteristic of ecstatic maenads in Attic vase painting as early as 500 BC. The effect is a contorted posture impossible in real life.

A late 5th to early 4th century version of this exaggerated torsion can be found expressed in two dimensions in a thyrsos-bearing maenad on the fragmentary cast bronze Mänadenkrater in Berlin (Fig. 7). Relief compresses three-dimensional illusion onto a flat surface. Even without completely accurate foreshortening, the implied movement of this bronze relief figure can be clearly understood. She twists her upper body from her left to her right, swinging her right arm back while simultaneously throwing her head back and turning her face left, presenting her profile to the viewer. With her skirt billowing out behind, the figure presents in two dimensions a vigorous and highly unnatural movement like that of the three-dimensional Dresden Maenad (Figs. 5-6).

Figure 7

Bronze relief maenad on the Mänadenkrater. Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preussicher Kulturbesitz. Inv. 30622. A determination of the nature and position of the attribute associated with the statuette's missing left arm is dependent on an accurate reading of her pose, the position and carved surface of her left shoulder, and the significance of the irregular area of pointed chisel marks under her left arm

Figure 5

The bronze relief maenad is on her toes, and the rising posture of the marble statuette suggests that she, too, moves on her toes. That such radical torsion is associated with murderous violence is clearly indicated on the Mänadenkrater frieze where near the twisting maenad the slaughter of goats is imminent. 3 On the hammered frieze of the bronze Derveni krater, dated by this writer to ca. 375-350 BC, 4 the skillfully depicted torsion of two maenads carrying a young deer, mythological surrogate of the sacrificial goat, is also relevant to that of the Dresden statuette. Heads are thrown back, the breasts of one woman are bared, and the transparency of garments reveals much of their bodies. Figures 1-2 These maenads, too, are on their toes, with the lightness of step characteristic of followers of Dionysοs in the 4th century BC. 5 The maenad on the Derveni krater frieze with the most complex torsion, also demonstrating this buoyancy, reverses the stance of the Dresden statuette (Fig. 8) gests full understanding of a three-dimensional figure in space, and presupposes free-standing sculpture with artistically rendered torsion of this nature by the 2nd quarter of the 4th century BC.

Figure 8

A frequent objection to Treu's association of the Dresden statuette with Skopas has been what has seemed to observers to be the lack of any indication of the young goat vividly included in the description of the Skopas' maenad by Kallistratos (Statuarum descriptiones ii, 3rd-4th centuries AD). Kallistratos described the goat as lifeless, slaughtered in the maenad's Bacchic frenzy.

The likelihood that the Dresden statuette held an attribute in her missing left arm is suggested in the first instance by her posture (Fig. 1). From her right side, the marble figure has a close coun-

When Treu first published the Dresden Maenad, these elements were exactly as they are today, as clearly indicated in his published drawing (Fig. 12). Believing them original to the sculpture, Treu concluded that the original left arm had been a separately inserted element. 8 Accordingly, he reconstructed the maenad with the upper part of her left arm held close to her body in an oblique position and her lower arm held up vertically, the hand raised to the height of her shoulder. The arm would have been flexed, thus, in a V-shape.

Treu correctly differentiated from the end of the maenad's hair ribbon a small, raised, irregularly shaped break that lies more forward on the surface of the shoulder and closer to the area of the arm's fracture ( Fig. 10 and Treu's drawing, Fig. 13). Treu believed that what had left this singular trace on the shoulder must have been an attribute. He found it improbable that a tympanon could have extended up far enough onto the maenad's shoulder to leave this trace. He proposed that it indicated the presence of a goat, the forepart carved with the shoulder, the rest with the separately made left arm, by which it was almost entirely supported. 9 An early reconstruction in his initial publication was corrected in a 1905 drawing to correspond to this view (Fig. 14). It was this reconstruction with which, in 1913, Neugebauer agreed. 10 Neither Treu nor Neugebauer, however, mentions the oblique line across the top of this raised, irregularly shaped break, at one edge of which a drill hole can be seen, suggesting that a carved object rose above it (detail, Fig. 15). The presence of this line suggests the trace of a cloven hoof. 11 A goat, then, must have been carved together with the figure and the left arm, and the entire statuette created from a single block of marble.

