Back to homepage

Back to Art H 280 table of contents

The History of Art Survey
Lecture 8
Greek Art 2: Early and High Classical
Gardner 120-139
A
B
Style Periods: Early Classical and High Classical: 480 - 400 BCE
5-
* 29 Temple of Hera II Paestum
30 East Pediment, Temple of Zeus Olympia
31 Seer, from the east pediment of the Temple of Zeus Olympia
32 Athena, Herakles, and Atlas with the apples of the Hesperides,
Temple of Zeus Olympia
33 Kritios Boy (Acropolis) Athens
34 (& I-18) Warrior (Reggio)
35 Charioteer, dedicated by Polyzalos of Gela Delphi
36 Zeus or Poseidon
37 Diskobolos, Myron (Roman marble copy of bronze orig.)
38 Doryphorus, Polykleitos (Roman marble copy of bronze orig.)
* Doryphorus, Polykleitos (Roman bronze copy by Apollonios of Athens
39 Pericles, Kresilas
40 Acropolis Athens
41 Acropolis (reconstruction)
* 42 Parthenon (Temple of Athena Parthenos), Iktinos and Kallikrates Athens
43 Parthenon (plan)
44 Athena Parthenos (model)
45 Lapith vs Centaur
46 Helios and his horses, east pediment of Parthenon
47 Three goddesses from the east pediment
48 Horsemen of the Panathenaic procession (on the north)
48 Seated gods and goddesses, Panathenaic procession (on the east)
48 Procession of elders and maidens, Panathenaic procession (on the east)
49 Propylaia, Mnesikles Acropolis
50 Erichtheion Acropolis
* Aeolian Capital Larissa
51 Erichtheion (plan) Acropolis
52 Caryatid (Brit Mus), Erichtheion south porch Acropolis
53 Temple of Athena Nike, Kallikrates Acropolis
54 Nike adjusting her sandal, south side of T. of Athena Nike Acropolis
55 Grave Stele of Hegeso Athens
* Painter and asssistants crowned by Athena and Victories
56 Warrior taking leave of his wife, Achilles Painter Eretria
57 Apollo and Artemis slaying the children of Niobe, Niobid painter
58 Hermes bringing the infant Dionysos to Papposilenos, Phiale ptr
59 Youth diving (ptd sarcophagus cover) Paestum

Art Historiography: genuflecting and looking at the ourselves
Prefacing the last lecture I returned to the point that most historians spend more time trying to fit into the hegemonic vision of their world than in critically examining the evidence. The point I want to extend our understanding to today is the most important corollary of that narrow professional insight. It is that as we shift our gaze from the narrow profession of historian to the wider, and more important role of citizen, we find more or less the same situation. We all tend to work harder at fitting into the prevailing hegemony than at critically analyzing it. Few of us will become historians, but all of us are citizens. So this is the genuinely critical issue for all of us.

Despite our self-congratulatory belief that our own communities are socially civilized and technologically advanced, we live in threatening and violent worlds, in which we are taught very early that the slightest deviation from hegemonic orthodoxy may lead to ostracism and punishment. No one makes it to adulthood without recognizing that criticizing the mainstream social consensus is dangerous.

Academic Freedom does exist and within the university there is a certain amount of effort expended to maintain it, but I can testify that few of my colleagues approach anywhere near breaks indecorum, much less genuinely critical thinking that will challenge it. There are the academic realms of free critical inquiry and that is where we stay. To question the status quo is to take on the onus of not belonging and that is reasonably frightening to most of us. And yet we live in a culture that not only depends upon it, but claims we all do it. What is the date of this painting? Were the ancient Greeks more classical than the Romans? How great was Alexander? Few approach the fact that Alexander the Great was a mass murderer on the level of a Stalin or an Attila the Hun. For Alexander was a Greek, not a Hun. Though he wasn’t a Greek!

Who questions a president who says his favorite political philosopher is Jesus Christ, and prefers to invade crippled and impoverished nations with vast armies and bombardments killing hundreds of his own citizens and thousands of his enemies, rather than accepting the judgment of most of the wrest of his own allies that negotiations are preferable? Most citizens fear to ask, or even wonder, why such un-Christian policies and murder flow out of the man who has the greatest power over us.

It could result in a rebuke by our fellow citizens. It could cost us our personal prestige.

History composing is a mode of human thought and a mode of human production. As we study it, we are modeling much of the thinking and potential action that we apply in other modes of our daily lives. It is most wise not to reject the conclusions of our predecessors without finding compelling evidence and logic to do so. But it is also the requirement for a responsible historian to test all conclusions for more cogent readings.

The 5th Century, Early & High Classical Greece 480-50 & 450-500 BCE
Classical Historiography The Classical period begins with the Greek victory over the Persians at Salamis and the sack of Athens. As a period of visual artistic imagery it is the model for all the later uses of the term “Classical.” It was the Golden Age, the ideal period. And in this case it was the work done to replace the destroyed art of the Acropolis in Athens, the Greeks largest and most powerful and wealthy city that set this standard.

This was a period of great art in the theater and literature as well. Aeschylus “[h]imself a veteran of the epic battle of Marathon, ...repudiated in majestic verse all the slavish and inhuman traits of nature that the Greeks at that time of Crisis associated with the Persians.” (120) Sophoclese and Eruipides, Herodotus and Pericles, Socrates and Plato were all of this period. It was the peak of the model European root culture.

If the claim of the art historian has been that this is a great model for all later European art, it can also be said quite as definitely that this art historiography is the great model for all later European art history.

