Epigonus
Epigonus(Greek:Ἐπίγονος) ofPergamum[1]was the chief among the courtsculptorsto theAttaliddynasty atPergamumin the late third century BCE.
Biography
[edit]Pliny the Elder,who offers the only surviving list of the sculptors of this influential Pergamene school,[2]attributes to him works among the sculptures on the victory monument erected byAttalus Iin the sanctuary of Athena at Pergamum to commemorate his victory over theGaulsofGalatia(223 BCE). Among works there by other sculptors, Pliny attributes to Epigonos[3]a masterfulTrumpeterand "his infant pitiably engaged in caressing its murdered mother"; the male figure in his group, once part of the dedication of Attalus I at Pergamon, is probably the original of the marble copy known in modern times asThe Dying Gaul,[4]in theCapitoline Museums,Rome.[5]TheWeeping Child pitifully caressing its murdered motheris "associated with the so-calledDead Amazonin Naples, a copy of a group which was once part of the later, second Gallic dedication of Attalos, at Athens.... From drawings of this composition made in the Renaissance, we learn that the child was removed from the Naples statue during the sixteenth century ".[6]Another sculpture from the same monument exists in marble copy of theGaul Killing Himself and His Wife,formerly in theLudovisi collection.Eight signed bases[7]from the acropolis of Pergamon have lost their sculptures of valuable bronze, which was doubtless laboriously cut apart for the sake of the metal and refounded during Christian times.
Notes
[edit]- ^His father was Charios of Pergamum.
- ^"Several artists have represented the battles of Attalus and Eumenes against the Gauls: Isigonus [otherwise unknown; probably a slip for Epigonos], Pyromachus, Stratonicus, and Antigonus, who wrote books about his art."Natural History34.84
- ^Natural History34.88 His "Isogonos" is doubtless a slip of the stylus.
- ^A curvedCeltichorn rests by his side.
- ^Inv. No. 747
- ^Seymour Howard, "Henry Blundell'sSleeping Venus",The Art Quarterly31.4, 1968, pp 411–12. Howard discusses aSleeping Hermaphrodituswith suckling infants that was castrated, recarved and restored as a Venus with the infants removed.
- ^The dedicatory inscriptions to Athena are translated by Stewart,op. cit.
Further reading
[edit]- Andrew Stewart,One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant WorksT.150, T.151 (Perseus website on-line)
External links
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