Late Classical, 430 - 323 BCE:       The Sculpture:      Aphrodite of Knidos, by Praxiteles.   Hermes and Dionysos, unknown sculptor, but sculpted in the style of Praxiteles.   In the Late Classical period, which dates from the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in 430 BCE and ends with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, the canon of proportions established in the works of Polycleitus in the High Classical is remade.  The thick, muscular model of the Doryphoros is thinned out and made more graceful and sinuous, as seen in the work and style of Praxiteles.  In works such as Hermes and Dionysus, which may not be the actual work of Praxiteles but is certainly indicative of his style, a change from the symmetry and rational balance of the Doryphoros to a more sensuous, flowing form.  The weight of the figure remains shifted onto one leg, but here a sinuous curve in the body is more pronounced.  Perhaps related to Praxiteles’ new, fluid model of proportion is his popularization of the female nude.  He was so skilled at conveying this more naturalistic model that his Aphrodite of Knidos supposedly prompted observers to say that the goddess of love herself would have exclaimed “Where can Praxiteles have seen me naked?”  Apoxyomenos, by Lysippos. Also, there developed a new relationship between the sculpted figure and its enclosing space.  In the earlier years of the Classical period, sculptures had been intended for viewing from only one or two certain angles, usually frontal.  During the Late Classical period, the sculptor began to create figures that interacted with their environment in all three dimensions: these figures could be viewed from any angle with equal effectiveness.   This dimensional innovation is generally credited to Lysippos, personal sculptor for Alexander the Great.  His statue Apoxyomenos (a young man scraping mud and sweat from his body before bathing*) has the properties of the Praxitelean canon of proportions, but has arms outstretched in the act of scraping, reaching out to enclose a three-dimensional space.  The arm of the figure extends directly forward, between the statue and the viewer.  In order to truly sculpt a figure that is as the eye would see it, the artist must make the figure real in three-dimensional space, as the eye views it from every angle.  In the late Classical and future Hellenistic period, free-standing sculpture will move further away from the strict frontal pose of the Early and high Classical periods, into a more free figure in terms of pose and position.   * This was common practice for ancient Greek athletes.

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