Ancient Greek sculpture

The

The Greeks decided very early on that the human form was the most important subject for artistic endeavour.^[1] Since they pictured their gods as having human form, there was little distinction between the sacred and the secular in art—the human body was both secular and sacred. A male nude of Apollo or Heracles shows only slight differences in treatment from a sculpture of that year's Olympic boxing champion. The statue (originally single, but by the Hellenistic period often in groups) was the dominant form, although reliefs, often so "high" that they were almost free-standing, were also important.

Bronze was the most prestigous material, but is the least common to survive, as it was always expensive and generally recycled.

By the

Many statues were given jewellery, as can be seen from the holes for attaching it, and held weapons or other objects in different materials.[4]

Ancient Greek sculptures were originally painted in multiple colours;^[5][6][7] they appear colourless today only because the original pigments have deteriorated.^[5][6] References to painted sculptures are found in classical literature,^[5][6] including in Euripides's Helen, in which the eponymous character laments, "If only I could shed my beauty and assume an uglier aspect / The way you would wipe colour off a statue."^[6] Some well-preserved statues still bear traces of pigments^[5] and archaeologists can reconstruct what they may have originally looked like.^[5][6][7]

It is commonly thought that the earliest incarnation of Greek sculpture was in the form of wooden or ivory

The forms from the

Inspired by the monumental stone sculpture of ancient Egypt^[12] and Mesopotamia, the Greeks began again to carve in stone. Free-standing figures share the solidity and frontal stance characteristic of Eastern models, but their forms are more dynamic than those of Egyptian sculpture, as for example the Lady of Auxerre and Torso of Hera (Early Archaic period, c. 660–580 BC, both in the Louvre, Paris). After about 575 BC, figures such as these, both male and female, began wearing the so-called archaic smile. This expression, which has no specific appropriateness to the person or situation depicted, may have been a device to give the figures a distinctive human characteristic.

Three types of figures prevailed—the standing nude male youth (

The Greeks thus decided very early on that the human form was the most important subject for artistic endeavour. Seeing their gods as having human form, there was no distinction between the sacred and the secular in art—the human body was both secular and sacred. A male nude without any attachments such as a bow or a club, could just as easily be Apollo or Heracles as that year's Olympic boxing champion. In the Archaic Period, the most important sculptural form was the kouros (See for example Biton and Kleobis). The kore was also common; Greek art did not present female nudity (unless the intention was pornographic) until the 4th century BC, although the development of techniques to represent drapery is obviously important.

As with pottery, the Greeks did not produce sculpture merely for artistic display. Statues were commissioned either by aristocratic individuals or by the state, and used for public memorials, as offerings to temples, oracles and sanctuaries (as is frequently shown by inscriptions on the statues), or as markers for graves. Statues in the Archaic period were not all intended to represent specific individuals. They were depictions of an ideal—beauty, piety, honor or sacrifice. These were always depictions of young men, ranging in age from adolescence to early maturity, even when placed on the graves of (presumably) elderly citizens. Kouroi were all stylistically similar. Graduations in the social stature of the person commissioning the statue were indicated by size rather than artistic innovations.

• 
  Dipylon Kouros, c. 600 BC, Athens, Kerameikos Museum.
• 
  The Moschophoros or calf-bearer, c. 570 BC, Athens, Acropolis Museum.
• 
  National Archaeological Museum of Athens

  .
• 
  Peplos Kore, c. 530 BC, Athens, Acropolis Museum.
• 
  Frieze of the

  Gigantomachy, c. 525 BC, Delphi Archaeological Museum

  .
• 
  Euthydikos Kore. c. 490 BC, Athens, authorized replica, original in

  National Archaeological Museum of Athens
• 
  An

  red-figure aryballos

  , c. 520–510 BC.

The Classical period saw a revolution of Greek sculpture, sometimes associated by historians with the popular culture surrounding the introduction of democracy and the end of the aristocratic culture associated with the kouroi. The Classical period saw changes in the style and function of sculpture, along with a dramatic increase in the technical skill of Greek sculptors in depicting realistic human forms. Poses also became more naturalistic, notably during the beginning of the period. This is embodied in works such as the Kritios Boy (480 BC), sculpted with the earliest known use of contrapposto ('counterpose'), and the Charioteer of Delphi (474 BC), which demonstrates a transition to more naturalistic sculpture. From about 500 BC, Greek statues began increasingly to depict real people, as opposed to vague interpretations of myth or entirely fictional votive statues, although the style in which they were represented had not yet developed into a realistic form of portraiture. The statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, set up in Athens mark the overthrow of the aristocratic tyranny, and have been said to be the first public monuments to show actual individuals.