And then there is the problem of the “West” versus the “East.”

“at times it seemed as though Greece would be swallowed up by Asia...””When the Greek city of Miletos was destroyed in 494 BCE, the Persians killed the male inhabitants and sold the women and children into slavery. The close escape of the Greeks from domination by Asian “barbarians” nurtured a sense of Hellenic identity so strong that from then on the history of European civilization would be distinct from the civilization of Asia, even though they continued to interact.” (120)

This is the East versus West I warned of earlier. The Persians fought and nearly conquered the Greeks. There was no such thing as Asia at the time. Indeed, as we have seen, a large part of the Greek world was on the coast of what we now call Asia. The Greeks called less civilized nations speaking other languages “barbarians,” but took the great civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and Egypt as cultural models. The Greek city states were supported in large measure by its slave economy.

The special vilification of Asia and Asians here is an anachronism put upon them by much later Europeans. We have no reason to honor it today, unless it is to continue the Imperialist Kipling’s claim that “never the twain shall meet.” It was perhaps Alexander, in his conquest of the Persian empire, who first developed the contrast of the Hellenistic world versus the Persian in a conscious spreading of Greek military as well as commercial cities.

* 28 Temple of Hera II, c 460 BCE Paestum (It)

The second temple of Hera at Paestum was constructed around 460 BCE. It’s a lot more like the temple of Aphia at Aegina of a half-century earlier, than the first Hera temple of a century earlier. But that’s the major point that art historians have learned from their records. Over time styles continuously change. Even the Egyptian art that maintained so many features for such a long time, changed so continuously that antiquarians can date most work on the basis of their style.

In this case there is now the even number of pillars in the facade, since once builders learned to avoid a set of pillars running down the center of the interior, an even number was necessary. Aphia at Aegina was 6 by 12, Hera II is 6 by 14, a variation. Inside the facade pillars we can make out the second row of pillars across the sanctum porch.

The main difference for us, though not a difference in the design, is the survival of the tympanum on the facade. The figurative sculpture that once filled the tympanum and the metopes are now missing, but we are getting a closer idea of the way Greek temples were finished. This one, like the two we’ve already seen, is Doric. And a good deal stockier in proportions and darker in color than Aegina.

The Greek temples of Paestum, on the southern coast of the Italian peninsula are a reminder of the Greek polis there. It was originally a colony from ????, but once established it became an independent Greek speaking, and Greek cultured town. And as pointed out earlier, it was one of a number of Greek settlements on the southern Italian coast. As the presence of such fine Greek art in the Etruscan tombs indicates, there had been centuries of trade between the two regions even before some of the Greek traders settled on the peninsula.

29 East Pediment, Temple of Zeus, c 470-456 BCE, 87’ Olympia
The temple of Zeus at Olympia was from the same period, but it has fallen in ruins. Much of its figurative sculpture has survived and has been reassembled at the site. The subject of the east pediment is the tragic tale of the chariot race between Pelops and King Oinomaos. The temple stood at the starting point for the chariot races held at the Olympic festivals. The composition is the wide low and ever lower pedimental triangle. Here the figures take advantage of the shape to form their composition. In traditional fashion Zeus is larger then any of the mortals, so he stands at the center and highest point. The next figure on either side is a male and then there is a female. Again, traditionally he men are taller than the women, so we are picking up the slope of the frame, without bending the figures.

In the fashion of Classical Greek the figures are generally beautiful, youthful, and devoid of emotions.

31 Seer, from the east pediment of the Temple of Zeus, 4’6” Olympia
The major exception is the Seer from near the northern end of the pediment. He is shown as an old man reacting in horror, because he know of the tragic events about to occur. Such unidealized figures were always possible, but they were generally avoided in the Classical period.

32 Athena, Herakles, and Atlas with the apples of the Hesperides, 470- 456 BCE, 5’3”, Temple of Zeus Olympia
The metopes of the temple have survived in fragments. The include the 12 labors of the great hero Herakles, who is shown here holding up the sky. The figures are in high relief. Which reminds us that the pediment figures were fully in the round. The style, is typical of the Early Classical period (480-450 BCE). This is also often called the Severe Classical or Severe Period, for the strict grid like stiffness of the poses and simplicity in the major lines of the compositions.

The Severe gains in dignity, whatever it sacrifices in naturalistic curves.

33 Kritios Boy (Acropolis), c 480 BCE, 2’10” Athens

The sculpture of the Classical period is an ideal chosen as the model for much later work. The classic model is the development of naturalism in Greek sculpture. The Greeks took four centuries to move from the stick figure conceptualizations to the apparent slipping line over which what we read as diagrams —sometimes brilliantly esthetic diagrams— to those we read intuitively as human. That is, those we read for information and those we respond to emotionally, as if alive.

“The classical style is also characterized by a final break from the rigid and unnatural Egyptian-inspired pose of the Archaic kouroi.” (122) This is the moment of Greeks moving beyond a psychological dependence upon those who preceded them to a more self-confident exploration of alternatives.

The Kritios Boy, that is, the boy sculpt by Kritios, is often taken as the earliest fine example of this transformation to survive. We can see the development in two key characteristics: the softening of the contours in the removal of all hard ridges and geometric contours, and the shifting of the axis of the figure’s stance from vertical to hip-shot. If the one leg is put in front of the other the hip on that side dips. And the torso above is shifted away from the vertical to a subtle angle away from the lower hip to balance it. We get a subtle ∫ curve. And in this shift from the conceptual logic of straight to a slight curve, we move to an intuitively more “real” or “human” being.

