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Kairos,
marble relief, 1 st century AD. Collection of the monastery
of St Nicholas, Trogir. A Hellenistic sculpture of a running
naked youth personifying the divinty of the "fleeting
moment" or "lucky chance".
It is enough to compare any fragment
of the noble and restrained Greek art with stone fragments
from the Illyro-Celtic buildings at Nesactium with their
crudely executed spiral patterns, or even meanders taken
from Greek tradition. |
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Again, a
comparison between the typical Hellenistic marble relief
of Kairos - divinity of the fleeting moment - from Tragurion
(Trogir), perhaps brought to the town later, and the Horseman,
a stone relief from Nesactium (an outstanding example of
iron-age sculpture) will suffice to illuminate the differences
in outlook and the gulf that separated these two neighbouring
cultures on the artistic and spiritual planes in that period.
In contrast to the softness of moulding of the Greek relief
conveying beneath the surface the play of straining muscles
of the running naked youth, his hair streaming, while the
back of the head is bald (for it you miss your chance, the
"fleeting moment", you will never manage to grab
it by the -hair from behind as it passes you by), the stone
carver from the centre of the Illyrian Histri treated the
mass in summary fashion, roughly suggesting the parts of
the body, and making no attempt at realistic proportions,
let alone convincing presentation of the subject or definition
of detail. Equally striking would be a comparison between
the exquisite bronze head of a Greek goddess (Artemis?)
from Vis, with silver whites of the eyes and long flowing
hair, and the naturalistic, crudely carved figure of a fertility
goddess from Nesactium. |
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