Desperately Seeking Skopas

In America today, opinion has turned decisively against the resurrection of artistic personalities from Greek antiquity. After investigating why scholars have taken this extreme position, this paper attempts to counter it both methodologically and philologically, then examines what we know about Skopas and his oeuvre. In particular, how do we explain his frequent appearance alongside Praxiteles in the sources, their disputes over attribution included? I then discuss some individual works, offering new or overlooked evidence for their date and attribution, and finally present a new reconstruction and evaluation of the Tegea temple’s interior, based on recent work at Tegea by Jari Pakkanen.