The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

Introduction
It is generally thought that the style of representations of animals in Classical
Greek sculpture is problematic because it exhibits a combination of contradictory or
inconsistent traits, specifically naturalistic and non-naturalistic elements. Trudy Kawami
illustrates the idea in her discussion of a fourth-century B.C. statue of a dog found in the
Athenian Kerameikos (Fig. 1):
This “Hound of the Kerameikos”…has…powerful, naturalistic forms, heavy
shoulders, thick legs and large paws [but it also exhibits] subtle leonine qualities,
[such as] the heavy compact chest, the well-sprung, almost barrel-like rib cage,
and the carefully modeled toes with claws….The Kerameikos hound is lion-like. 1
The contradiction inherent in the style of the Kerameikos dog does not accord well with
the interpretation of Greek naturalistic style, which, as the defining characteristic of the
art of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., is generally known for its adherence to a strict
imitation of the external world. The combination of opposing, canine and leonine,
stylistic elements in this statue has been explained as a reflection of “the common
apotropaic functions of the two species of animals in both the Aegean and the Near
East.” 2 Other discussions of the problematic style of Classical Greek animal sculpture
have interpreted this phenomenon in fundamentally negative terms: as the result of
artists’ inability, misunderstanding, or failure to depict animal anatomy accurately, lack
of real models, and also as a mix of artists’ copying from Near Eastern and Bronze Age
animal models and observing only such comparable animals as were available.
These interpretations do not take into account the conceptual context of Classical
Greek culture, of which these animal sculptures are the products. What is lacking,
1 T. S. Kawami, “Greek Art and Persian Taste: Some Animal Sculptures from Persepolis,” AJA 90 (1986) 262.
2 Kawami, “Greek Art and Persian Taste” 262.
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