Greek Art PDF

GREEK ART THE GREEKS AND THEIR GODS The Greeks, or Hellens, were the product of an intermingling of Aegean and Indo-European peoples who established independent city-states, or poleis. The Dorians of the north, who many believe brought an end to Mycenaean civilization, settled in the Peloponnesos an...

GREEK ART THE GREEKS AND THEIR GODS The Greeks, or Hellens, were the product of an intermingling of Aegean and Indo-European peoples who established independent city-states, or poleis. The Dorians of the north, who many believe brought an end to Mycenaean civilization, settled in the Peloponnesos and the Ionians settled in the western coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and the islands of the Aegean Sea. Whatever the origins of the various regional populations, in the eighth century BCE economic conditions improve, the population began to grow and in 776 BCE the separate Greek-speaking states held their first athletic games in common at Olympia. From then on, despite their differences and rivalries, the Greeks regarded themselves as citizens of Hellas, distinct from the surrounding “barbarians” who did not speak Greek. Even the gods of the Greeks were distinct from those of neighbouring civilizations. The Greek gods and goddesses differed from human beings only in being immortal. RELIGION NAD MYTHOLOGY The names of Greek gods and goddesses appear from different sources: - Homer’s Iliad (the epic tales of the war against Troy) Homer’s Odyssey (the adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus on his long journey home) Hesiod’s Theogony (the genealogy of the Gods) The Greek deities are the offspring of the two key elements of the Greek universe: Earth/Gaia Heaven/Uranus The 12 Titans Mnemosyne Tethys Theia females Phoebe Rhea Themis Oceanus Hyperion Kronos castrated his father, mated his sister Rhea and swallowed all his children Coeus males Kronos Crius Iapetus Hestia/Vesta Hera/Juno Poseidon/Neptune Hades/Pluto Demeter/Ceres When Zeus was born, Rhea deceived Kronos by feeding him a stone wrapped in clothes in place of the infant. Zeus/Jupiter Zeus’ Children After growing to manhood, Zeus forced Kronos to vomit up Zeus’ siblings. Together they overthrew their father and the other Titans, and ruled the world from their home on Mount Olympus. Ares/Mars Athena/Minerva Hephaistos/Vulcan Apollo/Apollo Artemis/Diana Aphrodite/Venus Hermes/Mercury ANCIENT GREEK STYLISTIC PERIDOS: Geometric (1000 – 700 BCE) Orientalising (700 – 600 BCE) Archaic (600 – 480 BCE) Early Classical (480 – 450 BCE) High Classical (450 – 400 BCE) Late Classical (400 – 323 BCE) Hellenistic (323 – 30 BCE) GEOMETRIC PERIOD In the first few centuries of their domination of Greece the art of these tribes looked harsh and primitive enough. There is nothing of the gay movement of the Cretan style in these works; they rather seem to surpass the Egyptians in rigidity. Their pottery was decorated with simple geometric patterns. The eighth century also brought the return of the human figure to Greek Art, not in large-scale statuary but in small bronze figurines and in paintings on ceramic pots. Figure 1 Figure 2 ORIENTALIZING PERIOD During the seventh century BCE, the pace and scope of Greek trade and colonization accelerated, and Greek artists became exposed more than ever before to Eastern works. The closer contact had a profound effect on the development of Greek art. Indeed, so many motifs borrowed from or inspired by Egyptian and Mesopotamian art entered the Greek pictorial vocabulary at this time that art historians have dubbed the seventh century BCE the Orientalizing period. Figure 3 Figure 4 ARCHAIC PERIOD The next period of Greek History is described as Archaic and lasted for about two hundred years from (700 – 480 BCE). During this age Greek population recovered and organized politically in city-states (Polis) comprised of citizens, foreign residents, and slaves. This kind of complex social organization required the development of an advanced legal structure that ensured the smooth coexistence of different classes and the equality of the citizens irrespective of their economic status. This was a precursor for the Democratic principles that we see developed two hundred years later in Athens. Greek city-states of the Archaic period spread throughout the Mediterranean basin through vigorous colonization. As a consequence, Greece came into contact with Africa, Asia, and Europe. Through domination of commerce in the Mediterranean, aggressive expansion abroad, and competition at home, several very strong city-states began emerging as dominant cultural centers, most notably Athens, Sparta, Corinth among other. STATUARY The earliest surviving large-scale stone statues of the Greeks follow very closely the standard Egyptian format. Archaic Greek statues always smile, even in the most inappropriate contexts. Art historians have interpreted this so-called Archaic smile in various ways. This smile is the way Greek sculptors of this era indicated that the person portrayed is alive. By adopting this convention, Greek artists communicate that their intentions were very different from those of their Egyptians counterparts. Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 ARCHITECTURE Figure 8 1 - Greek temple plans -> The core of an ancient Greek temple plan was the naos or cella, a windowless room that usually housed the cult statue of the deity. In front of the naos was the pronaos, or porch, often with two columns between the antae, or extended walls. A smaller second room might be placed behind the cella or a porch at the rear, opisthodomos. This second porch served only a decorative purpose, satisfying the Greek passion for balance and symmetry. Around this core, Greek builders might erect a colonnade all around the cella and its porches to form a peristyle. Single (peripteral) colonnades were the norm, but double (dipteral) colonnades were features of especially elaborate temples. The earliest temples tended to be long and narrow (1:3). From the sixth century BCE on plans approached a ratio of front to side of exactly 1:2. Classical temples tended to be a little longer than twice their width. 2 – Doric and Ionic orders -> Historians describe the elevation of a Greek temple in terms of platform, the colonnade, and the superstructure. In the Archaic period, two basic systems, or orders, evolved. The names of the orders derive from the Greek regions where they were most commonly employed. The Doric, formulated on the mainland, remained the preferred manner there. The Ionic was the order of choice in the Aegean Islands. In both orders, the columns rest on the stylobate, the uppermost step of the platform. The columns have two or three parts: the shaft, usually marked with vertical channels (flutes); the capital; and, in the Ionic order, the base. Greek column shafts taper gradually from bottom to top. Greek column capitals have two elements. The lower part (echinus) varies with the order. In the Doric, it is convex and cushionlike. In the Ionic, it is small and supports a scroll-like spirals (volutes). The upper element, present in both orders, is a flat square block (abacus) that provides the immediate support for the entablature. The entablature has three parts: the architrave, the main weight-bearing element; the frieze; and the cornice, a molded horizontal projection that together with two sloping cornices forms a triangle framing the pediment. Doric architects subdivided the frieze into triglyphs and metopes, whereas Ionic builders left the frieze open to provide a continuous field for relief sculpture. The Doric order is massive in appearance. Compared with the weighty and severe Doric, the Ionic order seems light, airy, and much more decorative. Greek temples differed in function from most later religious shrines. The altar lay was outside the temple, facing the rising sun and the Greeks gathered outside, not inside, the building to worship. The temple proper housed the so-called cult statue of the deity. In basic plan the Greek temple still reveals a close affinity with the Mycenaean megaron. Figural sculpture played a major role in the exterior program of the Greek temple for three reasons: 1 – to embellish the god’s shrine: 2 – to tell something about the deity represented 3 – to serve as a votive offering The Greeks usually erected their temples on elevated sites, often on a hill above the city (acropolis means “high city”). Most of the sculptural ornament was on the upper part of the building, in the frieze and pediments. The Greeks painted their architectural sculptures and placed them only in the building parts that had no structural function. Figures 9-10 With the sixth century BCE also came the construction of grandiose Ionic temples on the Aegean Islands and the west coast of Asia Minor. The gem of Archaic Ionic architecture and architectural sculpture is, however, not a temple but a treasury. Greek treasuries were small buildings set up for the safe storage of votive offerings. Figures 10-11 VASE PAINTING By the mid-sixth century BCE, the Athenians, having learned the black figure technique from the Corinthians, had taken control of the export market. But the black figure technique presented severe limitations. The solution was red-figure painting. Its inventor was the ceramist whom art historians call the Andokides Painter – that is, the anonymous painter who decorated the vases signed by the potter Andokides. The differences between the two techniques can best be studied on a series of experimental vases with the same composition painted on both sides; these are the so-called bilingual vases, produced only for a short time. The new red-figure technique had obvious advantages over the old black-figure manner. Red-figure is the opposite of black figure. The artist used the same black glaze for the figures, but instead of using the glaze to create silhouettes, the painter outlined the figures and then coloured the background black. The painter used a soft brush to draw the interior details. The artist could vary the thickness of the lines. Figures 12-13 AEGINA AND THE TRANSITION TO THE CLASSICAL PERIOD The years just before and after 500 BCE were also a time of dynamic transition in architecture and architectural sculpture. Some changes are evident in the Doric temple at Aegina dedicated to Aphaia, a local