“When it reappeared after a long absence, in the sculpture of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it was an unmistakable sign of renewed interest in Classical art.” This is the art historical model.

34 & I-18 Warrior, c 460-450 BCE, Bronze 6’6” (Reggio)
When move to the bronze Warrior, found in the sea off Riace (or Reggio), Italy, we take a step further down the historically staged development. The hips are shot a little further, and now the head turns to the side, and we respond a bit more intuitively to its pseudo-humanity. We don’t forget it is an object, but we are compelled to view it with a bit more sympathy, despite its being inanimate. This is one of a pair of fine, life sized bronze figures found only a few years ago. It is a hollow caste bronze, nude figure with an athletes body and adult’s beard.

Once more we are also reminded that a large amount of most interesting Greek art to survive is located in what is later Italy. The modern geographic distinction between Italy and Greece did not exist until late in the Hellenistic era, when the Romans conquered the Greek city states in the south of the peninsula.

We should note that the Greeks and later Roman collectors of Greek art, valued bronzes over marble works, as more subtle creations. The bronzes were originally modeled in wax, over a clay armature, and could not only take finer detail than marble, they could be reworked and refined in process. Because modeling in wax is an additive process, the sculptor could alter their work at any point in the process without starting the entire piece over. Because stone sculpture is subtractive, once an element is roughed out, it can not be added to or significantly altered.

You will note that many of the works we consider from this point on are designated marble copies of bronze originals.

Don’t skip the book’s explanation of cire perdue (lost wax) casting. It is a fundamental means of making fine sculpture that goes back to at least the Geometric period among the Greeks. [I don’t know how much further, elsewhere.]

35 Charioteer, ded by Polyzalos of Gela, c 470 BCE, 5’11” Delphi
The Charioteer from the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi is a good example of the variety of styles available at any time. Its Archaic stiffness can be taken to note that everyone did not move in lock step into the new stylistic realm plotted by Kritios.

The work was dedicated to commemorate the victory of the tyrant Polyzalos of Gela (Sicily) in a chariot race. The head may point in a slightly different direction than the feet, there may be a slight twist in the waist, but this is the monumental and formal Severe Style of the Archaic, not the more casual lifelikeness of the Classical. There are glass paste eyes inlayed here as in the Riace Warrior, but they belong to different cultures.

The continuous and repetitious vertical folds of the charioteers garment make it clear that the artists who created it were more interested in formal strength and what we might see as an eternal or frozen timelessness, than the more instantaneous effect of more casual and organic irregularity found in the later, Classical liveliness.

36 Zeus or Poseidon, 6’10” 460-450 BCE, (Cape Artemision)
The magnificent Poseidon (or Zeus), launching a trident (or thunderbolt), is a close relative of the Riace Warriors. Though we can say that the very formality of its pose seems to conserve a bit of the rigidity, and so the monumentality and timelessness, of the Severe. And it strides now even further out into space, beyond the vertical block of the Archaic.

37 Diskobolos, Myron (Roman marble copy of bronze orig.), [c 450 BCE], 5’1” [Rome]
The Diskobolos is one of the more famous statues from Classical Greece, though it is known today only through copies. The original was a bronze by Myron in the mid 5th century. We know of its contemporaneous fame, through the fact of the numerous surviving copies. The Romans collected Greek sculpture with great avidity, as Greek culture was highly admired by them. The copies in marble differ from the original bronze, as stone has different working characteristics than bronze. There was the necessity of adding the tree trunk, we see here, to support in marble, what would be free standing in metal.

Though the pose is in motion, the effect is still relatively static and “Severe.” Still it faces away from the viewer, as if acting for himself, not posing for us.

In fact the image we see here is largely reconstructed from a torso and legs, and has been reconstructed in a variety of quite different ways!

38 Doryphorus, Polykleitos (Roman marble copy of bronze orig.) c 450-40 BCE, 6’11” (Pompeii)
The Doryphoros (spear bearer) is another, even more famous work, seen here in the finest surviving example. Again we see the supporting tree trunk and a clip between right wrist and thigh, added there for support. The model was done by Polykleitos, one of the most famous artists of Classical Athens. It was the illustration for a treatise he composed on the ideal figure. The operative term here is “ideal.” The being we see is a perfected model, not a study of a particular being. He is 18 or so. Old enough to have a fully developed physique, yet too young to have a beard. Polykleitos called the work an ideal measure, the canon

Polykleitos canon based its aesthetic ideal on the Greek philosophical ideal of perfected proportion. The proportions he chose were from those advocated by Pythagoras, in whole numbers, e.g., 1:2, 2;3, 3:4 and so on. There is a quote in the chapter.

[Beauty arises from] the commensurability [symmetry I’d say measure] of the parts, that is to say of finger to finger, and of all the fingers to the palm and the wrist... —Galen paraphrasing

The pose is somewhat stronger in contrapposto (counter-posed) than Kritios’s Boy: the hips shot a little further, the torso turned a bit more from the plain of the hips, the head brought back a bit more from the plane of the torso. There previously-planer ∫ curve now twists in space in an ∫ spiral.

* Plato’s Cave Head of the Doryphorus of Polykleitos (Roman bronze copy by Apollonios of Athens, 21” c

There is preserved in Naples also a bronze copy of Polylkeitos’s head for the Spear Bearer, from Herculaneum, near Pompeii. It is signed by Apollonios of Athens. Comparing the two heads we can see a little of the difference between the two media. Even when such fine edges were possible in stone, they would wear in the weather, where bronze will not. .

