| Doryphoros or Canon | See
Perseus web site, under Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors:
Their Careers and Extant Works: The Sculptors: The Early and High Classic
Periods II: Polykleitos "Spear Bearer," also called Canon after treatise whose principles the bronze statue embodied, ca. 450-440 B.C. Pliny the Elder, Natural History 34.18 Formerly (in Athens) statues were dedicated wearing the toga. Nude statues holding a spear were also in favour, modeled after young men in the gymnasia; these were called Achillean. Stewart, T62: Pliny the Elder, Natural History 34.55-56 Polyclitus of Sicyon, a pupil of Hageladas, made...a "Doryphorus", a virile-looking boy. He also made a statue that artists call the "Canon", and from which they derive the principles of their art, as if from a law of some kind, and he alone of men is deemed to have rendered art itself in a work of art.... It was strictly his invention to have his statues throw their weight onto one leg, though Varro says that they are foursquare and all virtually stereotyped. Stewart, T69: Galen, De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 5 (p. 3.16 Kuhn; a physician of 2nd century A.D.) Beauty, Chrysippos believes, inheres... in the commensurability of the parts, such as that of finger to finger, and all these to the palm and wrist, and of these to the forearm, and of the forearm to the upper arm, and of everything to everything else, just as it is written in the "Canon" of Polykleitos. For having taught us in that treatise all the commensurate proportions of the body, Polykleitos made a work to support his account; he made a statue according to the tenets of his writing, and called it, like the treatise, the "Canon". |