nymph. Figure 14 Figure 15 The temple sits on a prominent ridge with a view out to the sea. The peripteral colonnade consists of 6 Doric columns on the façade and 12 on the flanks. The columns of the Aegina temple are more widely spaced and more slender. In place of a single row of columns down the center of the cella is double colonnade. This arrangement enabled the citizens to place a statue on the central axis. Painted life-size statuary filled both pediments. The theme of both statuary groups was the battle of Greeks and Trojans, but the sculptors depicted different episodes. The compositions were almost identical, with Athena at the centre. She is larger than all the other figures because she is superhuman. The designer was able to keep the size of the figures constant by using the whole range of body postures from upright (Athena) to leaning, falling, kneeling. East pediment West pediment Figure 17 It is instructive to compare the eastern and western figures. The sculptor of the west pediment’s dying warrior still conceived the statue in the Archaic mode. The warrior’s torso is rigidly frontal, and he looks out directly at the spectator – with his face set in an Archaic smile despite the bronze arrow puncturing his chest. Arms and legs have been arranged by someone else for effective display. The comparable figure in the east pediment is fundamentally different. This warrior’s posture is more natural and more complex with the torso placed at an angle to the viewer. He reacts to his wound and he knows that death is inevitable, but he still struggles to rise once again, using his shield for support. No more than a decade separates the two statues, but they belong to different eras. The eastern warrior belongs to the classical world and this constitutes a radical change in the conception of the nature of statuary. EARLY AND HIGH CLASSICAL PERIODS Art historians date the beginning of the Classical age from a historical event: the defeat of the Persian invaders of Greece by the allied Hellenic city-states. Shortly after the invaders occupied and sacked Athens in 480 BCE, the Greeks won a decisive naval victory over the invaders at Salamis. ARCHITECTURE Historians consider the decades following the removal of the Persian threat the high point of Greek civilization. This is the era of the statesman Pericles and the philosopher Socrates. The fist great monument of Classical art and architecture is the temple of Zeus at Olympia. The architect began work on the temple about 470 BCE and completed it by 457 BCE. Today the structure is in ruins. A good idea of its original appearance can be discovered from a slightly later Doric temple at Paestum modelled closely on the Olympian shrine of Zeus but the temple of Zeus was more lavishly decorated. Figure 18 Figure 19 The Olympia metopes are thematically connected with the site, for hey depict the 12 labours of Herakles, the legendary founder of the Olympic games. In both attitude and dress these Olympia figures display a severity that contrasts sharply with the smiling and elaborately clad figures of the Late Archaic Period. Consequently, many art historians call this Early Classical phase of Greek art the Severe style. Figure 20 STATUARY The hallmark of Early Classical statuary is the abandonment of the rigid and unnatural Egyptian-inspired pose of Archaic statues. The figures in the Olympia pediments exemplify this radical break. Although it is well under life-size, the marble statue known as the Kritios Boy – because art historians once thought it was the work of the sculptor Kritios – is one of the most important statues in the history of art. Real people do not stand in the stiff-legged pose of the kuroi and korai or their Egyptian predecessors. Humans shift their weight and the position of the torso around the vertical axis of the spine. His right leg is bent and the head also turns slightly to the right and tilts, breaking the unwritten rule of frontality. This weight shift, which art historians describe as contrapposto, separates Classical from Archaic Greek statuary. An unknown sculptor carried the innovations of the kritios boy even further in the bronze statue of two warriors found in the sea near Riace. The weight shift is more pronounced and the head turns more forcefully to the right, his shoulders tilt and his arms have been freed from the body. Figure 21 Figure 22 The male human form in motion is, in contrast, the subject of another Early Classical bronze statue which, like the Riace warriors, divers found in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece at Cape Artemision. The bearded god once had a weapon, probably a thunderbolt, in which case he is Zeus. A bronze statue similar to the Artemision Zeus was the renowned Diskobolos (discus Thrower) by the Early Classical master Myron. The original is lost. Only marble copies survive, made in Roman times. Usually, the copies were of less costly painted marble, which presented a very different appearance from shiny bronze. Myron’s Discus Thrower is a vigorous action statue. Myron froze the action and arranged the body and limbs to form two intersecting arcs. This tension, however, is not mirrored