Bulle[499] has gone carefully into the technique of the hair by different Greek artists. In archaic times this was “_ein, man darf sagen, unmoegliches Problem_.” The primitive means at the disposal of the early artist made it impossible to render the hair naturally and hence it was conventionalized. Two styles arose in archaic times, which endured with modifications all through Greek art. The one was the pictorial (_malerisch_), where only the general appearance of the hair was represented, the merest necessary plastic form being added.[500] Painting here helped the shortcomings of the sculptor to some extent. The second style was the plastic (_plastisch_), where individual locks were attempted. The plastic use of light and shade made the use of color now less necessary. Such examples as the _Korai_ of the Akropolis Museum and the Rampin head in the Louvre show the difficulty which the early artist encountered in representing hair plastically. In the Rampin head[501] we see examples of three sorts of plastic hair treatment: the pearl-string (_Perlschnuerre_) on the neck, grained hair (_Koerner_) in the beard, and snail-volutes (_geperlte Schnecken_) on the forehead. None of the three seems to belong integrally to the head, but each appears to have been pasted on. The pearl-string fashion was first used in the soft _poros_ stone and was only later successfully transferred to marble. During the severe style of Greek sculpture, both fashions, pictorial and plastic, were used, as we see them in the pediment groups from the temple of Zeus at Olympia. In the period of Pheidias the plastic treatment was used almost exclusively, as we see in the _Lemnian Athena_. In the next century impressionism came in, though the plastic treatment still continued, for we see it in the bronze work of Lysippos and the marble work of Praxiteles. The old pictorial treatment was revived again in the later Hellenistic age.
In a well-known passage Pliny says that “the ancients did not make any statue of individuals unless they deserved immortality by some distinction, originally by a victory at some sacred games, especially those of Olympia, where it was the custom to dedicate statues of all those who had conquered, and portrait statues if they had conquered three times. These are called iconic.”[502] Many solutions of this passage have been offered. Older commentators, as Hirt and Visconti,[503] interpreted Pliny’s word _iconicas_ as life-size statues. Scherer, however, easily refuted this idea and showed that the adjective εἰκονικός, though ambiguous in its meaning, had nothing to do with size, but referred rather to an individual as opposed to a typical sense in relation to statuary. In his explanation he referred to the words of Lessing in the _Laokoön_: _es ist das Ideal eines gewissen Menschen, nicht das Ideal eines Menschen ueberhaupt_.[504] Nowadays all scholars agree that Pliny’s word refers to portrait statues.[505] However, Pliny’s dictum about the right of setting up portrait statues is certainly open to doubt.[506] It can not have been true of monuments erected before the fourth century B. C., when portrait statues were rare. Portraiture was a form of realism and was a product of the later period of Greek art—especially after the time of Lysippos. In the fourth century B. C. we find one well-attested exception to Pliny’s rule. The discovered inscription from the base of a monument erected to the horse-racer Xenombrotos of Cos,[507] reads (fifth line): τοῖ[ος], ὁποῖο[ν] ὁ[ρ]ᾷς Ξεινόμβροτο[ς]. These words indubitably point to a portrait statue. However, neither the recovered epigram nor Pausanias indicates anything about this victor being a τρισολυμπιονίκης, and consequently he appears not to have merited a portrait statue.[508] Pliny’s statement can be explained in many ways: it may be apocryphal, or different usages may have fitted different periods; or the rule may have held good only for gymnic victors and not for equestrian ones, which, being strictly votive in character, may not have been restricted to its operation.[509]