a greek head of the severe period

A Greek Head of the Severe PeriodAuthor(s): Brunilde Sismondo RidgwaySource: The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 56, No. 3 (Mar., 1969), pp. 121-126Published by: Cleveland Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25152264 .

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A Greek Head of the Severe Period

Of all periods of Greek art, the fifth century B.C. is

perhaps the most famous and best known. Scholars

tend to speak of it as a unit, yet it included three dis

tinct phases, each with its own characteristic style. It

can be stated with some justification that in no other

century did Greek sculpture evolve at such a rapid

pace as it did between 500 and 400 B.C. The years

from the turn of the century to the destruction of

Athens by the Persians in 480 were still characterized

by adherence to the Archaic formulas. The statues

were rigidly frontal with overly-decorative coiffures and attires; they were plausible but unnatural and

stylized representations of human beings. After 450, the tremendous impetus given to the arts by the erec

tion of the Parthenon made sculptors develop that

naturalistic, though idealized, style which is called the

High Classical and usually associated with the name

and genius of Pheidias. And sandwiched in between

480 and 450 were thirty years of an unusual and dis

tinctive sculptural fashion which partook of the past and forecast the future, but at the same time brought

a break with Archaic traditions and introduced inno

vations and tendencies not to be found again in Greek

sculpture until after 300. This period and style, after

a German definition, are called Severe.

The name alludes to the new psychological content

of the sculptures, as well as to their physical appear

ance. Human figures no longer stare straight ahead,

but turn their head to one side, or lower it as if ab

sorbed in introspection. Lips lose the Archaic smile and expressions become serious or serene at best,

sometimes even vapid and empty. Facial features are

heavy, characterized by massive chins, strong jaws, and thick lids; equally heavy is the rendering of dra

pery, with cloth acquiring a doughy appearance

which bespeaks of experimentation in clay. It is a

sober, simple style which emphasizes cubic forms and structural articulations in the naked body of the

athlete as well as in female figures, all but hidden

under the heavy Doric garment, the peplos. It is an

international style, spread by the renewed conditions of peace after the Persian upheaval, encouraged by a

new panhellenic feeling and aided by the increasing popularity of the Olympic Games. Athletes from all over the Greek world convened to Olympia in the

Peloponnese, where a host of artists was ready to

cater to their demands for victory monuments. And

it is no coincidence that just at this time the great

temple of Zeus was being erected in Olympia, with

sculptural decorations which seem the epitome of the

Severe style. The Head of a Youth in Cleveland (Figs. 1-4)1 be

longs to this artistic phase. Having been allegedly bought from a dealer in Rome around 1908 by two

American ladies (the Misses McKey of New York

City), the head was acquired in 1928 for the Cleve

land Museum and was briefly published in the Mu

seum Bulletin the following year. Since then it has

received only scant attention and two brief mentions

and illustrations in works of major importance; yet it is a piece of considerable interest, fully deserving

more extensive description and publication, and I am

most grateful to John Cooney for passing on to me

this opportunity of re-introducing the Cleveland Head to the scholarly world.

The head, slightly under life-size, is carved out of

greyish, large-grained marble containing shiny specks of mica, which might have come from one of the

Greek islands, possibly Thasos. Our piece broke off from the original statue at mid neck, and at some

point it must have been at least partly under water

since the weathering of the left cheek and part of the

forehead is heavier than that caused by simple atmo

spheric agents. As a result some of the features-es

pecially the left eye-are blurred, and the entire sur

face of the face is pitted and corroded in contrast

121



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with the smooth finish of the nape area. Besides the loss of its body, the head has suffered further damage.

