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

traces of Winckelmann’s ideas. 75 Regardless of their possible origin of inspiration, these
two conditions support Gombrich’s view of Greek art as a product directly influenced by
preexisting (Homer) and contemporary cultural conditions. The fact that he perceives the
acquisition of skilled craftsmanship not as advancement in technique, but as
experimentation with artistic media owing to new ideas is especially interesting. As
Gombrich marks above, “the sculptors in their workshops tried new ideas and ways of
representing the human figure.” The precedence of ideas is also stressed in the
Reflections, where he declares that “what makes it [Greek revolution] unique is
“precisely the directed efforts, the continued and systematic modifications of the
schemata of conceptual art, till making was replaced by the matching of reality through
the new skill of mimesis.” 76 Notwithstanding the complexity of mimesis, this way of
thinking indicates that Gombrich is interested in the revolution in Greek art as primarily
an artistic and intellectual phenomenon and secondarily as a technical one.
The continuing hold of this interest may be seen elsewhere in his theory. The
idea of improved craftsmanship as the second reason for the advent of Greek
naturalism—the other reason being influence from narrative texts—holds strong in
Gombrich’s mind. As he states, “Homeric freedom of narration was as necessary as was
and his adoption of these ideas from ancient discourse on the relationship between Art and politics, see A.
A. Donohue, “Winckelmann’s History of Art and Polyclitus,” in W. G. Moon, ed., Polykleitos, the
Doryphoros, and Tradition (Madison, 1995) 335, 339, n. 98; also A. Potts, Flesh and the Ideal:
Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (New Haven, 1994). For the influence of Winckelmann’s
study on modern scholarship, see Donohue, “Winckelmann’s History of Art” 327, and Childs, “The Classic
as Realism” 10.
75 See, for example, Donohue, “Winckelmann’s History of Art” 339, n. 98 citing Winckelmann: “In the age
of the highest illumination and freedom in Greece, says Winckelmann, “through this improvement [i.e., on
the Older Style] in art, Phidias, Polyclitus, Scopas, Alcamenes, and Myron made themselves celebrated” as
masters of the Grand Style.”
76 Gombrich, Reflections 141.
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