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

The statue proclaims its lifelikeness by identifying its treatment as alive not only by a
bull, but also by a calf and a herdsman, thus adding nothing new to the already
established categories of viewers who have been deceived. Like the previous ones, this
epigram points to viewers who share a common element: thorough knowledge of a cow’s
appearance. Viewed against Plato’s explicit assertion that good knowledge of what is
tried to be represented in art is a necessary criterion for good judgment of art, animals
emerge here as qualified judges of art. 122 In fact, by identifying cognition as a visual
(sensory) experience in which both animals and humans partake alike, the epigrams place
two otherwise distinct categories of living beings on the same qualitative level as
connoisseurs of lifelikeness in art. In this way, animals emerge as reliable guides to the
ancient Greek judgment of lifelikeness in art. If they can be deceived, however, then,
Myron’s statue has surpassed any standard of lifelikeness, and can, therefore, be easily
seen as rivaling nature. This idea is exemplified by an epigram, by Julian, Prefect of
Egypt, probably from the sixth century A.D., that states the following:
Nature and Queen Art strove in the matter of
this cow, and Myron gave to each a prize of equal
value. When one looks at it Art robs nature of
her superiority, but when one touches it Nature is nature.
(Julian, Prefect of Egypt, Anth. Pal. 9.738) [129]
The poet refers to Myron’s cow as the balanced outcome of a struggle between nature
and art, that is, between reality and image. His statement, although it may be
exaggerated, indicates belief in the statue of the cow to be real, when viewing it, while
maintaining awareness, through touching it, of its artificiality as an image. Sight and
122 This evidence fits well with Plato’s, already discussed, remark, in the Critias (107b-107e) that in order
to be able to judge art well, one needs to have intimate knowledge of what the artist tried to represent [143].
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