A heavy blow has removed a large chip from the

right half of the cranium and caused a crack running

obliquely through the forehead to the left eye. An other break has removed a good portion of the prom

inent chin, while minor chipping mars the neck, the ear rims, the forehead over the right eye, and the

hair roll. The nose is partly broken off and partly eroded. To judge by the present condition, the statue

must have been exposed to the elements from the front and somewhat obliquely from the proper left,

while the right cheek and the back remained rela

tively protected; but how much of the weathering is due to the original setting of the piece and how much to the location of the head after breakage is impos

sible to tell. The head is remarkable for its cubic structure. The

outline of the heavy face continues almost unbroken into the contour of the skull, with minor interruption of the forehead curls and the twisted roll. The thickly set neck is almost square in section, though at the

nape the higher projection of the right trapezium muscle breaks the flatness and suggests that the head was slightly turned to one side. This supposition is confirmed by the asymmetrical carving of the face,

whose features lie on a more superficial plane on the

left than on the right half, even in the present state

of corrosion.

Because of the poor condition of the original sur

face it is difficult to analyze details, but the over-all

pattern is clear. The features are well distributed

within the face with a regularity and sense of propor

tion typical of the Severe style, yet minor deviations, such as the higher left eyebrow, impart to the head a

naturalistic touch. The eyes, now blurred in their

contours, still display thick eyelids; the straight mouth has a fleshier lower lip, well detached from the rounded prominent chin. The cubic impression conveyed by the head is accentuated by the low fore

head and the proportionately high dome, to which the hair strands closely adhere. Indeed, the hair ren

dering of the Cleveland Head is one of its most dis

tinctive characteristics. Contemporary pieces suggest wavy hair by plastically-raised concentric circles around the skull crossed at right angles by engraved

wavy lines; the Museum's Head limits its rendering

to the latter, finely cut over the ovoid dome, with wider and deeper grooves stemming at irregular in

tervals from the center to indicate groups of strands

in a radial pattern. Over the forehead the ribbon-like

strands terminate in spiral corkscrew curls as an

elaborate form of bangs; at the back the long hair is

rolled tightly around a fillet, possibly of metal, which encircles the head. It is interesting to follow the sculpt

ing process: the artist must first have outlined the

ledge-like roll with abrasives, so that a clear groove set it off at right angles from the skull; he then pro

ceeded to engrave the individual strands in continu ous lines from dome to roll. He had some difficulty in connecting these two areas on the central axis over

the nape, where he tried to suggest the crossing of the

strands in a divergent course; as a result, the deeper

grooves of the skull connect with those on the roll at

the proper left, but not at the proper right of the axis.

Over the forehead the sculptor suggested the tran

sition between flat strand and corkscrew curls by

means of fine undercutting with a small drill and used the same tool to accentuate the center of the

locks (Fig. 5). A marked change in male coiffures occurred from

the Archaic to the Severe period. In the former phase, youths were regularly portrayed with long flowing hair, turning progressively shorter as the end of the

style approached. Later in the fifth century, long strands became a means of characterizing a divinity,

as contrasted with the short coiffures of human

beings. But at the very beginning of the Severe period this distinction had not yet been fully developed.

Athletes, who needed freedom of action in their

gymnastic feats, were often represented with long hair rolled up or otherwise bound,2 yet the coiffure of the Cleveland Youth seems unique. Indeed the first published description referred to the roll as "two braids bound about the head like a fillet." This fash ion of braided hair (sometimes, though disputedly, referred to as the "krobylos") was popular for youths around 480; by 450 it was already old-fashioned and reserved for elderly men or divinities. In its most

famous version the krobylos appears on the so-called

Blond Boy from the Athenian Acropolis (Fig. 6).3 Two tightly-knit braids originate behind the ears, cross each other at the nape and are tied together over

the center of the forehead, though the knot is hidden 124



- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~1 R Figure 5. Detail, Head of a Youth.

under the loose strands cascading forward from the crown. A similar coiffure, though different in indi vidual details, appears on a head in Thessaly,4 where a broad ribbon binding the forehead underlies the 4 thick forehead locks. A third head in Cyrene,5 North

