Pergamon Altar - Relationship To Other Works of Art

Relationship To Other Works of Art

At many places in the Gigantomachy frieze, other Greek works of art can be recognized as having served as models. For example, Apollo with his idealized stance and good looks recalls a classical statue by the sculptor Leochares, produced about 150 years before the frieze and famous already in antiquity; a Roman copy has survived and is now in the Vatican Museum (The Belvedere Apollo). The important group which includes Zeus and Athena moving in opposite directions recalls the scene showing the struggle between Athena and Poseidon on the western pediment of the Parthenon. Such allusions are not accidental since Pergamon considered itself to be something like a reborn Athens.

The frieze on its part also influenced later works of classical antiquity. The most famous example is the Laokoon Group mentioned above, which was created about twenty years after the Pergamon relief, as Bernard Andreae could show. The artists who produced the statue group were in the direct tradition of the creator of the relief, or may indeed even have participated in crafting the frieze.