The Classical Period also saw an increase in the use of statues and sculptures as decorations of buildings. The characteristic temples of the Classical era, such as the Parthenon in Athens, and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, used relief sculpture for decorative friezes, and pedimental sculpture in the round to fill the triangular fields of the pediments. The difficult aesthetic and technical challenge stimulated much in the way of sculptural innovation. Most of these works survive only in fragments, for example the Parthenon Marbles, roughly half of which are in the British Museum.

Funeral statuary evolved during this period from the rigid and impersonal kouros of the Archaic period to the highly personal family groups of the Classical period. These monuments are commonly found in the suburbs of Athens, which in ancient times were cemeteries on the outskirts of the city. Although some of them depict "ideal" types—the mourning mother, the dutiful son—they increasingly depicted real people, typically showing the departed taking his dignified leave from his family. This is a notable increase in the level of emotion relative to the Archaic and Geometrical eras.

Another notable change is the rise of giving artistic credit to sculptors. The entirety of information known about sculpture in the Archaic and Geometrical periods are centred upon the works themselves, and seldom, if ever, on the sculptors. Examples include Phidias, known to have overseen the design and building of the Parthenon, and Praxiteles, whose nude female sculptures were the first to be considered artistically respectable. Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Knidos, which survives in copies, was praised by Pliny the Elder.

Lysistratus is said to have been the first to use plaster moulds taken from living people to produce lost-wax portraits, and to have also developed a technique of casting from existing statues. He came from a family of sculptors and his brother, Lysippos of Sicyon, is supposed to have produced fifteen hundred statues in his career.^[13]

The

• 
  Kritios Boy. Marble, c. 480 BC. Acropolis Museum, Athens.
• 
  Copy of Polyclitus' Diadumenos, National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
• 
  So-called Venus Braschi by

  Knidian Aphrodite, Munich Glyptothek

  .
• 
  Family group on a grave marker from Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Athens
• 
  The

  Marathon Youth, 4th century BC bronze statue, possibly by Praxiteles, National Archaeological Museum, Athens

  .
• 
  Atalante Hermes, possibly by Lysippos, National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
• 
  Stoa of Attalus
• 
  Pottery vessel, Aphrodite inside a shell; from Attica, Classical Greece, discovered in the Phanagoria cemetery, Taman Peninsula (Bosporan Kingdom, southern Russia), early 4th century BC, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.
• 
  Athenian cavalryman Dexileos fighting a naked hoplite in the Corinthian War.^[14] Dexileos was killed in action near Corinth in the summer of 394 BC, probably in the Battle of Nemea,^[14] or in a proximate engagement.^[15] Grave Stele of Dexileos, 394-393 BC.
• 
  Dionysus holding an egg and a cock, terracotta from Tanagra, Greece, c. 350 BC

The transition from the Classical to the Hellenistic period occurred during the 4th century BC. Greek art became increasingly diverse, influenced by the cultures of the peoples drawn into the Greek orbit, by the conquests of

During this period, sculpture again experienced a shift towards increasing naturalism. Common people, women, children, animals, and domestic scenes became acceptable subjects for sculpture, which was commissioned by wealthy families for the adornment of their homes and gardens. Realistic figures of men and women of all ages were produced, and sculptors no longer felt obliged to depict people as ideals of beauty or physical perfection. At the same time, new Hellenistic cities springing up in Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia required statues depicting the gods and heroes of Greece for their temples and public places. This made sculpture, like pottery, an industry, with the consequent standardisation and (some) lowering of quality. For these reasons, quite a few more Hellenistic statues survive to the present than those of the Classical period.