in the athlete’s face, which remains expressionless. The Classical Diskobolos does not perform for the spectator but concentrates on the task at hand. One of the most frequently copied Greek statues was he Doryphoros (spear bearer) by Polykleitos, the sculptor whose work exemplifies the intellectual rigor of Classical art. In his treatise simply called the Canon, Polykleitos sought to define what constituted a perfect statue. He concluded that the way to create a perfect statue would be to design it according to mathematical formula. His aim was to impose order on human movement, to make it “beautiful”, to “perfect” it. Note how the straight-hanging arm echoes the rigid supporting leg, providing the figure’s right side with the columnar stability needed to anchor the left side’s dynamically flexed limbs. If read anatomically, however, the tensed and relaxed limbs may be seen to oppose each other diagonally. And although the Doryphoros seems to take a step forward, he does not move. Figure 23 Figure 24 Figure 25 THE ATHENIAN ACROPOLIS While Plykleitos was formulating his Cannon, the Athenians, under the leadership of Pericles were at work on the reconstruction of the Acropolis after the Persian sack. In September 480 BCE, the Athenian commander Themistocles decisively defeated the Persian navy off the island of Salamis, Athens emerged from the war with enormous power and prestige. In 478 BCE the Greeks formed an alliance for mutual protection, the Delian League, because its headquarters were on the sacred island of Delos, midway between the Greek mainland and the coast of Asia Minor. Tribute continued to be paid, but the Athenians did not spend the surplus reserves for the common good of the allied Greek states. Instead, Pericles expropriated the money to pay the enormous cost of executing his grand plan to embellish the Acropolis of Athens. The centrepiece of the Periclean building program on the Acropolis was the Parthenon, a magnificent marble building dedicated to Athena Parthenos. Construction began in 447 BCE. By 438 BCE, the building campaign was complete, although work on the Parthenon’s ambitious sculptural ornamentation continued until 432 BCE. In 437 BCE the Parthenon stonemasons commenced construction of the Propylaia, the grand new western gateway to the Acropolis. Two later temples, the Erechtheion and the temple of Athena Nike were built after Pericles died. In the Middle Ages the Parthenon became a Byzantine and later a Roman Catholic church and then, after the Ottoman conquest of Greece, a mosque. With each rededication, religious officials remodelled the building. The Christians early on removed the colossal statue of Athena inside. In 1687, the Venetians besieged the Acropolis. One of their rockets scored a direct hit on the ammunition depot the Ottomans had installed in part of the Parthenon. The explosion blew out the building’s centre. From 1801 to 1803 Lord Elgin brought most of the surviving sculptures to England. For the past two centuries, they have been on exhibit in the British Museum. Figure 26 Figure 27 1.PARTHENON: ARCHITECTURE Most of the Parthenon’s peripteral colonnade is still standing. The architect was Iktinos assisted by Kallikrates. The statue of Athena in the cella was the work of Phidias, who was also the overseer of the temple’s sculptural decoration. The Parthenon may be viewed as the ideal solution to the Greek architect’s quest for perfect proportions in Doric temple design. The controlling ratio for the symmetria of the parts may be expressed algebraically as x=2y+1. The stylobate curves upward at the center on the sides and both facades and this curvature carries up into the entablature. Vitruvius, was a Roman author, architect, civil engineer and military engineer during the 1st century BC, maintained that these adjustments were made to compensate for optical illusions. He also recommended that the corner columns of a building should be thicker because they are surrounded by light and would otherwise appear thinner than their neighbours. The Parthenon incorporates Ionic elements. Although the cella had a two-storey Doric colonnade, the back room had four tall and slender Ionic columns. And whereas the temple’s exterior had a standard Doric frieze, the inner frieze that ran around the top of the cella wall was Ionic. Figure 28 2.ATHENA PARTHENOS Inside the Parthenon was the most expensive item of all – Phidia’s Athena Parthenos, a colossal gold-andivory (chryselephantine) statue of the virgin goddess. A model gives a good idea of tis appearance and setting. Athena was fully armed with shield, spear, and helmet, and she held Nike (the winged female personification of victory) in her extended right hand. No one doubts that this Nike referred to the victory of 479 BCE. Phidia’s Athena Parthenos incorporated multiple allusions to the Persian defeat. On the thick soles of Athena’s sandals was a representation of a centauromachy. High reliefs depicting the battle of Greeks and Amazons (Amazonomachy), decorated the exterior of her shield. On the shield’s interior, Phidias painted a gigantomachy. Each of these mythological contests was a metaphor for the triumph of order over