Resumen

IFF-NOEL, Flora. Are Epigrams about Art mere Copies of Copies? The Representation of Niobe in Ceramic, Sculpture and Hellenistic Epigram. UH [online]. 2023, n.297  Epub 10-Jun-2023. ISSN 0253-9276.

The concept of mimesis that structures ancient aesthetics finds a new turn in some Hellenistic ekphrastic epigrams: when statues were striving to be a perfect copy of their original, these short poems gave them a voice to emphasize how they could become as full of life as their original. Far from being a copy of a copy of a copy, as Plato would put it, these poems about artworks seem to be more full of life than the original itself, thus triggering a reflection on truth and illusion, original and copy, life and art. This paper focuses on the striking example of the representations of Niobe, in sculpture, ceramic and epigrams. According to the myth, Niobe’s children were killed by Artemis and Apollo after she boasted that she had more children than Leto. Niobe was then petrified by her grief. The challenge of representing the decisive instant between life and death was accepted by ceramists and sculptors. Those artworks in turn inspired epigrams by Theodoridas, Meleager and others who insisted on the powerful representation of lifelike death: the only reason why the artists did not make their artworks breathe is because they wanted to represent breathless corpses.

Palabras clave : ecphrastic epigram; illusionism; mimesis; mythology; Meleager of Gadara; Niobe; text and image.

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