The Development of Hindu Iconography c15.2.4

c15.2.4

his study of proportion seems to indicate at once an imitation of Polyclitus and a departure from his *Canon*.² In the Hellenistic age such treatises became quite common, and this fact was not a little due to the influence of the great artist of this age, Lysippus, one of the most prolific sculptors of ancient Hellas. He was looked upon by the later Hellenistic artists and art-critics as the most academic of sculptors; he revolutionised the system of proportions adopted by his predecessors such as Polyclitus and others and introduced many technical innovations and improvements which he derived from a direct and thorough study of nature. The activities of the two artists of the Pergamene school, *viz*., Antigonus and Xenocrates (3rd-2nd century B.C.), who were both writers on art and practical sculptors, can be directly traced to the school of Lysippas. They ‘are cited by Pliny as authorities; and very probably their works commonly served as a basis for the treatises of the later writers’ (E. A. Gardner, *op. cit.*, p. 2). Most of the artists mentioned above not only made figures of mere mortal men such as the Greek athletes, where they could display their keen sense of modelling the human body, but also fashioned divine images, such as those of Zeus, Hera, Nike, Aphrodite and a host of other Greek deities.