chaos, of civilization over barbarism, and of Athens over Persia. Figure 29 3.PARTHENON DECORATION: The subject of the two pediments were especially appropriate for a building that celebrated Athena. The east pediment depicted the birth of the Goddess. At the west was the contest between Athena and Poseidon to determine which one would become the city’s patron deity. Athena won, giving her name to the polis and its citizens. The most remarkable part of the Parthenon’s sculptural decoration is the inner Ionic frieze that represents the Panathenaic Festival procession that took place every four years in Athens. The procession began at the Dipylon Gate, passed through the agora (central square), and ended on the Acropolis, where the Athenians placed a new peplos on an ancient wood statue of Athena. Figure 30 Figure 31 4.PROPYLAIA: Even before all the sculptures were in place on the Parthenon, work began on a grandiose new entrance to the Acropolis, the Propylaia. The site was a difficult one, on a steep slope, but the architect succeeded in disguising the change in ground level by splitting the building into eastern and western sections, each one resembling a Doric temple façade (hence the name “Propylaia”, Greek for “gates”, rather than “gate”). To either side of the central ramp were stairs for pedestrian traffic. Inside, tall, slender Ionic columns supported the roof. The full plan for the Propylaia was never executed and only the northwest one was completed. In Roman times, it housed a pinakotheke. It is uncertain whether this was the wing’s original function. If it was, the Propylaia’s pinakotheke is the first recorded structure built for the specific purpose of displaying paintings, and it is the forerunner of modern museums. Figure 32 5.ERECHTEION: In 421 BCE, work finally began on the temple that was to replace the Archaic Athena temple that the Persians had destroyed. The new structure, the Erechtheion honouredAthena and housed the ancient wood image of the goddess that was the goal of the Panathenaic Festival procession. But it also incorporated shrines to a host of other gods and demigods including Erechtheus, and early king of Athens and Kekrops, another king of Athens. The asymmetrical plan reflected the need to incorporate other preexisting shrines. The unknown architect had to struggle with the problem of uneven terrain. The ionic capitals were inlaid with gold, rock, crystal and coloured glass. The Erechtheion’s most striking and famous feature is its south caryatids, as on the Siphnian treasury at Delphi. Although the caryatids exhibit the wight shift (contrapposto), the flutelike drapery folds underscores their role as architectural supports. 6.TEMPLE OF ATHENA NIKE: Another Ionic building is the small temple of Athena Nike designed by Kallkrates, who worked with Iktinos on the Parthenon. The Athena Nike Temple is amphiprostyle with four columns on both the east and west facades. It greets all visitors entering Athena’s great sanctuary. Like the Parthenon, this temple commemorated the victory over the Persians. Around the building was a parapet decorated with exquisite reliefs of the Nike. Figure 33 Figure 34 PAINTING In The Classical period, some of the most renowned artists were the painters of large wood panels displayed in public buildings. Those works were by nature perishable. Greek vases of this period, especially those painted using the white-ground painting technique, give some idea of the polychrome nature of Classical panel paintings. One of the best examples of the white-ground technique is the lekythos (flask to hold perfumed oil) on which artists applied black glaze to outline the figures, and diluted brown, purple, red, and white to colour them. Greek artists explored the full polychrome possibilities of the white-ground technique almost exclusively on lekythoi, which families commonly placed in graves as offerings to the deceased. Although all the panel paintings of the masters disappeared long ago, some Greek mural paintings survive. An early example is in the Tomb of the Diver at Paestum. On the Tomb’s over slab a youth dives from a stone platform into a body of water. The scene most likely symbolises the plunge from this life into the next. Figure 35 Figure 36 LATE CLASSICAL PERIOD The Peloponnesian War, which began in 431 BCE, ended in 404 BCE with the complete defeat of Athens. The victor, Sparta, and then Thebes undertook the leadership of Greece, both unsuccessfully. In the middle of the fourth century BCE, a threat from without caused the rival Greek states to put aside their disagreements and unite for their common defence. But at the battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, the Greek cities suffered a devastating loss and had to give up their independence to the Macedonian king, Philip II. Philipp was assassinated in 336, and his son, Alexander III, better known simply as alexander the Great, succeeded him. Alexander led a powerful army on an extraordinary campaign that overthrew the Persian Empire. SCULPTURE He fourth century BCE in Greece was a time of political upheaval, which had a profound impact on the psyche of the Greeks and on the art they produced. The