Africa, sports not one but two rows of snail curls U,:

around the face; the braids are bound above, not below them, as in the previous examples. Two more heads, one in Cyprus6 and one found in Corinth in 1964,7 repeat this latter fashion which somewhat ' resembles the fillet-roll arrangement of the Cleveland Youth. Moreover all five heads bear a strong affinity to our piece in the distinctive cubic structure of face and neck, the prominent jaws, the thick-lidded eyes, and smooth contour of the skull, which in the Cypri ote head is divided into sections by evenly spaced straight grooves. But none of these works displays the extremely fine engraving of the dome strands so

typical of the Cleveland Head and which strongly :

recalls metal techniques. Indeed, the only close parallel to this rendering

occurs on a bronze statue from Selinus, Sicily: the so-called Castelvetrano Youth (Fig. 7).8 This remark able work (stolen in 1962 and dramatically recovered . ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~2 "I by the Italian police in March 1968) is a typical prod- - uct of a provincial workshop; little in its face, with _

apprehensive expression and ill-proportioned fea tures, can recall the Cleveland Head. The hair ren dering over the dome is, however, remarkably sim- - ilar, even in the detail of irregular sections formed

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by wavy grooves. Conversely, in the bronze Youth these strands terminate uniformly in clearly spaced IL

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loops around a fillet, a rendering exemplified also by x', ' " a bronze statuette in the Cleveland Museum collec tion (Fig. 8)9 and even known from marble statues, as for instance the famous Kritian Boy from the

Athenian Acropolis.10 Another marble piece, the Youth from Agrigento in Sicily (Fig. 9) ,11 is perhaps closest to the Cleveland Head in the tight treatment of the roll over the nape, even to the detail of the

Figure 6. Archaic Head of a Youth (Blond Boy). Marble, early 5th century B.C. Greek, Archaic. Acropolis Museum,

Athens (Photo: courtesy of Bryn Mawr College).



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Figure 7. Castelvetrano Youth. Bronze, H. 33-1/8 inches, late 6th century B.. Greek, Severe period.

Selinus, Sicily (Photo: courtesy of Bryn Mawr College).

diverging strands; but the roll ends just above the

ears and the supporting fillet is clearly visible around

the front half of the dome, overlying the balancing roll above the forehead. I know of no exact parallel to the Cleveland Youth's coiffure, which seems al

most a cross between the braided krobylos and the

nape roll.

Where was the Cleveland Head made? The wide dis

tribution of the general type, as exemplified by the

heads from the Athenian Acropolis, Thessaly, Cyre

naica, Cyprus, Corinth, and Sicily, makes specific

attributions difficult. Of the scholars who have dealt

with the Museum's piece, Orlandos has considered

it Argive; Langlotz possibly Aeginetan; and Kukahn

generically Ionian. A possible clue may be furnished

by the fact that our head was acquired in Italy. Since

the closest parallels to its coiffure appear in Sicily, it

is perhaps logical to surmise th cent oury piece, too, was

made on that island, whence it might easible have made on that island, whence it might easily have

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Figure 8. Detail, Athlete. Bronze, H. 7-3/4 inches, ca.460 B.C. Greek, Attic.

Gift of Hanna Fund. 55.684

found its way to Rome-either in modern times or

during the late Republican period, when the Romans were avidly collecting Greek art.

Another point of difficult solution is the correct

chronology of the work. When first published, the Cleveland Head was defined as an Augustan copy after an original of the early fifth century; Orlandos and Kukahn after him have dated it around 470. The obvious similarity with undoubted Severe originals leaves no question as to the style of our head and

nothing in its technique suggests that such style is

rendered at second hand through the intermediary of a copyist. Indeed a later artist would have been

tempted to impart a softer, more naturalistic appear

ance to the angular hair roll. Tiny drill holes marking both the center of the corkscrew curls and their sep aration from the flat strands have at times been con

sidered evidence of late date. But similarly pierced locks appear, for instance, on the famous Apollo

126



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Figure 9. Detail, Agrigento Youth.

Marble, ca.490 B.C. Greek, late Archaic.

