![Laocoon Pio-Clementino Inv1059-1064-1067](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Laocoon_Pio-Clementino_Inv1059-1064-1067.jpg)
Agesander (also ''Agesandros'', ''Hagesander'', ''Hagesandros'', or ''Hagesanderus''; grc, Ἀγήσανδρος or grc, Ἁγήσανδρος) was one, or more likely, several
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
sculptor
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sc ...
s from the island of
Rhodes
Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the So ...
, working in the first centuries BC and AD, in a late
Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
"baroque" style.
[Boardman, 199–201] If there was more than one sculptor called Agesander they were very likely related to each other. The very important works of the groups of ''
Laocoön and his Sons
The statue of ''Laocoön and His Sons'', also called the Laocoön Group ( it, Gruppo del Laocoonte), has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures ever since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and placed on public display in the Vatican Museums ...
'', in the
Vatican Museums
The Vatican Museums ( it, Musei Vaticani; la, Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of ...
, and the
sculptures discovered at Sperlonga are both signed by three sculptors including an Agesander.
Sculptures
The name Agesander is only found in ancient literature in
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic '' ...
, but occurs in several inscriptions, though between them these certainly refer to a number of different individuals. Until the discovery at
Sperlonga
Sperlonga (locally ) is a coastal town in the province of Latina, Italy, about halfway between Rome and Naples. It is best known for the ancient Roman sea grotto discovered in the grounds of the Villa of Tiberius containing the important and spect ...
in 1959, only one work which Agesander executed was known, although this is one of the most famous of all classical sculptures. Pliny records that in conjunction with Athenodorus and Polydorus, Agesander sculpted ''Laocoön and his Sons'', although modern art historians generally view the trio as being either "high-class copyists",
or working in a
Pergamese baroque style created some two centuries earlier.
![Gruppo di scilla, sperlonga](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Gruppo_di_scilla%2C_sperlonga.jpg)
In 1959
a very large set of sculptures were discovered at
Sperlonga
Sperlonga (locally ) is a coastal town in the province of Latina, Italy, about halfway between Rome and Naples. It is best known for the ancient Roman sea grotto discovered in the grounds of the Villa of Tiberius containing the important and spect ...
, and are now in a museum there created for them. One section, the ship's prow of the "
Scylla
In Greek mythology, Scylla), is obsolete. ( ; grc-gre, Σκύλλα, Skúlla, ) is a legendary monster who lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait are within an arrow's r ...
group", was signed by the same three names, this time with the names of their fathers, but in a different order. Sperlonga is the classical ''Spelunca'' mentioned by
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historiography, Roman historians by modern scholars.
The surviving portions of his t ...
and others, on the coast between Rome and
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
, where the emperor
Tiberius
Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was the second Roman emperor. He reigned from AD 14 until 37, succeeding his stepfather, the first Roman emperor Augustus. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC. His father ...
had a celebrated villa. Tiberius was nearly killed when the grotto containing the statues collapsed in 26 AD, as Tacitus recounts, so they must predate this. The sculptures were in thousands of fragments, and reconstruction of the smaller pieces continues, amid much scholarly argument. The scenes all feature stories of
Odysseus
Odysseus ( ; grc-gre, Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς, OdysseúsOdyseús, ), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses ( , ; lat, UlyssesUlixes), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey''. Odysse ...
,
and are in a similar style to the ''Laocoön'', but with many significant differences, not least in quality, being uneven but generally of much lower skill and finish (the group is also considerably larger).
Both the Sperlonga works and the ''Laocoön'' were probably created in Italy for very wealthy Roman patrons very likely from the Imperial circle; they were certainly owned by the Imperial family later, as Pliny says the ''Laocoön'' belonged to the Emperor
Titus
Titus Caesar Vespasianus ( ; 30 December 39 – 13 September 81 AD) was Roman emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death.
Before becoming emperor, Titus gained renown as a mili ...
in his day.
Inscriptions
Agesander is named first by Pliny as artist of the ''Laocoön'', with Athenodoros second, but in the "signature" inscription at
Sperlonga
Sperlonga (locally ) is a coastal town in the province of Latina, Italy, about halfway between Rome and Naples. It is best known for the ancient Roman sea grotto discovered in the grounds of the Villa of Tiberius containing the important and spect ...