Peloponnesian war brought an end to the serene idealism of the previous century. Greek thought and Greek art began to focus more on the individual and the real world of appearances instead of on the community and ideal world of perfect beings and perfect shrines. In the Archaic period and Early and High Classical periods, Greek sculptors shared common goals, but in the Late Classical period distinctive individual styles emerged. The new approach to art is immediately apparent in the work of Praxiteles. He did not reject the favoured statuary themes of the High Classical period, but in his hands those deities lost some of their solemn grandeur and took on a worldly sensuousness. Nowhere is this new humanising spirit more evident than in the statue of Aphrodite that Praxiteles sold to the Knidians after another city had rejected it. The lost original is known only through copies of Roman date. This statue made Knidos (ancient Greek city. Modern day Turkey) famous, and many people sailed there just to see the statue in its round temple. The Aphrodite of Knidos caused such a sensation in its time because Praxiteles took the unprecedented step of representing the goddess of love completely nude. This statue is not openly erotic but she is quite sensuous. The Praxitelean “touch” is also evident in the statue of Hermes and the infant Dionysus. Hermes leans on a tree trunk and his slender body forms a sinuous, shallow S-curve that is the hallmark of many of Praxiteles’ statues. He gazes dreamily into space while he dangles a bunch of grapes (now missing) as a temptation for the infant. This is the kind of tender human interaction between an adult and a child that one encounters frequently in life but that had been absent from Greek statuary before the fourth century BCE. Praxiteles’ gods have stepped off their pedestals and entered the world of human experience. Another sculptor and architect was Skopas, who designed a temple and contributed to the decoration of one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos. His hallmark was intense emotionalism and none of his statues survives, but a grave stele. The third great classical sculptor, Lysippos (the head 1:8 the height of the body) introduced a new canon of proportions in which the bodies were more slender than those of Polykleiots (the head 1:7 the height of the body). One of Lysippos’ most famous works, a bronze statue of an apoxyomenos (an athlete scraping oil from his body after exercising), exhibits the new proportions. Lysippos also began to break down the dominance of the frontal view in statuary and encouraged the observer to view his athlete from multiple angles. To comprehend the action, the observer must move to the side and view Lysippos’ work at a three-quarter angle or in full profile. To grasp the full meaning of another of Lysippos’ works, a colossal statue depicting a Weary Herakles, the viewer must walk around it. Once again, the original is lost but the most impressive copy stood in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, where it provided inspiration for Romans who came to the baths to exercise. Lysippos depicted the hero as so weary that he must lean on his club for support. Herakles holds the golden apples of the Hesperides in his right hand behind his back – unseen unless the viewer walks around the statue. Herakles is no longer serene and instead of expressing joy, or at least satisfaction, at having completed one of the impossible 12 labours, he is most dejected. Exhausted by his physical efforts, Lysippos’ portrayal of Herakles is testimony to Late Classical sculptors’ interest in humanizing the Greek gods and heroes. Figure 37 Figure 38 Figure 39 Figure 40 Figure 41 ALEXANDER THE GREAT AND MACEDONIAN COURT ART Alexander the Great’s favourite book was the Iliad, and his own life very much resembled and epic saga full of heroic battles. A great example of painting at the time of Alexander comes from a large mosaic that decorated the floor of a room in a lavishly Roman house at Pompeii. The mosaicist was a master of a later mosaic technique employing tesserae (cubical pieces of glass or tiny stones cut to the desired size and shape) instead of pebbles. The subject is a great battle between the armies of Alexander the Great and the Achaemenid Persian king Darius III, probably the Battle of Issus in southeastern Turkey, when Darius fled in his chariot in humiliating defeat. Most art historians believe that it is a reasonably faithful copy of Battle of Issus, a famous panel painting of about 310 BCE made by Philoxenos of Eretria for King Cassander, one of Alexander’s successors. Some scholars have proposed, however, that the Alexander Mosaic is a copy of a painting by one of the few Greek woman artists whose name is known, Helen of Egypt. Details visible in the mosaic are impressive. Everywhere in the scene, men, animals, and weapons cast shadows on the ground. Perhaps most impressive, however, about the Battle of Issus is the psychological intensity of the drama. Alexander, riding Bucephalus, lead his army into battle without even a helmet to protect him. Figure 42 He drives his spear through one of Darius’s trusted “Immortals”, who swore to guard the king’s life, while the Persian’s horse collapses beneath him. Alexander directs his gaze at the Persian king while Darius has called for retreat. In fact, his charioteer is already whipping the horses and speeding the king to safety. Before he escapes, Darius looks back at Alexander. ARCHITECTURE In architecture, as in sculpture and painting, the Late Classical Period was a time of innovation and experimentation. In ancient Greece, actors perform plays only during sacred festivals. Figure 43 It is Epidauros, in the Peloponnesos, that boasts the finest theatre in Greece. Constructed shortly after the birth of Alexander, the theatre is still the setting for performances of ancient Greek dramas. The architect was Polykleitos the Younger, possibly a later-generation member of the famous fifth-century BCE sculptor’s family. The actors and chorus performed in the Orchestra that literally means “dancing place”. At Epidauros, an altar to Dionysos stood at the centre of the circle. He spectators sat on a slope overlooking the orchestra – the theatron, or “place for seeing”. The auditorium, with its 55 rows of seats, could accommodate about 12,000 spectators. HELLENISTIC PERIOD Alexander the Great’s conquest of Mesopotamia and Egypt ushered in a new cultural age that historians and art historians alike call Hellenistic. The Hellenistic period opened with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE and lasted nearly three centuries, until the double suicide of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt and her Roman consort, Mark Antony, in 30 BCE after their decisive defeat at the battle of Actium by Antony’s rival Augustus. That year Augustus made Egypt a province of the Roman Empire. The cultural centres of the Hellenistic period were the court cities of the Greek kings who succeeded Alexander and divided his empire among themselves. Chief among them were Antioch in Syria, Alexandria in Egypt and Pergamon in Asia Minor. An international culture united the Hellenistic world and the world of the small and heroic city-state passed away, as did the power and prestige of its center, Athens. A cosmopolitan civilization, much like today’s, replaced it. ARCHITECTURE The greater variety, complexity, and sophistication of Hellenistic culture called for an architecture on a grandiose scale and of wide diversity. Building activity shifted from the old centers on the Greek mainland to the opulent cities of the Hellenistic monarchs in the East. Great scale, a theatrical element of surprise, and a willingness to break the traditional rules of Greek temple design characterize one of the most ambitious projects of the Hellenistic period, the Temple of Apollo ad Didyma. Figure 43 Figure 44 Construction began around 300 BCE and so vast was the undertaking that work continued for more than 500 year – and still the project was never completed. The temple was dipteral in plan and had a façade of 10 ionic columns. The sides had 21 columns, consistent with the Classical formula for perfect proportions used for the Parthenon but nothing else about the design is classical. It had no pediment and no roof. The unroofed dipteral colonnade did not surround a traditional cella. The columns were instead an elaborate frame for a central courtyard in which was a small prostyle shrine with a statue of Apollo inside. Entrance to the interior court was through two smaller doorways to the left and right. Opposite Apollo’s inner temple, a stairway some 50 feet wide rose majestically toward three portals leading into the oracular room that also opened onto the front of the temple. This complex spatial planning marked a sharp departure from Classical Greek architecture. One of the most important and versatile secular Greek buildings was the stoa. These covered colonnade , or porticos, which often housed shops and civic offices, were ideal vehicles for shaping urban spaces. Priene, Turkey, had stoas framing each side of its agora. The finest of the new Athenian stoas was the Stoa of Attalos II, a gift to the city by the king of Pergamon who had studied at Athens in his youth. The stoa was meticulously reconstructed under he direction of the American school of Classical Studies at Athens and today has a second life as a museum. The stoa has two stories, each with 21 shops. The façade columns are Doric on the ground level and Ionic on the second story. Figure 45 The builders left the lower third of every Doric column shaft unfluted to guard against damage from constant traffic. Pergamon, the kingdom of Attalos II, was born in the early third century BCE after the breakup of Alexander’s empire. Upon the death in 133 BCE of its last king, Attalos III, Pergamon was bequeathed to Rome. The Attalids enjoyed immense wealth and expended much of it of he embellishment of their capital city, especially its acropolis. The Altar of Zeus at Pergamon, erected about 175 BCE, was on an elevated platform, framed by an Ionic stoalike colonnade with projecting wings on either side of a broad central staircase. All around the altar platform was a sculptured frieze populated by about a hundred larger-than-life-size figures. The