LYSIPPUS of Sicyon, in the Peloponnese, was a contemporary of Alexander the Great, who made him his court sculptor, decreeing that no one should paint his portrait but Apelles, and no one should make his statue but Lysippus. He was a self-taught workman in bronze; who, by his energy, industry, and original genius became the most famous statuary in bronze of the ancient world. Like all the Peloponnesian school, Lysippus did not aim at ideal beauty, or grace of expression, but excelled in force, realism, and striking personality. His works were all in bronze, and are said to have amounted to 1,500 in number. They represented Alexander and his generals in various characters, Hercules in many aspects, and celebrated athletes of the most naturalistic type.

Lysippus was the sculptor not of Athene, like Phidias, nor of Aphrodite, like Praxiteles, but pre-eminently of soldiers and athletes. Two of his works at Tarentum were colossal, the Zeus, 60 feet in height, and the Hercules, afterwards removed to Rome. Of the consummate truth and life of his athletes we have an extant speciman in the beautiful work in the Vatican, an athlete using the strigil, clearly a fine marble copy of the famous bronze which Agrippa placed in his baths. Of his power in portraits, the busts imitated from his Alexander give us an adequate conception. It is a melancholy thought that, like almost all the bronze work of antiquity, every fragment of the genuine products of Lysippus has entirely disappeared from the world.

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