The Athenian Acropolis
Following the Persian sack of their city in 480 BCE, the Athenians, now the leaders of the Delian League, rebuilt and expanded all the monuments of the Acropolis, the great table top ritual center of the city. The won largely through a destruction of the Persian fleet at Salamis.

“In the aftermath of the Persians’ expulsion from the Aegean, the Greeks formed and alliance for mutual protection against any renewed threat from the Orient.” (126)

The conflict with the Persians lasted through the century. In 454 BCE the treasury of the league was shifted from Delos to Athens itself. Pericles the Athenian leader succeeded in turning the League into an Athenian empire. And so the wealth of the central Greek city states was sucked into the beautifying of Athens. And great resentment grew toward Athens among the other states and within Athens of Pericles. While Pericles’s Athens was embellished “like some pretentions woman decked out with precious stones.”(127, = Plutarch, 12)

Did you notice how Plutarch’s complaint about a man’s vanity turns is voiced in terms of women’s?!

This 12th edition of Gardner points out, the gems of the Parthenon are not the product of Athenian democracy, but of its “tyranny and abuse of power.” I had to go back to the 5th edition of Gardner’s to find the, then standard, reference to Athenian art as open and democratic, in comparison to the closed art of the Spartans, and in many ways Greek art seen as different in just this way from the art of the previous Oriental empires. So we can see the development of Gardner itself reveals the progress over time of a critical sense.

And yet we can try to be nuanced, non-idealizing and still non-stereotyping, and recognize that the culture of classical Athens was that of a democracy, however limited, and that its products were far more open to far more people than those of the Archaic aristocratic empires of ancient Egypt and the Fertile Crescent that we have looked at in previous chapters. The pre-literate, Neolithic tribal societies, in which everyone in a band knew and was related to everyone else, were even more democratic.

In such societies that have survived around the world, such as those of the Native Americans or Africa and Oceania in the last several centuries, we see that this extends to women having relatively much greater roles then they have in any of the larger societies. Where the issue is survival and people struggling in nature, women have been relatively important co-producers and decision makers in society. Where, as in the Archaic civilizations, war between men, rather than the struggle for subsistence, has been the issue, the warrior gender has subordinated women in distinctive ways.

The Archaic empires buried the primitive egalitarianism of the tribal band in their construction of large scale societies through closed and oppressive aristocratic systems of inherited clan rule. In this regard the Athenians and some other communities managed to open social power to more than a few citizens and this was visible in their monuments.

So, as we look at the Greek temple, open on all sides, even in such a protected location as the Athenian Acropolis, we are seeing a monument to the ability of men in some cultures to open their cultures to more than a limited few, and by comparison with the walled in exclusive temples of the Egyptians and the empires, make their creations more accessible. We should think here of the Panathenaic Festival Procession in comparison with the Pharaoh’s worship in the temples of Egypt.

39 Pericles, Kresilas, 6’, (Roman marble copy of bronze c 429 BCE)
The original is a bronze by the Cretan, Kresilas, who worked in Athens. This is a bust of the head only, on a square base, called a herm. It is more an idealization than an accurate portrait.

40 Acropolis Athens
“More human creative genius concentrated on the Periclean Acropolis than in any other place or time in the history of Western civilization.” (127)

What can we say, other than it is a silly concept. There is not way to measure “creative genius.” This is plain and simple a combination of genuflection to the hegemonic flag and high school rally enthusiasm.

Each building was later remodeled and severely damaged over time. The Parthenon had its image removed to make it into a church, and later a mosque. In 1687, when the Venetians besieged the town, then in Turkish hands, the Parthenon was used as an ammunition dump and blown apart. They then destroyed some of its pediment sculpture trying to take some as souvenirs. In the end it was the British who took home most of the sculpture. Today, what is left is threatened with disintegration, by the city’s air pollution.

41 Acropolis (reconstruction)
What is clear from the reconstruction is that the site was considered as a whole, not just a place with separate constructions upon it. Each temple, for instance is sited where it can be seen from below. And the whole is fit to the Panathenaic Festival Procession.

42 Parthenon (Temple of Athena Parthenos), 447-438-432 BCE
Iktinos and Kallikrates Athens
The Greek temple like their ideal figure, was composed on the basis of harmonic proportions. The basic proportion on the Parthenon was x = 2y + 1. Thus the peristyle colonnade was 8x17 columns, the stylobate is on proportions of 4:9. By repeating the basic relationship a consistency is maintained.

I would say it is the consistency, rather than any of the particular proportions here that has been successful.

The fact is, to look straight and precise, at its gigantic size, many irregularities were planned into the building. The stylobate, and every horizontal above it, curves upward toward the center, so that they doesn’t appear to sag. The corner pillars lean in slightly, and they are slightly thicker then the rest. Thus the structure is adjusted at every element, and never conveniently right angled. Vitruvius, the first century Roman architect whose writings have survived, claimed to have seen the thesis Iktinos wrote on his building. He mentions these devices.

The temple’s exterior is Doric. The pillars are taller and more widely spaced than the second Hera temple at Paestum, though not so much as found earlier at Aegina. The dish of the echinus capitol is more compact and less distinct than earlier ones. Thus the echinus and its abacus are far less individually important and blend into the column more. The stay within the profile of the lintel above. The result is a colonnade that blends into one compact form, without the staccato rhythms of more salient pillars in earlier temples. As appropriate in the Doric, the pillars have no bases, the shafts and their flutes continue to the floor. In this case there is a very elegant articulation of a barely sunken square marking the reception of the pillar on the stylobate.