Alongside the natural shift towards naturalism, there was a shift in expression of the sculptures as well. Sculptures began expressing more power and energy during this time period. An easy way to see the shift in expressions during the Hellenistic period would be to compare it to the sculptures of the Classical period. The classical period had sculptures such as the Charioteer of Delphi expressing humility. The sculptures of the Hellenistic period however saw greater expressions of power and energy as demonstrated in the Jockey of Artemision.^[16]

Some of the best known Hellenistic sculptures are the Winged Victory of Samothrace (2nd or 1st century BC), the statue of

• 
  The

  Attalus II of Pergamon

  , now considered a portrait of a Roman general, made by a Greek artist working in Rome in the 2nd century BC.
• 
  The

  The Louvre, Paris
• 
  Sepulchral monument of a dying

  Tuscana

  , 250-100 BC
• 
  Fragment of a marble relief depicting a

  Taurica (Crimea), Bosporan Kingdom
• 
  Ancient Greek

  Tarent

  , c. 300 BC, Antikensammlung Berlin.
• 
  Female head incorporating a vase (lekythos), c. 325-300 BC.
• 
  Bronze portrait of an unknown sitter, with inlaid eyes, Hellenistic period, 1st century BC, found in Lake Palestra of the Island of Delos.
• 
  Corinthian columns, 1st–2nd century CE. Buner, Swat, Pakistan. Victoria and Albert Museum

  .
• 
  Gravestone of a woman with her child slave attending to her, c. 100 BC (early period of

  Roman Greece

  )

Cult images

All ancient Greek temples and Roman temples normally contained a cult image in the cella. Access to the cella varied, but apart from the priests, at the least some of the general worshippers could access the cella some of the time, though sacrifices to the deity were normally made on altars outside in the temple precinct (temenos in Greek). Some cult images were easy to see, and were what we would call major tourist attractions. The image normally took the form of a statue of the deity, originally less than life-size, then typically roughly life-size, but in some cases many times life-size, in marble or bronze, or in the specially prestigious form of a Chryselephantine statue using ivory plaques for the visible parts of the body and gold for the clothes, around a wooden framework. The most famous Greek cult images were of this type, including the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, and Phidias's Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon in Athens, both colossal statues now completely lost. Fragments of two chryselephantine statues from Delphi have been excavated. Cult images generally held or wore identifying attributes, which is one way of distinguishing them from the many other statues of deities in temples and other locations.

The acrolith was another composite form, this time a cost-saving one with a wooden body. A xoanon was a primitive and symbolic image, usually in wood, some perhaps comparable to the Hindu lingam, although the oldest cult image from the Greek world, the Minoan Palaikastro Kouros, is highly sophisticated. Many xoana were retained and revered for their antiquity in later periods; they were often light enough to be carried in processions. Many of the Greek statues well known from Roman marble copies were originally temple cult images, which in some cases, such as the Apollo Barberini, can be credibly identified. A very few actual originals survive, for example the bronze Piraeus Athena (2.35 metres high, including a helmet).

In

palladium" was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend, especially the wooden one that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to Rome by Aeneas. (The Roman story was related in Virgil's Aeneid

and other works.)

Part of a series on the
History of Greek art
Greek Bronze Age Aegean art Cycladic art Minoan art Minoan pottery Mycenaean art Mycenaean pottery Protogeometric art
Ancient Greece Geometric art Archaic Greek art Ancient Greek art Ancient Greek architecture Ancient Greek pottery Ancient Greek sculpture Hellenistic art see also: Greco-Buddhist art
Medieval Greece Byzantine art Byzantine Iconoclasm Macedonian art
Post-Byzantine Greece Cretan school Heptanese school
Modern Greece Modern Greek art Modern Greek architecture Munich School Contemporary Greek art
v t e

Drapery

Female

• 
  diplax
• 
  Pallas over a peplos.
• 
  Chiton
• 
  Weavers on the Parthenon Frieze

