Musculata Images

[Diocle]

You'll find innumerable examples of the same and even better quality in the Hellenistic artistic production, you need only to observe carefully the details and maybe also reading something about the 'Naturalism' in the Greek-Roman Artistic production of the Classical Age, it's easy and also interesting. :wink:

And complete rubbish. It is impossible to tell whether something in a sculpture is made of leather or textile unless the artist has bothered to include the cross hatching of the weave in the texture. Leather can fold and move and drape just like cloth. It all depends on the type of weave in the cloth and the thickness of the leather.

No, this is not true, if you look carefully at the dresses of Venus you'll see that they are clothes, probably form the shape of the folds on the fabric, it's linen or a light fabric, instead if you look, (trying to be patient) at the folds of the Leather subarmalis of Mars you'll see another shape, there, the folds are almost absent or rather rounded ... it's not a textile fabric it's something less ... creased.

Look at the wonderful sculptures from the Parthenon in London, you can clearly understand the quality of the fabric represented ... these details are absolutely readable, because the Hellenism had, as main objective and artistic language, what was called 'Naturalism', that is, they thought that the imitation of the nature, the 'Mimesis', should be considered the highest form of artistic expression.

So now, look at the details of the sculpture we are discussing:

Firstly the textile fabric of the cloth of Venus, do you see how the folds are tight and dense? Probably it's a light fabric, maybe linen?



Then look at her mantle, do you see how the folds are deeper and more plastic? Probably the fabric is made of heavier textile material ... cotton? wool?



Now finally look at what looks like the leather subarmalis of Mars (at least in my opinion), do you see how quickly the folds die? do you see how thicker and less crushed on each other they are? It is as if the material opposes a resistance to bending. It's clearly different from the clothes of Venus, here the material looks stronger and thicker ....