43 Parthenon (plan)
“The Parthenon is “irregular” in other ways as well. One of the ironies of this most famous of all Doric temple is that it is “contaminated” by Ionic elements. Although the cella had a two-story Doric colonnade around Phidias’s cult statue, the back room...had four tall and slender Ionic columns...And while the exterior of the temple had a canonical Doric frieze, the inner frieze that ran around the top of the cella wall was Ionic. Perhaps this fusion of Doric and Ionic reflects the Athenians’ belief that the Ionians of the Cycladic Islands and Asia Minor were descended from Athenian settlers and were therefore their kin.” (129)

This is a fairly transparent racialization of the orders. The term “contaminated” is itself so strongly associated with race mixing that the authors have put it in quotes. The issue is amplified by the racial analysis of the groups associated with the styles that follows. The reference to Asia Minor as the location of the Ionians adds the element of East versus West conflict, that has been developed out of the Greco-Persian conflict. And then, after a sentence suggesting a cultural, rather than racial, explanation we get a wiping away of the entire issue as an issue.

“Or it may be Pericles and Iktinos’s way of suggesting that Athens was the leader of all the Greeks. In any case, we shall see that a mix of Doric and Ionic characterizes the fifth-century building of the Acropolis as a whole. (129)

That is, the only reason we have been given this discussion at all is that it is prominent in the literature and so interesting to the writer, and they don’t realize that it is a carry over of 19th century racialism.

The Sculpture
The temple was the largest Greek temple built to that time. The sculpture program— the two pediment friezes, the 92 metopes, the 534 foot Panathenaic Procession frieze and the Athena of the interior—was the most lavish ever attempted to that time.

Most of this sculpture is now in the British Museum, where it has been since it was purchased from Lord Elgin, who got it in Athens between 1801 and 1803. Elgin claimed to have a permit from the Ottoman Turkish government to take the sculpture. According to the Greeks today the work was stolen by Elgin and should be returned to them. According to the museum Elgin had a legal permit to take them. According to recent accounts Elgin’s documents are forgeries. According to our text “Elgin must be credited with saving the sculptures from almost certain ruin if they had been left at the site.”

It is not an easy set of choices. It may be true that had Elgin not taken the marbles some further damage might have occurred. It is questionable whether or not this treasure trove or Greek heritage should be entirely on display in a distant land.

44 Athena Parthenos (model), original by Phidias
Phidias the greatest sculptor of the day was personally responsible for the chryselphantine (gold, Ivory and other materials) image of Athena Parthenos, herself, and the director of the full decorative and figurative scheme. His image of the goddess was 38 feet high and largely covered in gold. Parthenos is the Virgin. On her right hand she supported an image of Nike (Victory), symbolic of Athens victory over the Persians at Salamis. “The Athenians were intensely conscious that by driving back the Persians, they ere saving their civilization form the Oriental “barbarians” who had committed atrocities at Miletos.” (131)

Her sandals depicted the Lapiths defeat of the Centaurs, on the outside of her shield was the victory of the Greeks over the Amazons, on the inside was the victory of Olympian gods over the giants. “Each of these mythological contests was a metaphor for the triumph of order over chaos. of civilization over barbarism, and of Athens over Persia.”

This is unarguable. The Athenians saw themselves as warriors creating their cultures success by their military power and the success of their might and even right over their enemies. On the metopes of the exterior these three battles were repeated on a larger scale on the west, south and east, with the victory of the Greeks over the Trojans on the north.

On the statue’s base is the creation of Pandora, the first woman. Pandora was the gift to man of a being to limit him. She was created by Hephaistos as a human with a devious heart, a lying tongue, and beauty to blind him to it. She came with that jar of evils plus one good thing, hope. Like the Old Testament Hebrews, with their legend of Adam and Eve, the Greek were a community of men who portrayed women as the source of evil in the world.

 

* 45 Lapith vs Centaur, Mete, Parthenon, 4’8” [London]
Here is one of the not so well preserved metopes, which does reveal what the direction of style evolution has been, when we compare it with the Early Classical metope from Olympia (32). What we see from this broken fragment is the stylistic leap of the High Classical over the Early. The earlier relief has figures standing up strongly from the background of the block. If the Archaic relief style at Paestum was around 180 degrees, or in the half round, we can see the level at Olympia as 220 degrees, or well over half round, and so standing out from the wall. The Centaur here is raised totally off the relief to such an extent that many of its elements have simply sheared off when it was thrown down in the explosion. Or in Lord Elgin’s trophy hunt. Three of its legs, its torso and head were free from the block and so legs and arms and the head have been lost. As have the head and arms of the Lapith trampled upon at the bottom.

If you take a look at the images on Plato’s Cave of the metope that has been “restored” with a cast, on the eastern end of the southern facade, you can see how effective this is in situ, with the view from below. Here we see a Centaur holding a Lapith by the neck, and as we move below we can see how the different views are stressed by the projection of the relief, free from the back ground. We can see how anatomy and action are focused and displayed for us. As we move we get a continuous set of different views, instead of the one only possible in bas (low) relief.

