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

of Kollytos in the Athenian Kerameikos (Fig. 3). 89 In this way, Boardman may not
assign importance to the role of representations of animals in the phenomenon of
naturalism in Greek art, but he does not, at least, ignore the existence of this body of
Greek sculpture.
William A. P. Childs
A similar inclusion of representations of animals cannot be detected in William
Childs’s article “The Classic as Realism in Greek art,” which provides an analysis of the
fifth- and fourth-century style of Greek art by focusing explicitly on sculptural
representations of the human form (e.g., reclining female figure from the west pediment
of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia [c. 460 B.C.] and male figure A from the same
pediment of the Parthenon [437-432 B.C.]). Childs argues against the usual assumption
of “idealism” as a defining characteristic of the style of Greek art in the Classical period.
He suggests that the style of this period is “primarily realistic” or more precisely, “vital,
descriptive, and eminently real—perhaps the only truly realistic style phase.” 90 He
considers this style reflective of a conception of naturalism that relies heavily on the
contemporary understanding of the essential character (phusis) of the human subjects of
works of art, while being simultaneously concerned with an accurate observation of real
forms—two notions that are often seen as opposites. In other words, he proposes to see a
special kind of naturalism governed by a synthesis of a heightened reality (how they
knew things to be) and the accurate reproduction of external appearances.
89 Boardman, Greek Sculpture. The Late Classical Period 114, 120, fig. 112.3 (no museum number); also
120, figs. 113, 114 for statues of a dog and a lion from respective grave monuments on Salamis and
perhaps in Athens.
90 Childs, “The Classic as Realism” 13.
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