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

the acquired skill of craftsmanship to open the way for the Greek Revolution.” 77 How he
actually understands the influence of Homeric texts on the naturalistic development of
Greek art is seen in his statement that “when Greek artists discovered the character of
Greek narration, they set up a chain reaction which transformed the methods of
representing the human body.” 78 He elaborates this view further by posing the following
question:
Is it not much more likely that the discoveries which infused life into the
freestanding single statue were first made in narrative contexts that demanded a
convincing re-creation of a situation—for instance, in the narrative groups of
pediments with their dramatic evocation of mythical episodes? 79
Gombrich seems to place the intellectual origin of naturalism in Greek art in textual
narrative. Thus, he connects the emergence of naturalistic images in Greek sculpture to
narrative contexts, whose aim, he identifies, with “a convincing re-creation of a
situation.” This dependence of images on texts is not completely divorced from his
broader conviction that “in the whole history of Western art [there is a] constant
interaction between narrative intent and pictorial realism.” 80 The link between the
development of naturalism and Greek art to textual narrative again reveals Gombrich’s
attention to specific cultural circumstances framing his interpretation. In this way, his
theory of the rise of naturalism in Greek art again emerges as historical in its conception,
and diverges from that of Löwy, which, as seen earlier, relied on the psychology of vision
as a universal phenomenon.
77 Gombrich, Reflections 133; for a short discussion of this aspect of Gombrich’s theory, see Stewart, Greek
Sculpture 75.
78 Gombrich, Reflections 129.
79 Gombrich, Reflections 133.
80 Gombrich, Reflections 131.
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