* 46 Helios and his horses, east pediment of Parthenon, 4’3” h.
The west pediment, seen by those approaching the temple from the entrance to the hill, presents the competition between Poseidon and Athena to be chosen as the city’s patron. The east pediment, which was more important, as the one before which the great festivals were held and beneath which one entered the sanctum, contained images surrounding Athena’s birth. The center of the east pediment was much damaged when the temple was converted to a Christian church, but the figures to each side have survived in fragments, now in the British Museum and represented at the site in precise copies.

Here we see Dionysos (or Herakles) with the horses of the Sun. Phidias’s vision of the pediment was as a frame that the scene is glimpsed through rather than heraldic signboard—a view of a scene rather than an emblem. Dionysos (?) is viewed sitting back from us at an angle, his body is revealed, but he doesn’t appear to be posing for us. The horses turn away from the plane of the wall, revealing their handsome forms as they can be seen in motion. The sculptors of Phidias’ day understood anatomy deeply and so showed it in complex motions that revealed its dynamic grace, not just its most typical contours.

As you can tell, from the silhouette of each of these two groups, they are from the narrowing right and left wings of the frame. What you can tell from the views taken at the site, is how little of the beautiful anatomy and motion, visible in the British Museum and our book, would have been visible at the site. In these pedimental sculpture the artists sacrificed much of their skills to depict things largely invisible from the viewer’s position below. Why bother? Because whatever parts did show would have thus planned into them the level of sophistication that only working the figure out fully could provide. (The images of Helios’ horses and Dionysos in place on the temple today are copies put there to enhance the contemporary viewer’s understanding.)

You can also see how the frame with things disappearing behind combined with the style of relief that breaks away from the wall, could be used to great advantage. Take the horses of Selene (the Moon) at the other end of the same pediment (Plato’s Cave). The way the play with the frame is not only elegant in its self, it give us a clue to the changing views that anyone approaching the temple would have of the figures like Dionysos as well. Instead of one static view, we get a sequence of changing views of the images.

The success of the horses here are a clue to me as to what it is about Greek sculpture that has been found so satisfying to so many over the years. I have no particular interest in horses, and yet here the sharp delineation of selected features seems to catch what is characteristic in the horses’ anatomy and the way it moves, and offer it with just enough personality as to both catch my interest and give it something tangible to hold on to. Here it is the special emphasis given to the flaring of the nostrils and eyes and the prominence of a few major veins or vessels, and that sharply turned gesture of the head in motion.

47 Three goddesses (Hestia, Dione, and Aphrodite?), from east pediment
Here are three more figures from the east pediment. Again, they show us how bodies interact and move and how cloth responds to motion to reveal the bodies beneath it.

As they sit to day in the British Museum they are magnificent works of sculpture. Beautiful masses of female anatomy and drapery in wonderful eye catching human masses and textile folds. They are, in terms of pure craft and form quite exciting and interesting on their own. The way women’s swelling breasts come up from within their figures, the way their legs and knees catch the grace of human movement, the way cloth bunches up at the bottom of a drape, are all enjoyable to watch.

But that is only the craft. The original point was to present three goddesses observing Zeus creation of Athena from his consciousness. And the truth is, like so many wonderful works of art for the most prestigeous sites, it is so far from the viewer’s eye that very little of its glory is actually available.

This may be among the finest sculpture ever created, but at 50 feet or so above the ground, it is fairly well lost on us. Monumental art is, after all, often more intended to impress than to actually inform. It is grand display meant to impress, to awe and inspire. Like a military charge played on the trumpet, its goal is to incite our feelings, not to temper or develop them.

The Panathenaic Festival Procession
The great civic festival that was the center of Athenian public life, as the Presidential inauguration is in American life, was the Panathenaic Festival Procession, that also took place every four years. Beginning in the market place, the procession wound up to the city and then up the hill and onto the Acropolis, where it circled around to the east facade of the Parthenon, where a new woolen garment was presented to priests of the temple by the leaders of the city, who had marched at the head of the parade. Taking part in the procession was limited to the families of citizens and pride of place in the procession went to the most respected in the city’s elite.

The actual presentation was to the wooden image originally housed in the structure destroyed by the Persians, and later held in the Erichtheion. It was brought out before the Parthenon for the ceremony.

48 (top) Horsemen of the Panathenaic Festival Procession
(on the north), 3’6” high
The procession is depicted on the 534 foot Ionic frieze that ran all the way around the exterior wall of the temple’s sanctum, running both directions from the southwest corner and meeting on the east. Being almost 50 feet above the viewers, and under the outer colonnade roof, it was not easy to read, though there were attempts through size and the projection of the upper parts out at a higher relief than the lower, to make it more readable.

The point is unavoidable, however, that as is common on gigantic public monuments to this day, awe and emotional inspiration and the demonstration of luxury was more important than legibility. One may think of the paintings in the U.S. Capitol or the great sculpture of Freedom atop its dome. You probably don’t know it, unless you took my History of Design course. It was a plum commission, but a nearly secret work of art. You likely don’t know the figurative sculpture on our library or any of the other buildings on campus: our major monuments.

Much of the procession is composed of the young men of he city, its prospective citizen warriors, riding handsome horses. The relief is quite low compared to the exterior work. We see citizens of many kinds bringing gifts and moving at an ever faster rate up to the east end of the building.

48 (mid) Seated gods and goddesses (Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Eros) Panathenaic Procession. on the east
On the east facade the people come together to meet the gods, seated at its center, waiting to observe the presentation. The gods and goddesses, are shown seated to emphasize their status, and to allow them to be displayed at a larger scale than their human worshippers.