his name comes second to Athenodoros, who is "Athenodoros, son of Agesander". The others are "Agesandros, son of Paionios" (Paionios is a rare name) and "Polydoros, son of Polydoros". It is thought that strict seniority governed the sequence of names in such cases and, barring a simple mistake by Pliny, that it cannot be the same Agesander in both Pliny and Sperlonga. It was common for Rhodians to be named after their grandfathers, with the same names alternating over many generations for as long as several centuries. An inscription on a base for a statue at
Lindos, firmly dated to 42 BC, records "Athenodorus, son of Agesander", but again it is unclear how these two names relate to the other references – in fact both names were very common on Rhodes, though infrequent elsewhere. Conversely Polydorus, the last named in both inscriptions, is generally a common Greek name, but much less so on Rhodes, and as a sculptor seems only known from Pliny, whereas an Athenodorus was evidently famous, recorded on several bases for sculptures (all found or recorded detached from their sculptures), more as a label or caption than a signature. In some he is again "Athenodorus, son of Agesander". This is also the name of a priest recorded in an inscription at Lindos datable to 22 BC, which also records a possible brother "Agesander, son of Agesander"; either of these might have been sculptors also, or not.
![Gruppo di polifemo, sperlonga 0](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Gruppo_di_polifemo%2C_sperlonga_0.jpg)
"Agesandros, son of Paionios" occurs in other honorific inscriptions, including a very grand one on Rhodes listing over twenty related individuals, and Paionios's own father is another Agesander. E. E. Rice says this inscription can be dated fairly closely to "–50 BC, probably closer to 50 BC", and identifies Agesandros with the Sperlonga sculptor. As an example of the proliferation of these names, another "Agesander, son of Agesander, son of Athenodorus" is recorded as a military man on Rhodes, and was probably born about 120 BC, but there is no evidence to connect him with sculpting.
One possibility is that either or both of the trios containing Agesander possessed the same names as sculptors from an earlier period, perhaps as members of the same family or workshop tradition.
Controversy over the general date of Agesander's life, or the lives of various Agesanders, has never been settled; it was previously discussed on the grounds of artistic style, but now the evidence of inscriptions has come into play. The 18th-century art historian
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (; ; 9 December 17178 June 1768) was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the differences between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art. "The prophet and foundin ...
felt certain that, as sculptor of the ''Laocoön'' group, he was a contemporary of
Lysippos
Lysippos (; grc-gre, Λύσιππος) was a Ancient Greek sculpture, Greek sculptor of the 4th century BC. Together with Scopas and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the three greatest sculptors of the Ancient Greece, Classical Greek era, bri ...
in the 4th century BC;
others have placed him as late as the 70s AD, in the reign of
Vespasian
Vespasian (; la, Vespasianus ; 17 November AD 9 – 23/24 June 79) was a Roman emperor who reigned from AD 69 to 79. The fourth and last emperor who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors, he founded the Flavian dynasty that ruled the Empi ...
. The death of Pliny in the eruption that destroyed
Pompeii
Pompeii (, ) was an ancient city located in what is now the ''comune'' of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was buried ...
in 79 AD provides a ''
terminus ante quem
''Terminus post quem'' ("limit after which", sometimes abbreviated to TPQ) and ''terminus ante quem'' ("limit before which", abbreviated to TAQ) specify the known limits of dating for events or items..
A ''terminus post quem'' is the earliest da ...
'' for the ''Laocoön'', just as the collapsing grotto at Sperlonga in 26 AD does for those works. Modern scholarly consensus puts the likely time frame for these works as between 50 BC and 70 AD, though lively controversy continues as to more precise dating: a French article of 1997 was called "Un conflit qui s'éternalise: La guerre de Sperlonga", or "A conflict which is becoming endless: the War of Sperlonga".
Rice makes the confident and convenient but perhaps unwarranted assumption that only one Athenodoros, the son of Agesander, practiced as a sculptor, and that he signed the Lindos statue in 42 BC, a prestigious commission not likely to be given to a young artist. Reconstructing his proposed and putative career as a famous sculptor, Athenodoros flourished up to perhaps about 10 BC, working in Italy for perhaps most of the latter part of his career. Some time before about 10 BC he was first the second sculptor of the ''Laocoön'', probably under his father Agesandros, and at a later date was the lead sculptor of Sperlonga. He was probably also related to the Sperlonga Agesander, son of Paionios, although this Agesander was not his father, and Rice does not speculate how the Sperlonga Agesander (the second name listed on the inscription there) might fit in.
[Rice, 237, 249–250]
Notes
References
*
Boardman, John ed., ''The Oxford History of Classical Art'', 1993, OUP,
*Rice, E. E., "Prosopographika Rhodiaka", ''The Annual of the British School at Athens'', Vol. 81, (1986), pp. 209–250
JSTOR
{{DEFAULTSORT:Agesander of Rhodes
Hellenistic sculptors
Ancient Rhodian sculptors
1st-century BC Greek people
1st-century Greek sculptors
1st-century BC Rhodians