XLVIII. The Hermes of Praxiteles.—

Hermes is represented standing with the infant Dionysus on his left arm, and the weight of his body resting on his right foot. His form is the perfection of manly grace and vigour; the features of his oval face, under the curly hair that encircles his brow, are refined, strong, and beautiful; their expression is tender and slightly pensive. The profile is of the straight Greek type, with “the bar of Michael Angelo” over the eyebrows. The left arm of the god rests upon the stump of a tree, over which his mantle hangs loosely in rich folds, that contrast well with his nude body. His right arm is raised. The child Dionysus lays his right hand confidingly on the shoulder of Hermes; his gaze is fixed on the object, whatever it was, which Hermes held in his right hand, and his missing left arm must have been stretched out (as it appears in the restoration) towards the same object. As most of Hermes’s right arm is wanting, we cannot know for certain what he had in his right hand. Probably it was a bunch of grapes. In a wall-painting at Pompeii a satyr is represented holding the infant Dionysus on his left arm, while in his raised right hand he dangles a bunch of grapes, after which the child reaches. It is highly probable that this painting is an imitation, not necessarily at first hand, of the work of Praxiteles; and if so, it affords a strong ground for supposing that the missing right hand of the Hermes held a bunch of grapes. The only objection of any weight to this view is that in the statue Hermes is not looking at the child, as we should expect him to be, but is gazing past him into the distance with what has been described as a listening or dreamy look. Hence it has been suggested that Hermes held a pair of cymbals or castanets in his hand, to the sound of which both he and the child are listening; and a passage of Calpurnius has been quoted in which Silenus is represented holding the infant Dionysus on his arm and amusing him by shaking a rattle. This certainly would well explain the attitude and look of Hermes; but on the other hand cymbals or a rattle would not serve so well as a bunch of grapes to characterise the infant Dionysus. The same may be said of the suggestion that Hermes, as god of gain, held aloft a purse and was listening to the chinking of the money in it. In his left hand Hermes probably held his characteristic attribute, a herald’s staff; the round hole for it in the hand is still visible.

On his head he seems to have worn a metal wreath; the deep groove for fastening it on may be seen in the back part of the hair. Traces of dark red paint were perceived on the hair and on the sandal of the foot when the statue was found; the colour is supposed to have been laid on as ground for gilding. The back of the statue, which would not be seen well, is not carefully finished; it still shows the strokes of the chisel. Otherwise the technical finish is exquisite. The differences of texture between the delicate white skin of the god, the leather straps of the sandals, the woollen stuff of the cloak, and the curly hair of the head, are expressed in the most masterly way.

A late distinguished critic was of opinion that the Hermes is an early work of Praxiteles, executed before he had attained a full mastery of his art. Such a view, it would seem, can only be held by one who knows the statue solely from photographs and casts. But no reproductions afford an adequate idea of the beauty of the original. Engravings of it are often no better than caricatures. Again, the dead white colour and the mealy texture of casts give no conception of the soft, glossy, flesh-like, seemingly elastic surface of the original, which appears to glow with divine life. Looking at the original, it seems impossible to conceive that Praxiteles or any man ever attained to a greater mastery over stone than is exhibited in this astonishing work.