Male

• 
  Chlamys
• 
  Parthenon Frieze

See also

• Meniskos, a device for protecting statues placed outside

Notes

1. ^ Cook, 19
2. ^ Cook, 74–75
3. ^ Cook, 74–76
4. ^ Cook, 75–76
5. ^
   ISBN 978-0-89-236-918-8
   .
6. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Gurewitsch, Matthew (July 2008). "True Colors: Archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann insists his eye-popping reproductions of ancient Greek sculptures are right on target". Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
7. ^ ^{a b c} Prisco, Jacopo (30 November 2017). "'Gods in Color' returns antiquities to their original, colorful grandeur". CNN style. CNN. Cable News Network. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
8. ^ The term xoanon and the ascriptions are both highly problematic. A.A. Donohue's Xoana and the origins of Greek sculpture, 1988, details how the term had a variety of meanings in the ancient world not necessarily to do with the cult objects
9. ^ [1] Archived February 27, 2005, at the Wayback Machine
10. ^ Μαντικλος μ' ανεθεκε ϝεκαβολοι αργυροτοχσοι τας {δ}δε|κατας· τυ δε Φοιβε διδοι χαριϝετταν αμοιϝ[αν]," transliterated as "Mantiklos m’ anetheke wekaboloi argyrotokhsoi tas dekatas; tu de Phoibe didoi khariwettan amoiw[an]"
11. JSTOR 42668124
    .
12. ^ The debt of archaic Greek sculpture to Egyptian canons was recognized in Antiquity: see Diodorus Siculus, i.98.5–9.
13. ^ Gagarin, 403
14. ^
    ISBN 9781848322226
    .
15. ^ "IGII2 6217 Epitaph of Dexileos, cavalryman killed in Corinthian war (394 BC)". www.atticinscriptions.com.
16. ^ Stele, R. Web. 24 November 2013. <http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/Sculpture/>
17. ^ Gazetteer of the Union Territory Goa, Daman and Diu: district gazetteer, Volume 1. panajim Goa: Gazetteer Dept., Govt. of the Union Territory of Goa, Daman and Diu, 1979. 1979. pp. (see page 70).
18. ^ (see Pius Melkandathil,Martitime activities of Goa and the Indian ocean.)

References

• ISBN 0140218661
• Gagarin, Michael,
  ISBN 9780195170726
• Stele, R. Web. 24 November 2013. http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/Sculpture/

Bibliography

• Boardman, John. Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period: A Handbook. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
• --. Greek Sculpture: The Classical Period: A Handbook. London: Thames and Hudson, 1985.
• --. Greek Sculpture: The Late Classical Period and Sculpture In Colonies and Overseas. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1995.
• Dafas, K. A., 2019. Greek Large-Scale Bronze Statuary: The Late Archaic and Classical Periods, Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Monograph, BICS Supplement 138 (London).
• Dillon, Sheila. Ancient Greek Portrait Sculpture: Contexts, Subjects, and Styles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Furtwängler, Adolf. Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture: A Series of Essays On the History of Art. London: W. Heinemann, 1895.
• Jenkins, Ian. Greek Architecture and Its Sculpture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Kousser, Rachel Meredith. The Afterlives of Greek Sculpture: Interaction, Transformation, and Destruction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
• Marvin, Miranda. The Language of the Muses: The Dialogue Between Roman and Greek Sculpture. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2008.
• Mattusch, Carol C. Classical Bronzes: The Art and Craft of Greek and Roman Statuary. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996.
• Muskett, G. M. Greek Sculpture. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2012.
• Neer, Richard. The Emergence of the Classical Style In Greek Sculpture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
• Neils, Jenifer. The Parthenon Frieze. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Palagia, Olga. Greek Sculpture: Function, Materials, and Techniques In the Archaic and Classical Periods. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Palagia, Olga, and J. J. Pollitt. Personal Styles In Greek Sculpture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
• Pollitt, J. J. The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.
• --. Art In the Hellenistic Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
• Ridgway, Brunilde Sismondo. The Archaic Style In Greek Sculpture. 2nd ed. Chicago: Ares, 1993.
• --. Fourth-Century Styles In Greek Sculpture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
• Smith, R. R. R. Hellenistic Royal Portraits. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
• --. Hellenistic Sculpture: A Handbook. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1991.
• Spivey, Nigel Jonathan. Understanding Greek Sculpture: Ancient Meanings, Modern Readings. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996.
• --. Greek Sculpture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
• Stanwick, Paul Edmund. Portraits of the Ptolemies: Greek Kings As Egyptian Pharaohs. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.
• Stewart, Andrew F. Greek Sculpture: An Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.
• --. Faces of Power: Alexander's Image and Hellenistic Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
• von Mach, Edmund. Greek Sculpture: Its Spirit and Its Principles. New York: Parkstone Press International, 2006.
• --. Greek Sculpture. New York: Parkstone International, 2012.
• Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, and Alex Potts. History of the Art of Antiquity. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2006.

External links

Library resources about
Ancient Greek sculpture

---

• Online books
• Resources in your library
• Resources in other libraries

• Classic Greek Sculpture to Late Hellenistic Era, lecture by professor Kenney Mencher, Ohlone College [link not valid as of 20 March 2023^[update]]
• Sideris A., Aegean Schools of Sculpture in Antiquity, Cultural Gate of the Aegean Archipelago, Athens 2007 (a detailed per period and per island approach).