subject is the battle of Zeus and the gods against the giants. The gigantomachy also appeared on the shield of Phidia’s Athena Parthenos and on the east metopes of the Parthenon, because the Athenians wished to draw a parallel between the defeat of the giants and the defeat of the Persians. Figure 46 In the third century BCE, King Attalos I had successfully turned back an invasion of the Gauls in Asia Minor. The gigantomachy of the Altar of Zeus alluded to that Attalid victory over those barbarians. The figure of Athena, for example, closely resembles the Athena from the Parthenon’s east pediment. While Gaia, the earth goddess and mother of the giants, emerges from the ground and looks on with horror, Athena grabs the hair of the giant Alkyoneos as Nike flies in to crown her. Figure 47 Its tumultuous narrative has an emotional intensity without parallel in earlier sculpture. The battle rages everywhere, violent movement and vivid depictions of death and suffering fill the frieze. Deep carving creates dark shadows. For these reasons art historian have justly described there features as baroque. The monument’s west front has been reconstructed in Berlin. SCULPTURE Hellenistic sculptors went further in expanding the range of subjects considered suitable for large scale public sculpture. One of the masterpieces of Hellenistic baroque sculpture is the statue of winged victory set up in the sanctuary of the Great Gods on the island of Samothrace. The Nike of Samothrace has just alighted on the prow of a Greek warship. She raises her right (missing) arm to crown the naval victor. The Samothracian Nike’s wings still beat, and the wind sweeps her drapery. Her himation bunches in thick folds around her right leg, and her chiton is pulled tightly across her abdomen. The statue’s setting amplified this theatrical effect. The sculptor set the war galley in the upper basin of a two-tiered fountain. In the lower basin were large boulders. The fountain’s flowing water created the illusion of rushing waves hitting the prow of the ship. The sound of splashing water added another dimension to the visual drama. The Hellenistic statues interact with their environment and appear as living human presences. Figure 48 Figure 49 Figure 49-bis In the Hellenistic period, sculptors openly explored the eroticism of the nude female form. The famous Venus de Milo is a larger-than-life-size marble statue of Aphrodite found on Melos together with its inscribed base (now lost) signed by the sculptor Alexandros of Antioch-on-the-Meander. In this statue the goddess of love is more modestly draped but is more openly sexual. Her left hand holds the apple that Paris awarded her when he judged her the most beautiful goddess. Her right hand may have lightly grasped the edge of her drapery. Other Hellenistic sculptors, especially when creating works for private patrons, went even further in depicting the goddess of love as an object of sexual desire. Hellenistic sculptors often portrayed sleep. The suspension of consciousness and the entrance into the fantasy world of dreams had great appeal for them; the antithesis of the Classical ideals of rationality and discipline. This newfound interest is evident in a marble statue of a drunken, restlessly sleeping satyr known as the Barberini Faun, after cardinal Francesco Barberini, who acquired the statue when it was unearthed in Rome in the 17th century. Barberini hired Gianlorenzo Bernini to restore the statue. The satyr has consumed too much wine and has thrown down his panther skin on a convenient rock. Eroticism also comes to the fore in this statue. Although men had been represented naked in Greek art for hundreds of years, Archaic Kouroi and Classical athletes and god do not exude sexuality. Figure 50 Hellenistic sculptors did not abandon traditional themes, often treating them in novel ways. This is certainly true of the magnificent bronze statue of a seated boxer, a Hellenistic original found in Rome. The boxer is not a victorious young athlete with a perfect face and body but a heavily battered, defeated veteran whose upward glance may have been directed at the man who had just beaten him. Too many punches have distorted the boxer’s face. His nose is broken as are his teeth. He has smashed “cauliflower” ears. Inlaid copper blood drips from the cuts on his forehead, nose, and cheeks. How different is this rendition of a powerful bearded man from that of the noble Riace warrior of the Early Classical period. Figure 51 The realistic bent of much Hellenistic sculpture is evident in a series of statues of old men and women from the lowest rungs of the social order. Shepherds, fishermen, and drunken beggars are common. One of the finest preserved statues of this type depicts haggard old woman bringing chickens and a basket of fruits and vegetables to sell to the market or bringing gifts to the god Dionysos. The woman’s face is wrinkled and her body bent with age. The Hellenistic world was a cosmopolitan place and a growing number of foreigners and poor inhabited it. Hellenistic art reflects this different social climate in the depiction of a much wider variety of physical types, including different ethnicities.