#polydoros

Athenodorus of Rhodes

Polydoros of Rhodes

Agesander of Rhodes

Athenodoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros

"the prototypical icon of human agony" in Western art.

Laocoön and His Sons / Laocoön Group, most likely dating to the 1st c. B.C. or1st c. C.E., made of six blocks of Greek Parian marble max H: 2 m (6 ft 7 in). Today in the Octagonal Court / Cortile delle Statue, Vatican.

The "wrong" and full version of it from a 1795 "Royal Academicians in General Assembly" painting by Henry Singleton

Excavated damaged in 1506 and has undergone speculative interventions to show the whole work (all missing parts creatively restored). Since 1980s the group is rid of Jacopo Sansovino's (1st) and Michelangelo's apprentice Giovanni Antonio Montorsoli's extencive restorations, after Ludwig Pollak discovered a missing part of the much debated Right arm, in 1906 (which confirmed Michelangelo's rejected initial view).

Pliny attributed the work (still in Emperor Titus' palace then) to three Greek sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros, and Polydorus, but he did not mention date or patron. An enigmatic Hellenistic "baroque" masterpiece [a unique surviving instant of huge visual impact, without any intermediate, possibly offensive restoration. It seems almost Doric in comparison with Gian Lorenzo Bernini's baroque view]

Paradox: Laocoon seems convinced by Cassandra's already delivered but never-to-be-believed Trojan Horse accurate prophecy [?]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laoco%C3%B6n_and_His_Sons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agesander_of_Rhodes

https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/museo-pio-clementino/Cortile-Ottagono/laocoonte.html

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/greek-art/hellenistic/a/athanadoros-hagesandros-and-polydoros-of-rhodes-laocoon-and-his-sons

- ΓΝΩΣΤΟΠΟΙΗΣΗ -

Την Παρασκευή 3 Σεπτεμβρίου 2021, ημέρα μνήμης του Αγίου Πολυδώρου, θα τελεσθεί Όρθρος & Θεία Λειτουργία  μετ' αρτοκλασίας στο ξωκλήσι που τιμάται επ' ονόματί του στην περιοχή της Κουλουμπρίζας.

Διαβάστε το βίο του Αγίου Πολυδώρου ακολουθώντας τον παρακάτω σύνδεσμο : https://ingenesiotistheotokou.blogspot.com/2019/09/blog-post.html

THE CITY BEAUTIFUL

​by Aden Polydoros

(Inkyard Press, 10/5/21 9/7/21)

9781335402509

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(No, not like some Shakespearean play or an opera where a character manages to reel off a thousand word soliloquy or aria before they die. Just his ghost come back to haunt people: much more realistic!

Euripides is having more fun with grammar in this than even his usual self, or it feels that way to me.)

Once upon a time, there were three sculptors from Rhodes: Agesandros, Polydoros, and Athenodoros. When exactly they lived, when they came to Italy is uncertain; some stories say 50 BCE to 25 CE, some say a hundred, or two hundred years earlier, some say that their names were identical to that of an earlier trio of artists. They worked in marble, and their sculptures were highly praised. Perhaps they copied Greek bronzes from Pergamon from the second century BCE, perhaps their work was original.The details have been lost.

At some point, they created one of the most famous sculptures of the ancient world: the so-called Laocoön group, depicting Laocoön and his two sons, Antiphantes and Thymbraeus. As the story goes, Laocoön was a priest who rightly mistrusted the Trojan Horse. He begged the people to burn it, and was blinded by Athena, for fear the ruse would be exposed. When even this would not keep him from insisting that the horse was a dangerous present, either Athena or Poseidon--or in some versions, Apollo--sent sea serpents to strangle him and his sons. The result--Laocoön's blind marble face turned upward, mouth open--his sons fruitlessly attempting to push the coils of snakes from around their tiny bodies--has been called one of the most perfect sculptures ever wrought.

Several years later (though, perhaps it was a hundred years, perhaps they were not the same sculptors at all) Tiberius, Emperor of Rome, commissioned five statues for the grotto of his villa at Sperlonga. A beautiful rectangular pool reflected a set of craggy caves beside the sea, and around and upon this fountain were to be four scenes from the Iliad and Odyssey and one from Greek mythology. 

