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| Anonymous Swiss Artist after Jacques-Louis David Paris and Helen ca. 1820 enamel on gold (top of snuffbox) Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Johann Balthazar Probst after Victor Honoré Janssens Wrath of Achilles 1721 etching Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig |
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| Ludwig von Schwanthaler Hector and Andromache 1838 drawing (sculpture group by von Schwanthaler) Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Virgil Solis Battle between Greeks and Trojans ca. 1550-60 woodcut (illustration to Ovid's Metamorphoses) Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel |
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| Johann Balthazar Probst after Victor Honoré Janssens Achilles mourning Patroclus 1721 etching Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig |
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| Pierre Courteys Battle before the Walls of Troy before 1586 enamel on copper Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Johann Balthazar Probst after Victor Honoré Janssens Achilles dragging the Corpse of Hector 1721 etching Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig |
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| Eberhard Siegfried Henne Priam supplicating Achilles ca. 1800 etching Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel |
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| Anonymous German Artist The Trojan Horse ca. 1464 drawing, with added watercolor Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Pierre Courteys The Trojan Horse before 1586 enamel on copper Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna |
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| Virgil Solis Ajax disputing with Odysseus over the Armour of Achilles ca. 1550-60 woodcut (illustration to Ovid's Metamorphoses) Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel |
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| Max Klinger Cassandra ca. 1903 marble (partly painted) Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Ancient Greek Culture in South Italy Cassandra seated on Altar 350 BC terracotta statuette Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève |
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| Johann Heinrich Lips after Johann Heinrich Meyer Ajax seizing Cassandra at the Altar of Athena 1794 aquatint Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich |
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| Samuel Bottschild Aeneas carrying Anchises out of Burning Troy ca. 1690 etching Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel |
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| Gérard de Lairesse Venus presenting the Armour of Vulcan to Aeneas 1668 oil on canvas Museum Mayer van der Bergh, Antwerp |
For as soon as the Greeks looked at the Egyptian figure type from the aspect of an art which wants to "convince," it undoubtedly raised the question why it looks unconvincing. It is the reaction we express when we speak of its "rigid posture." It might be argued that this reaction itself is due to our Greek education; it was the Greeks who taught us to ask "How does the statue stand?" or even "Why does he stand like that?" Applied to a pre-Greek work of art, it may be senseless to ask this question. The Egyptian statue does not represent a man standing rigidly or a man standing at ease – it is concerned with the what, not with the how. To ask for more might have struck an Egyptian artist as it would strike us if someone inquired the age or mood of the king on the chessboard.
We have no early documents to prove that the Greeks did begin to ask such "inappropriate" questions, but later texts illustrate the fact that from a new point of view, Egyptian art provoked such misunderstanding. We have seen, after all, that Plato considered that Egyptian reliefs represented certain sanctified postures. We also know that Heliodorus puzzled his mind over why the Egyptians rendered their gods with closed feet and that he suggested this was intended to symbolize their swiftness. But the most telling document of this change of attitude toward the symbolic image concerns not an Egyptian but an archaic Greek work and the way it was reinterpreted in a narrative context in a later period. We know from Philostratus' life of Apollonius that there was an archaic statue of one Milo in Olympia, standing on a disk with his two feet close together; in his left hand he grasped a pomegranate; the fingers of his right hand were extended and held tightly together. "The people of Olympia thought that these features showed Milo to have been so inflexible and firm that he could never be induced to budge from the spot where he stood; and this is the meaning of the clenched fingers . . . and why they look as if they could not be separated." Apollonius knew better. He told his guides that these puzzling traits were due to the archaic style of the sculpture.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)