Canon of Polykleitos

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Raya
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Canon of Polykleitos

Post by Raya »

I am trying to find a Greek text known as the Canon of Polykleitos, and having a very hard time of it! I need it in English translation, but if I could find it in Greek as well that would be brilliant...

To my knowledge, the text only survives through quotation in Galen's writings. I have a reference, although I don't quite know what it means or what to do with it:
Galen, <i>De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 5</i>, p.3. 16 Kühn

But, failing to find a copy of the original text... does anyone here know anything about the contents of the Canon? I mean I know generally that it laid out Polykleitos' chiastic theory - presenting a set of 'rules' for creating the perfect human sculpture - but does anyone know what these rules were?

Emma_85
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Post by Emma_85 »

I just googled a bit, but you probably just found the same stuff :-(:

What we know of it is that it dealt with contrapost and I read somewhere that Botticelli's Venus was painted with some information from that canon.

"Greek sculptor Polykleitos gave a sense of proportions of human figure in treatise "Canon" that was practically embodied in his sculpture "Doryphoros"."

"Polykleitos' book is lost, but we know from other writers who refer to him
that he used some form of a module system:
He used one part of the body (we don't know what part) as a basic unit of measure
and measured out the rest of his sculptures of the human body in terms of that module"

"The possibility of some link between Polykleitos (or Polyclitus) and the Pythagoreans was suggested already by Diels in 1889. Raven (1951) presented his arguments that probably there was a Pythagorean source where the Canon of Polyclitus was summarized and this work was used by both Vitruvius and Galen. Pollitt (1974, p. 18-21), continuing Raven's work, went even further and suggested that this link was mutual. Specifically, Polykleitos was influenced by, and perhaps contributed to, the Pythagorean doctrine of number and symmetria (commensurability). The latter view has got a further support by Stewart (1978, pp. 127 and 131).

Raven, J. E. (1951) Polyclitus and Pythagoreanism, Classical Quarterly, 45 [= New Series, Vol. 1], 147-152.

Pollitt, J. J. (1974) The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. [See the chapter "Polyclitus's Canon and the idea of symmetria", pp. 14-22].

Stewart, A. F. (1978) The canon of Polykleitos: A question of evidence, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 98 122-131."

Keesa
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Post by Keesa »

Emma_85 wrote:
"Polykleitos' book is lost, but we know from other writers who refer to him
that he used some form of a module system:
He used one part of the body (we don't know what part) as a basic unit of measure
and measured out the rest of his sculptures of the human body in terms of that module"
I don't know if this will help-probably not-but Mamma and the other artists she hangs out with usually use the head. i.e., the body is so many heads high; the shoulders are so many heads wide, etc. And they don't always use whole units; fractions are allowed (two and a half heads, for example.)

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