Museo Civico Archaeologico, Agrigento.

from the West Pediment of the temple of Zeus at

Olympia, and small drill holes mark the interstices between the curls of the Cypriote head.'2 While

punctuation with the drill was common during the

Severe period, this mannerism does not appear in

classicizing works of the first century B.C. in pseudo Severe style; and though present in some Archaistic

creations, the larger size of the drill employed and

the decorative intent behind its use produce entirely different effects. It is indeed likely that the drill work above the corkscrew curls of our head was not appar ent to the viewer when the unbroken statue stood in its original setting, on a high pedestal. It seems therefore best to consider the Cleveland Head of a

Youth part of an important Greek statue representing perhaps a victorious Sicilian athlete of the year ca.470 B.C.

BRUNILDE SISMONDO RIDGWAY

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College

1. 28.195 Head of a Youth, marble, ca.470 B.C., H. 7-5/8 inches. Greek, Sicily(?), Severe period. Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund. Publ: CMA Bulletin, xvI (Janu ary 1929), 7-8; Art News (February 9, 1929), p. 22; A. Orlandos, "O Poseidon tou Artemisiou," Archaiologikon Deltion, xm (1930), 91-92, figs. 32-33 [The verbal opin ion by E. Langlotz is mentioned in this text.]; E. Kukahn,

Anthropoide Sarkophage in Beyrouth (Berlin, 1955), pp. 34-35, fig. 12. 2. For a peculiar arrangement, possibly limited to Sicily, see a head in Hannover and its two parallels in Dresden and Vienna in W. Amelung, "Archaischer Jtinglingskopf in Hannover," Jahrbuch des deutschen archaologischen Instituts, xxxv (1920), 49-59, pls. 4-6. 3. Athens, Acropolis Museum No. 689. Publ: G. M. A. Richter, Kouroi, Archaic Greek Youths (1960), figs. 570 571. 4. Mitteilungen des deutschen archdologisches Instituts, Athenische Abteilung, LXV (1940), pls. 63-66. 5. E. Paribeni, Catalogo delle Sculture di Cirene (1959), pis. 20-21. 6. P. Dikaios, Guide to the Cyprus Museum (Nicosia, 1947), pl. 20:2. 7. Miriam Ervin, "News Letter from Greece," American Journal of Archaeology, LXXI (1967), 297 and pl. 90, fig. 9. 8. E. Langlotz and M. Hirmer, The Art of Magna Graecia (London, 1965), pl. 81. 9. 55.684 Athlete, bronze, ca.460 B.C., H. 7-3/4 inches.

Greek, Attic. Gift of Hanna Fund. Publ: CMA Bulletin, XLVI (February 1959), 19-24. Extensively published. 10. Athenian Acropolis No. 698. Publ: G. M. A. Richter,

Kouroi, Archaic Greek Youths (1960), figs. 564-569. From the Athenian Acropolis comes also another head which might be comparable to the Cleveland Youth, but its state of completion and preservation renders interpre tation difficult. The piece (Acropolis 657), appears almost unfinished, with the left side left largely undetailed. The hair roll, which encircles the head completely, is left plain except for the indication of three twisted strands above the right ear; it is broken off in the area of the forehead.

The hair calotte is left smooth, with a tongue-like projec tion stretching under the roll at the nape. Temples and forehead display a series of holes for the insertion of

metal curls. The head is illustrated in E. Schrader, E. Langlotz and W.-H. Schuchhardt, Die archaischen Mar morbildwerke der Akropolis (Frankfurt, 1939), no. 324, pl. 152, text p. 246, where the theory is advanced that the piece might belong to a metope or high relief, carved by the same workshop which made the Kritian Boy. 11. Richter, figs. 547-549. 12. Examples also exist from the Archaic period. See, e.g., H. Payne and G. Young, Archaic Marble Sculpture from the Akropolis (1936), pl. 27 (Acropolis Kore No. 669), pl. 32 (the "Peplos Kore," Acropolis No. 679), pl. 40 (Acropolis Kore No. 682), et al. Cf. also the coiffures on the so-called Harpy Tomb reliefs, E. Akurgal, Die Kunst Anatoliens, figs. 87-89.



a greek head of the severe period

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