The first either depicts Odysseus rescuing the body of the slain Achilles or Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus. In a series of scenes depicting the Odysseus, the latter makes little sense, but statues identified as Menelaus and Patroclus, such as that in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, are identical to reconstructions of the Sperlonga group. It has been suggested that if the trio of sculptors are indeed copyists, that they borrowed their material from Pergamon; it is believed that the sculpture of Menelaus and Patroclus that stands in Florence is a Roman copy of a Greek bronze also from Pergamon. It's possible that both artists were copyists, that they drew from the same original. In the context of the grotto, however, it makes most sense for the figures to adhere to the narrative of Odysseus. If it is indeed Odysseus and Achilles, he latter is naked, sprawled in Odysseus' arms as he attempts to drag the body back to camp.

The second shows Odysseus and Diomedes stealing the palladium of Troy. According to Greek and Roman belief, the palladium of a city was an ancient artifact, usually a statue of a god or goddess, without which the city would crumble. The Greeks believed that in order to take Troy, they first had to take this artifact. Odysseus and Diomedes were sent to retrieve it--a statue of Athena--but on the way back, Odysseus, perhaps looking to claim all glory for himself, attempted to stab Diomedes in the back. Diomedes saw the glare of the moon on the blade, and turned in time to avoid the blow. Odysseus was bound and returned to camp, along with the palladium. It's impossible to know exactly what the sculpture originally looked like. All  that remains today are the head of Diomedes, youthful and unbearded, and some great hand around the body of an Greek archaic-style statue of Athena. Which of  the hand belongs to is uncertain.

The third shows the sea monster Scylla attacking the ship of Odysseus. Tentacles have begun to drown both men and the animal sacrifices Odysseus attempted to use to placate the monster. As in one of the most famous scenes of the Odyssey, he attempted to navigate his ship between the twin dangers: Scylla, the many-tentacled sea monster with the body of the woman and four eyes, and the great whirlpool Charybdis. Six of his men were killed in the process. In the sculpture, Odysseus stands in the center, while chaos is wreaked around him and his helmsman presses himself to the prow. The sculpture would have originally sat at the middle of the pond, likely on a dais in the middle of the water.

The fourth statue, set back in the grotto, depicts Odysseus blinding the cyclops Polyphemus after being stranded on his island. Three soldiers accompany him, though one has been mostly destroyed.

The fifth statue is slightly mysterious. Among the others, it's somewhat anomalous, and it has, by far, gotten the least attention. It depicts Ganymede's and the eagle. As Homer tells the story, he was fated to be a hero of Troy, but was abducted and taken to Mount Olympia by Zeus in the form of an eagle in order to serve as divine cup bearer of the gods. There, he was granted immortality and eternal youth. Little is left of the sculpture: the vague shape of Ganymede, wings. Originally, it was likely situated in a niche in the rocks high above the grotto.

According to one story, the roof of Tiberius' grotto collapsed, nearly killing the emperor, and likely destroying many of the statues. Tiberius moved to Capri with the general who supposedly saved his life, and the sculptures were left behind.

It's uncertain as to whether the three sculptors ever created more works; only in recent years have they been credited with the sculptures in Tiberius' grotto, and even then, their names only come to us from Pliny the Elder, and their existence at all is somewhat uncertain.

In 1506, the Laocoön group was discovered and the Pope Julius II immediately purchased it for the Vatican. The sculpture was badly damaged by time, and many pieces were missing. Julius held a competition, judged by the painter and architect Raphael, to recreate the broken parts of the statue. Michelangelo, who was present when the statue was uncovered, suggested that the right arm of Laocoön was originally bent back behind his head, but in the Renaissance reconstructions, his arms and those of his sons are all shown upraised.

Four hundred years later, in 1906, Ludwig Pollak discovered a marble arm in a builder's yard, and believing it to be similar in style to the Laocoön group, donated it to the Vatican. For almost fifty years, it sat in storage until it was identified as the right arm of Laocoön. The Renaissance reconstructions were removed, and the sculpture, as it stands today, remains incomplete. As Michelangelo predicted, the arm is indeed bent behind the head of Laocoön.

Perhaps because of this, in 2005, Lynn Catterson argued that the sculpture was not Roman at all, but a fake produced by Michelangelo. The idea gained no popularity.

The fragments of the five statues from the grotto of Tiberius stand beside their reconstructions in the Sperlonga museum. Various reconfigurations of the statues have been suggested, but unless more marble body parts miraculously turn up, the remains are much too fragmented to produce any conclusive interpretations. As to the three sculptors who supposedly created them, they remain a mystery.