Ancient Greek Art: Delphi Charioteer

Next up we have the Delphi charioteer and he's also a really good example that you could use for Greek religion because he's an example of an honorific statue that was put up to commemorate an individual's victory at a major religious sanctuary because he stands at Delphi and the name of the victor was Polyxalis of Gala although he didn't take part in the chariot race and he was victorious in either 478 or 474 BC but in terms of Greek art this statue is really really good for talking about the benefits of using bronze to make a statue rather than marble for a start because bronze is a greater display of wealth especially if you're at this major religious sanctuary that a lot of people are going to come to it costs a lot more to make a Using bronze has lots of other advantages though too for a start we can have a look here at the finer details so I've changed to a picture of his face to be able to show this to you so if you look at the curls on the side of his head these have been cast separately and then added to the statue you can just see the amount of detail in those little curls the incised detail but also the inlaid eyes are still present and you can even see the eyelashes on his eyes now you can add extra metals on top of the bronze too so for example the eyelashes would have been lead there would have been silver on the headband there too copper on those lips and you can just imagine that when this statue was stood outside in the Greek sunlight and the bronze was shining all of these extra little details would have showed up even more. Coming back to the main image of him again you can see how the use of bronze has also led to increased movement in the statue so the lower half might be fairly stationary but he's got his arms out in front of him holding the reins and the bronze has also allowed for a much larger group statue to be produced so if you go to the Delphi Archaeological Museum today you'd also be able to see the remains of what would be the rest of the group horses chariot and even a slave boy attending to the As well as that we've got increased detail in the drapery itself so the charioteer wears a chiton because that was the traditional clothing of a charioteer and you can just about see the straps that would have stopped it billowing in the wind but we've got the use of colander folds on the lower half of the statue and catenary or u-shaped folds on the top half and the two kind of together give quite a nice little contrast and are pleasing to look at. Perhaps my favourite thing about the statue though and the one that I'm going to finish on is the fact that his eyes are looking slightly down a real sign of humility at a religious sanctuary and obviously this fits with the fact that his social status is a slave but also it's just reminding the viewer as well that these athletic victories are it thanks to the gods and not just the victor themselves.