“The restoration of the muzzle and lower jaw, which was done around the beginning of the twentieth century, is too large for the rest of the lion and, therefore causes the lion to have a stupid rather than a fierce expression.” (Grossman 88)
PP: The sculptor’s attempting to show the facial expression and miscalculating in the process. Overall, this is the huge advancement in term of understanding lion’s anatomy, and carving method using a tooth chisel tool. The Lion’s muscles and body features were rendered in a naturalistic manner. The 310 B.C lion is arguably the best looking among lion sculptures, because of the details it shows. It also conveys facial expression of the animal and has most realized sculpture. The 380 B.C lion seems like incomplete statue, as it lacks detail, texture and naturalistic feature. And finally, the quality of 325 B.C lion is placed between 310 and 380 B.C. It has a good form, nicely done texture, but it was too idealized.
In order to understand the origin and purpose of those funerary lion sculpture. We have to go back about Hellenistic period. After Alexander the Great has achieved his greatest victory, he united all his colonies under one empire, and this event lead to the cultural diffusion. The ancient Greek …show more content…
It can’t be a coincidence when Vermeule points out the movement from idealism toward realism. Which happens to be at the same time Isokrates finished his work on “lion’s training and education”. There is more thesis about rendering lions in Greek, such as hunting lion “about Mt. Pangaios and Kittos beyond Macedonia”, or appearing of Asian lions in Greece, even though there were traces left to be found. But the most important fact is that the Greek artists must have an acceptable model near late of the fourth century B.C. If the artist were switching from idealism to realism, they would need something else to