Religion and Art in Ancient Greece | Page 5

forms
and formulae almost for what we may call magic reasons, there was
also a sentiment about the matter which gave popular support to the
tendency. Thus Pausanias probably expresses a common feeling when
he says that the images made by Daedalus, "though somewhat strange
in aspect, yet seem to be distinguished by something in them of the
divine."

It is true that these early images attributed to Daedalus showed already
a considerable advance on the shapeless or roughly shaped stocks or
stones that had served as the most primitive objects of worship; but it
was their resemblance to these rather than their difference from them
that impressed the imagination of Pausanias. He appreciated them not
so much as examples of an art that promised much for the future, but
rather as linked with the past by the tradition of an immemorial sanctity.
We find, in fact, that the rude early images remained the centres of state
cult and official worship, as well as of popular veneration, long after
the art of sculpture had become capable of providing their worshippers
with more adequate embodiments of the gods they represented. It was
the early image of Athena, not the Athena Parthenos by Phidias, that
was annually washed in the sea, and for which the peplos was woven
by the chosen women of Athens. The connection between art and
religion is, in such a case, reduced to narrow limits; but, on the other
hand, we hear of many instances where new statues of the gods were
made as temple statues, to be the chief objects of worship and centres
of cult. And this was sometimes done with the official sanction of the
gods themselves, as expressed through the oracle of Delphi.
The sanctity of the old image was sometimes transferred to the new one;
a striking example of this is seen in the case of Artemis Brauronia on
the Athenian Acropolis. It had been the custom for the garments
presented to the goddess by her worshippers to be placed upon her
primitive statue; and when a new and worthier representation of the
goddess was placed in the temple in the fourth century, we are
informed by inscriptions that dedicated garments were sometimes hung
upon it, even though it was a statue from the hand of Praxiteles. It
sometimes happened that the old and the new statues stood side by side
in the same temple, or in adjacent temples, and they seem then to
exemplify the two kinds of idolatry--the literal and the imaginative--the
one being the actual subject of the rites ceremonially observed, and the
other being the visible presentment of the deity, and helping the
worshipper to concentrate his prayers and aspirations. Here the art of
the sculptor had the fullest scope, and it is in such cases that he could,
as Quintilian said of Phidias, "make some addition to the received
religion."

This duality was, however, the result of accident rather than the normal
arrangement, and, so long as the primitive image remained the official
object of worship, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the new and
more artistic statue to have its full religious effect. In many cases,
probably in most cases, it was actually substituted, sooner or later, for
the earlier embodiment of the deity. Sometimes the early image, which
was often of wood, may have decayed or been worn away by the
attentions lavished upon it; we hear of a statue of which the hand had
perished under the kisses of the devout. We hear also of cases in which
it had been entirely lost--for instance, the Black Demete of Phigalia, an
uncouth image with a horse's head; here, when a plague had warned the
people to replace it, the AEginetan sculptor Onatas undertook the task;
and he is said to have been vouchsafed a vision in sleep which enabled
him to reproduce exactly this unsightly idol. It would not seem that
such a commission gave much scope to his artistic powers; but it is
noteworthy that the Phigalians employed one of the most famous
sculptors of the day. Elsewhere the conditions were more favourable,
and it was possible for the artist, while conforming to the accepted type,
to give it a more correct form and more pleasing features.
Daedalus, we are told--and in this story Daedalus is an impersonation
of the art of the early sculptors in Greece--made statues of the gods so
life-like that they had to be chained to their pedestals for fear they
should run away. It is likely that this tale goes back to a genuine
tradition; for Pausanias actually saw statues with fetters attached to
them in several early shrines in Greece. The device is natural enough.
Daedalus was a magician as well as a sculptor; and if he could give his