48 (below) Procession of elders and maidens, Panathenaic Procession, on the east

Our book points out carefully the importance of the citizens, along side their gods. Indeed this is a very standard worship program, regardless of the tradition involved. We saw it in Egypt and shall see it again in Christian art of Europe and the Brahmanical art of India: people are shown in their worship. We shouldn’t take it as arrogance of the citizens so much as the desire of the elite to display their piety. Though it is possible there is no difference between these two things.

What our book often takes to be the Athenians is more truly the Athenian elite. If most of the inhabitants of the citizens were slaves of foreigners or otherwise, like the women, excluded from citizenship, most of the citizens were beneath this elite.

49 Propylaia,Mnesikles, 437-432 BCE Acropolis
Began as soon as the Parthenon’s structur e was completed, the Propylaia was the ceremonial gateway to the Acropolis. It provides handsome entrance to the site from a surprisingly irregular staircase below on the west, and regular temple-like facade when viewed from the site, as one leaves or looks back upon it from within. It is a Doric structure with a somewhat expanded opening between its central pillars to indicate its gateway function. As the Parthenon, it mixes a Doric exterior with an Ionic interior.

50 Erichtheion c 421-405 BCE Acropolis
The Erichtheion is the temple, constructed a few decades after the Parthenon on the site of the Athena temple destroyed by the Persians. It incorporated three different sanctums, and its irregular design reveals this. The pair of sanctums on the west housed images of two early Athenian kings: Erechtheus, in whose reign the wooden image of Athena Polais was said to have fallen to earth, and Kekrops, who judged the contest between Posidon and Athena. The mark of Poseidon’s trident is found in its northern porch. Athena’s olive tree, her gift to the city, was planted outside the western entrance.

Its largest room, on the east, housed the ancient Geometric Period wooden image of the goddess, Athena Polais. This was the most important ritual image of the goddess on the Acropolis, the one brought out of the sanctum to receive the peplos brought by the Panathenaic Festival Procession.

One thing you will notice about the Erichtheion is that it is an Ionic structure, so we can see this striking alternative to the Doric order here. The Ionic pillar has deeper flutes than the Doric and a double-edged ridge between flutes. It is a much taller, narrow pillar proportionately. Even more unlike the Doric, it has a distinctly molded base. And of course, it has the striking double-volute capital.

* Platos Cave Aeolian Capitol , c 600 BCE, Larissa
This capital is a form we can trace back for several centuries in Aeolia, the eastern region of the ancient Greek world, on the Islands and coast of the Anatolia, or what is now Turkey. We can even see other possible versions of such double volute capitals in Persian and even ancient Egyptian lotus volute designs. What we know for sure is its contrast with the quite different Doric, and its presence throughout the Greek world from the Archaic period on, in places like Paestum, for instance. It is a very handsome, symmetrical form, much more strikingly decorative than the Doric.

51 Erichtheion (plan)

It is clear from the deviations from the standard rectilinear clarity that the northern entrance porch and the caryatid porch on the south are unique additions to the original plan. Both have to do with the irregularity of the site and movement of the visitor from the level below the temple on the approach to the western shrines, to the level os the sanctums.

52 Caryatid from the Erichtheion’s south porch, c 421-405 BCE
formerly Acropolis [now London] 7’7”

The example of the caryatid in the British Museum gives us an idea of how images are chosen for the canon. We get the images of the best preserved specimens, which are most accessible. That is, the ones closest to us geograpnically, and so most studied and understood, and most photogenic. Of the six caryatids on the South porch, this is the one Elgin was able to get hold of. The one in place at the site today is a terracotta copy.

Caryatids are female figurative pillars found in a variation of the Ionic order; so what we see is a stiffly vertical figure. And yet one that shows a good deal of humanity beneath its somewhat windblown garment. The strong body beneath is revealed politely but distinctly. There is particular attention paid to the way cloth can flow and fold and bunch handsomely and light-catchingly

53 Temple of Athena Nike, Kallikrates, c427-424 BCE, Acropolis
Our last temple from the Acropolis is the Temple of Athena Nike, Athena victorious. It is a temple in the Ionic order, with volute-capitaled pillars and the continuous frieze, that is the Ionic’s other major difference from the Doric. It is located to the west of the Propylaia, at the entrance to the Acropolis. You see it on your right, even before you climb the stairs of the entrance. It is the victory over the Persians at Marathon (of 490 BCE)that is specifically referred to in the temple’s frieze.

The interesting comment about Kallikrates, who worked with Iktinos on the Parthenon, being possibly responsible for the Ionic elements on that structure is a continuation of the racial idea that these styles are ethnic ones and so the property of certain peoples, as if Iktinos possessed a special understanding of one style and Kallikrates the other. Its is more likely that though they might prefer one style to another, like the various languages they spoke, any experienced architect could work in either.

One of the elements we may note here is the interesting problem faced by a double-volute capitol when it appears on a corner. Like the Assyrian Lamassu, with its five legs, the bilateral ionic capitol needs special device to get around the corner.

54 Nike adjusting her sandal, from the parapet around the temple of Athena Nike, c 410 BCE, 3’6” Acropolis
The wonderful Nike adjusting her sandal comes from the parapet added around the Nike temple in 410. Here we can see the great triumph of Classical figure sculpture. Here is a woman’s body revealed by drapery in a very handsome, very human manner and yet one under total control of optical and anatomical logic. Even without her left hand and her entire head, we have a figure that holds our interests and exalts our feelings of humanity.

