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

is still central to his argument, but a new element is added now: artists’ dissatisfaction
with existing mental images. This condition, he asserts, led to closer observation of
nature, which, in turn, gave rise to increasingly naturalistic images in Archaic art:
It is worth while to note the manner in which art, when strong enough to observe,
turns to account its observations of nature. For this it appears to me specially
significant that in the more developed archaic period, as has often been noticed,
there is a relatively greater conformity to nature in the representations of objects
less commonly seen, as of animals rather than of men, particularly those animals
with which men are not daily associated, of men of foreign races rather than those
of their own kind, and so on. In all these cases the artists had not at once at their
disposal a more or less satisfactory memory-picture, and so being compelled to
observe nature they imitated her closely. But it must not therefore be supposed
that these productions represent pictures made on the spot; judged by their entire
structure, the typical generalization of line, the exhibition of the fullest aspect and
so on, they too betray themselves as being memory-pictures assimilated to the
common store although consciously acquired. 66
Löwy explains the increase of naturalism in Archaic Greek art as a reaction to
dissatisfaction with previous conceptual images. His argument unfolds in a circular way.
He starts first by acknowledging the expanded repertoire and the increasing naturalism of
subjects in Archaic art, where animals are included, but mentioned only fleetingly. Löwy
attributes these new conditions to the unavailability of satisfactory mental images, which,
he asserts, exhorted artists to observe nature closely, transformed mental images, and, as
such, launched the emergence of Archaic images of “greater conformity to nature.” This
characterization along with the calling of the Archaic period as “more developed”
consolidate Löwy’s view of this period as a step beyond of the earlier one, and
consequently, of preclassical Greek art as a successive advancement in terms of
increasing naturalism.
66 Translation: Fothergill: Loewy, Rendering 26-27.
41