Archaic sculpture in Boeotia

Abstract

Within the last fifty years the archaic sculpture of Boeotia has been the subject of a number of published studies. At least three separate analyses of the preserved marble statues have been made, needless to say with three quite disparate results. Holleaux, in his publication in the Bulletin de correspondence hellenique of the sculpture found at Mt. Pt oös, attempted to cas sify the material and explain his newly found Theban school. Deonna, in Les Apollons. archaiques, under a separate heading for Boeotia, analyzed a group of kouroi which, for various reasons, he considered as products of local manufacture. Most recently Lullies, in the Jahrbuch for 1936, published an article of the most modern kind of stylistic criticism in which he endeavored, by sheer force of critical insight, to walk safely along even the treacherous paths which divide the local imitation from the foreign model in cases of the most tenuous differentiation. Although the most brief, Lullies' treatment of the material is also the most inclusive of the three. It embraces nearly all of the objects that had been by others considered Boeotian, as well as the greater part of those found in Boeotia which his predecessors had believed to be imported from abroad. Of him alone it might be said that he tended to slight the problems of national authorship in an endeavor to tre~t all the material which has been related to Boeotia. However, Lullies' discussion is still in substance an attempt to analyze a supposed local sch ool, to define principles of attribution so fully as to be able to distinguish between the Boeotian pupil and his Attic master.