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

judged by the ancient Greeks? As suggested earlier, extant literary evidence strongly
suggests that animals can offer a valuable insight into this question.
b. Modern Theories of the Development of Greek Art in Terms of Naturalism
First, however, it is necessary to examine modern theories of the development of
Greek art in connection with naturalism. Four figures are particularly significant in this
connection: Emanuel Löwy, Ernst Gombrich, John Boardman, and William Childs. The
following section discusses the theories of these scholars as well as the different
conceptions—psychological, historical, technical, and art-historical—that shaped them.
With the exception of that of Childs’s, the common element of the remaining theories is
that dissatisfaction of the ancient Greeks with how insufficiently naturalistic their art
looked provided the impetus for the development of Greek art toward naturalism. The
human figure is the focus of all these theories.
Emanuel Löwy
In his study, Die Naturwiedergrabe in der älteren griechischen Kunst (1900),
Emanuel Löwy offers an account of preclassical Greek art (drawing, sculpture) framed by
the concept of increasing naturalism. Animals are marginal to this account, which is
dominated by the idea that “statuary [is], in its principal task, the representation of the
human form.” 64 Löwy explains the creation of artistic forms in early Greek art as the
64 E. Löwy, Die Naturwiedergrabe in der älteren griechischen Kunst (Rome, 1900) = E. Loewy, tr. E.
Fothergill, The Rendering of Nature in Early Greek Art (London, 1907) 45. This statement identifies Löwy
as a possible source for Richter’s previously expressed comment that, in her time, existing scholarship
considered the human figure the sole focus of ancient Greek sculpture. For a discussion of the influence of
Löwy’s lectures in Rome to Richter’s scholarly program, see Donohue, The Problem of Description 111-
112, n. 275.
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