Polykleitos Research Paper

Polykleitos, a Greek sculptor from the mid-fifth century BCE, revolutionized the way sculptures were created thereafter by revealing a new way to look at the human figure. After receiving his education in Argos, a school in Greece (Kleiner, Mamiya 133), Polykleitos entered a sculpting contest to create an Amazon for the temple of Artemis at Ephesos. Phidias, who was famed for his contribution to Greek sculpture, had also entered the contest and lost to his younger rival, Polykleitos. After this competition, Polykleitos’ reputation soared (Britannica “Polykleitos”). His very name means “far famed” in Greek (Lapatin 1). Later artists deliberately used characteristics from Polykleitos’ work to better their own works, such as the architect Vitruvius
By this basic belief, Polykleitos sought to make a perfect human form by mathematical formula (Kleiner, Mamiya 133). The basic underlying structure of his Canon is made up of common fractures, or exact divisions, of the figures’ height. The precise measurements of the Canon are lost, but the scheme promoted by the Roman writer and architect Vitruvius is similar to the system of Polykleitos; the head is one eighth of the total height, width of the shoulders is one quarter of the height, and so on until the entire body is broken down to common fractures (Schultz, Wilkins 80).
Polykleitos also broke down the way the body moves into opposites. The natural split of the body makes for easy comparison and contrast; left and right, bent and straight, moving and still, active and passive, contracted and relaxed, and so on (Lapatin 5). For example, Polykleitos’ Doryphoros is cris-crossed from stiff leg to bent arm, bent leg to straight arm, and also from side to side with the head pointing right and hips turned to the left. What seems to be a relaxed standing pose is actually a really complexed, organized order to various parts of the figure (Kleiner, Mamiya