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

and degrees in which this combination occurs is actually the principle on which the
concept of style in Classical Greek animal sculpture is based. In fact, these varieties of
combination, especially that of inconsistency, as evidenced by the above survey, does not
only define the style of Classical sculptures of lions and dogs, but extends also to those of
the Archaic period. What representations of animals in Greek sculpture indicate,
therefore, is that an interplay of conflicting elements persists as the defining principle of
style in the Archaic and Classical phases of Greek art. One needs to consider that such an
interplay also extends to the human form in both the Archaic and Classical periods of
Greek sculpture. As already noted, Childs has pointed out that a combination of similarly
conflicting elements also characterizes representations of the human form in Classical
sculpture whose style is defined by a combination of “knowable reality” and the artists’
impressions of visible appearances. That preceding—Archaic and early Classical—
sculpture is not immune to this idea is evidenced, for example, by certain pieces of
sculpture, such as the earliest Attic kouroi, whose clenched hand “is actually incorrect,
and the fingers have been given one extra joint…[thus] a total of four, rather than the
natural three, phalanges,” as Ridgway notes, and also by the early Classical sphinx from
Aegina, whose purely human head “is disturbingly naturalistic,” unlike its non-
naturalistic animal body. 190 As can be seen in this case, the human form develops in
contrast to the animal one which does not. This paradigm, therefore, shows an interplay
of accuracy and stylization; in other words, it embraces two essentially conflicting
notions/elements in the formation of style.
This evidence notwithstanding, another approach from which the scholarly works
cited so far refrain is to take into account the cultural context in which the animal
190 Ridgway, The Archaic Style 80 and The Severe Style 36, figs. 51-52 respectively.
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