Figure 13

Figure 14

Drawing of Treu's reconstruction of the Dresden Maenad. Treu 1905.

Figure 15

Detail of the left shoulder of the Dresden Maenad. Photograph: Beryl Barr-Sharrar.

Tentatively accepting, for a moment, Treu's conclusions about both the separate carving of the figure's left arm and its original position, a reconstruction making more explicit the relationship of the goat's hoof to the maenad's shoulder immediately suggests serious problems, both practical and aesthetic (drawings, Figs. 16-17). It is clear that even with a small goat, the weight on the arm would be prohibitively heavy. Further, and perhaps more critically, the visual drama of a 3-dimensional figure in exaggerated torsion, intended by its very nature for viewing from all sides, is greatly hindered by the containment of this important element, to be seen only from the back and left sides of the figure. Indeed, even some adherents of Treu's reconstruction believe the sculpture was crafted for a single view. This would belie the entire purpose of the maenad's complex pose.

Moreover, not only is Treu's reconstruction incompatible with what remains of the maenad's left arm and the crude removal of marble in the armpit, but also it is not compatible with the carving of the back of the statuette. Looking at the Dresden Maenad from the front and her left, the small area of arm that remains from the brutal cut across the stump as it joins her back sug-Beryl Barr- Sharrar Figures 12-13. Drawings of details of the Dresden Maenad. Treu 1903, p. 321, figs. 3-4. gests the left arm was held within a higher trajectory (Figs. 3-4 and drawing, Fig. 18). Looking at her back (Figs. [5][6], the position of the spine of her left scapula as well as the breaks on the shoulder reinforce that view, suggesting the arm was raised in a considerably higher position than Treu maintained, at a roughly 45-degree angle (Figs. 19-22).

I am not the first to suggest this. Both Six (1918) and Lorenz (1968) restored the Dresden Maenad with her left arm reaching upwards. While both accepted Treu's association of the statuette with Skopas, Six placed the affiliated goat in a lowered right hand and Lorenz, identifying a second maenad by Skopas, placed a tympanon in her left hand, raised to the height of her head. 12 Since both agreed with Treu that the left arm was separately carved, neither discussed the chisel cuts under the arm. This removal of marble is easily explained by an inept attempt at restoration, but the rude intrusion of these cuts into the edge of the maenad's chiton seems excessive for the purpose (Fig. 11). It is possible that this intervention removed a carved detail obstructive to the restorers that is of interest to our discussion. The maenad's left breast is covered by her chiton, but there is no sleeve on her shoulder as there is on her right side. Her left shoulder is bare. The edge of the chiton, into which the chisel cuts protrude, continues down over her rib cage to be tucked behind the belt. 13 The motif of covering part of the body with clothing for which no means of support is depicted is a 4th century gravitydefying sculptural concept. When the motif involves the area of the breast, the fabric of a missing sleeve is indicated in a series of folds, or a single fold, under the arm. 14 On the Dresden Maenad, the many marble fractures along the edges of the oblique and vertical folds of her chiton skirt, both in the gently billowing opening that reveals her belly and the diagonals that cross her back, are graphic amplifications of her rippling, wind-blown garment (Figs. [3][4][5][6]. The chisel cuts under her arm may have removed one or more folds. Folds may have been carved as if blowing upwards to abut the underside of the raised arm for crucial support at its join to the body (drawing, Fig. 18). If so, they would have fractured with the loss of the arm and been fragmentary at the time of the clumsy intervention. Such an original configuration could explain the severe cut made across the bottom of the arm stump. At the join of the right arm to the body, it should be noted, likewise carved with it, heavy chiton folds on the maenad's back add mass for support (Fig. 6).

Figure 6