PRAXITELES, a Greek sculptor, son and apparently also pupil of the Athenian Cephisodotus. An account of his works is given in vol. ii. p. 361; but since that was written there has been found at Olympia, where it still remains, a marble statue from his hand, Hermes carrying the infant Dionysus. Though a work of comparatively youthful years, as may be inferred from his obvious indebtedness to his father Cephisodotus, particularly in the figure of Dionysus, it is nevertheless a masterpiece in those qualities for which Praxiteles was famed in antiquity, the representation of what is called sympathetic types of human or divine beings, and the rendering of very subtle phases of emotion. The Hermes, while massive in build, is flexible and sensitive in his skin and flesh, indolent in his attitude, his mind sufficiently occupied for the moment in trifling with the infant on his left arm. In recent years it has been sought to prove that certain of the sculptures attributed in antiquity to Praxiteles were really the work of a grandfather of his of the same name. But the tendency of investigation has rather been to dispel these views as illusory.