Lansdowne Hermes :: Art Analysis

Sculpture is a medium that artists in ancient Greek commonly used to express spoken truths in an unspoken form. Every piece of ancient Greek sculpture has more than what the plaza sees to explain the story behind the in this case marble.Viewing the Lansdowne Hermes with a naked spunk and what you will see is a larger than life-size statue depicting a man with an ideal body leaning with the absolute majority of his weight on his duty plunk. His right arm is resting on his right buttock in an almost effortless pose. The left side of his body tells a different story. His left foot has barely any weight on it, and his left arm is supporting a pretty large portion of cloth wrapped so it utterly wraps around the shoulder and rests just above the wrist. It appears that he was at one time holding somewhat sort of sword or stick. To the naked eye that is what this sculpture seems to be, accepting a sculpture as a piece of art. Glancing at the Lansdowne Hermes you stand appreciate beau ty of art for beauty of art. However the woodcarver had much more in mind when he created this figure from a large unscathed piece of marble.Looking deeper into the statue a trained (or imaginative) eye can see more than what is just given at a glance. The pose given by Hermes is the classical pose of contraposto. Contraposto is a pose developed where the majority of the weight is placed on one leg and the other leg in a relaxed with relatively no weight on it in a position that can both be relaxed and ready to jump to action in the same resting position. The virtually unnoticed half palm tree that Hermes is resting against gives a divine character an almost mortal because of the necessity of support on an earthly object. In the pose where the presence of strength and anticipation of a move, on that point is also the presence of a mortal presence. The balance of the counter limb activity is present in the contraposto stance expressing a certain diagonal symmetry. In the Lansdowne Hermes both the right arm and the left leg are in the resting position awaiting the next motion. The right arm is resting on the right buttock anticipating some sort of motion or action to be carried out by the seemingly dormant arm.