The style is a step more revealing than the Parthenon pediment sculptors, of the body beneath the drapery. It that is drapery blown back against the body within by a gentle wind, this is wet drapery clinging to the body. The effect is riveting..

For me what is most exquisite for me is the sense of the body that is so strong and yet so subtle. All those irrational, yet descriptive convincing drapery folds revealing so familiar a gesture in a way that make is iconic.

 

55 Grave Stele of Hegeso, c 400 BCE, 5’2” Athens

Here is one last piece of famous sculpture that reminds us of the solemnity and calm that was maintained at the heart of the Classical image. Here around 400 BCE is an image not so far in outline from the Severe Style of the Archaic. This is bas relief, barely half-round, or 180 degrees off the ground. Here is a simple pent-topped, architectural frame with two figures, coming out of it and around the corners.

Our book says it is in the style of the Athena Nike parapet reliefs. That is, of the Nike Adjusting Her Sandal. I can’t see that, though the drapery is revealing. And we are closer to it in that respect than we are to the metopes from Olympia of 470 BCE. I’ll be willing to go as far back as the Parthenon pediments. But the figures are strictly parallel to the frame. Their gestures are stiffly formal. Their features are opaque and impersonal.

Well, you can see the problem. We can now think with these styles and try to place them into their chronological and stylistic order.

Everything doesn’t move according to the latest styles. Here’s a retardataire or conservative image. They are the most common sort in every period.

This is the grave marker of the upper class woman Hegeso. Its inscription gives her name and that of her father Proxenos. It shows a well dressed woman seated on a fine chair, examining her jewelry. Her importance is revealed in part by her being able to afford such a lavish grave marker. In part it is established by the fact that she with a servant in attendance. And you will notice the still traditional scale differential between the seated Hegeso and her standing servant. It is just like that on the Parthenon between the humans and the gods. The unnamed servant here is a slave, another proof of the subject’s wealth, like the jewelry.

As our authors point out, her mother’s name is not mentioned, only her fathers. This is a slave owning, patriarchal society

To understand the work’s meaning we need to understand its cultural context.

* Plato’s Cave Vase painter and assistants crowned by Athena and Victories, c 450
The earliest image of a female artist is recorded in this Greek red figure piece. The master artist is the largest figure, seated at his painting and approached by Athena herself. His two male assistants are each approached by a winged Nike. At the far right of the composition seated upon a dias there is a female painter. There is some question about the meaning here.

The only major femal artist to come down to us from Greek history was the poet Sappho. But the names of a number of women vase painters were recorded in Hellenistic texts. The Roman, Pliny the Elder lists seAristarete, Eirene, Iaia, Kalypso, Olympias, and Timarete. A Greek artist of Alexandria, named Helen, was credited by some as the author of a wall painting of Alexander’s victory at Issus, more commonly attributed to Philoxenos (5-69)

56 Warrior taking leave of his wife, Achilles Painter, 1’5”,
c 440 BCE, Eretria
We look at vase painting to understand the art of the time, because the larger, panel and mural painting has all disintegrated in the intervening years. Ceramic vessels and their fired surfaces are extremely resilient. Besides which, some are quite fine art and there is a very expensive market for them.

Here is an example of white ground painting. This takes the visibility of vase painting’s primary esthetic element a step further. Now we have an even clearer view of the elegant, highwire act of pure drawing. The media also included the addition of colors that could not be baked in, so it could only be used effectively on vessels for display rather than daily use.

Our text points to the repetition here of the composition of the woman seated in profile, just seen in the Hegeso stele.

57 Apollo and Artemis slaying the children of Niobe, Niobid painter, 1’9”, C 450 BCE
The subject here is the slaughter of Niobe’s 12 children by Artemis and Apollo, to chastise her for her hubris, thinking she could compete with the gods. The style is that traditionally attributed to Polygnotos, whose work was done on a mural scale, but has not survived. The advance over previous styles is found in the extensive use of three elements of perspective. There is placing of figures higher and lower in the picture plane to indicate spatial location, there is a use of overlaps, and there is the developed use of three-quarter views. There is also the developed use of scene setting props, like trees.

58 Hermes bringing the infant Dionysos to Papposilenos, Phiale painter, 1’2”, c 440-435 BCE
Here we see the white-ground style on a larger scale, and restricted to colors that could be fired into the permanent design: red, brown, purple, a white highlight and a dilute brown wash.

In contrast to simpler work’s focus upon the esthetic element of pure virtuoso line, there is in polychrome wares the movement toward scenes read as scenes, rather than compositions, becomes possible.

* 59 Youth diving (ptd sarcophagus lid), 3’4” c 480 BCE, Paestum
The panel of the youthful diver, from the Tomb of the Diver is included here to show us something that is not confined to a curving vase body. It points out the ability to create a scene. It is a theme found on Etruscan tomb walls, but not known on Greek pottery. It thus indicates that “The Greek painter of the Tomb of the Diver seems to have been aware of developments in Etruscan painting in Italy as of the work of contemporaries in mainland Greece.” (139)

Why, we might wonder, would a painting found in southern Italy, not far from the regions inhabited by the Etruscans, surprise us by having elements in common with Etruscan art? Why, we might wonder as well, would a painting found in southern Italy be considered Greek?

The premise of our study of art history is that works of art are not only the work of the particular beings we call artists, but that they are the products of those beings working within rich cultural systems that shape both the stories they tell and the ways they tell them. Like writers, artists work within particular languages and cultures. And however their works may express their own individual intentions, it is the fact that they are expressed within cultural systems that gives them meaning.