<A>Augustus in armour (Spearman of Polycletus): *
an idealized image of Augustus showing a standard pose of a Roman orator based on the 5th-century BC statue of the Spear Bearer (Doryphoros) by. The Doryphoros's contrapposto stance, creating diagonals between tense and relaxed limbs, a feature typical of classical sculpture, is adapted here & the pose of the statue's legs is similar to Doryphoros. The right leg is taut, while the left leg is relaxed, as if the statue is moving forward. The Romans (mistakenly) identified the Doryphoros as representing Achilles therby making the model all the more appropriate for this image. Despite the Republican influence in the portrait head, the overall style is closer to Hellenistic idealization than to the realism of Roman portraiture. The reason for this style shift is the acquisition of Greek art. Following each conquest, the Romans brought back large amounts of Greek art. This flow of Greek artefacts changed Romans' aesthetic tastes; and these art pieces were regarded as a symbol of wealth and status for the Roman upper class.
2 illustrations
<B>
Lenbach (and Rembrandt): *
LEFT portrait Richard Wagner by Lenbach
RIGHT self portrait by Rembrandt
<C>
Makart (and Rubens): *
BELOW LEFT-panel oil painting entitled The Five Senses, 1872-79. It is a study in the nude, depicting 5 different views of his ideal female form under the guise of the 5 senses: the senses of smelling, seeing, hearing, feeling and tasting. Each of the five senses is represented by the action of the female nude.
BELOW RIGHT-English: The Three Graces, Rubens, 1635, oil on canvas
<D>
Egyptian portrait (Amasis I to Cleopatra): *
“For 1500 years (Amasis I to Cleopatra) Egypticism piled portrait on portrait in the same way.”
see ILLUSTRATION D
<E>
Turfan : *
Spengler is rather imprecise in this reference. He probably knew of the expeditions to this area. In 1896 the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin discovered ruins on the outskirts of Khotan. These ruins included hundreds of wooden houses, a "Temple of Buddha", walls covered in earthen plaster & paintings, fragments of paper with indecipherable characters, a life-size gypsum foot & a series of Buddha images. A 2nd expedition led by Aurel Stein went to the Tarim basin in 1900, following the footsteps of Hedin. He continued excavations near Khotan & uncovered further structures, including dwellings & a number of Buddhist shrines. Among the documents discovered were a variety of scripts on paper, wooden tablets, sticks, Buddhist texts. These cities on the Silk Road would have hosted caravans from India, which might have been carrying Indian Sanskrit texts, to include Indian dramas.
BELOW LEFT- Tarim basin map BELOW RIGHT Silk Road map
<F>
Chinese painting (post Han dynasty): *
“Chinese painting as we know it shows not an evolution but an up-and-down of fashions for more than a thousand years on end; and this unsteadiness must have set in as early as the Han period.”
see ILLUSTRATION F