Back to Art H 280 table of contents
The History of Art Survey
Lectures 9
Greek Art 3: Late Classical and Hellenistic
Gardner 161-183
Style Periods: Late Classical and Hellinistic
Style Period: Late Classical: 400 - 323 BC
5-
60 Aphrodite of Knidos, Roman copy [Praxiteles] -
61 Head of a woman Chios
62 Hermes and the infant Dionysos, copy [Praxiteles] Olympia
63 Head of Heraklese or Telephos Tegea
64 Grave stele of a young hunter Athens
65 Apoxyomenos (Scraper), Roman copy of bronze , [Lysippos] -
66 Weary Herakles, Roman copy by Glykon of Athens, [Lysippos] Athens
67 Head of Alexander the Great Pella
68 Stag hunt, Gnosis Pella
*69 Battle of Issus, Philoxenos of Eretria Pompeii
70 Theater, Polykleitos the Younger Epidauros
71 Tholos, Theodoros of Phokaia Delphi
72 Corinthian capital, Polykleitos the Younger Epidarous
*73 Choragic Monument of Lysikrates Athens
Style Period: Hellenistic: 323 - 31 BC
74 Temple of Apollo, Phaionos of Ephesos and Daphnis of Miletos, Didyma
75 City of Priene, model
76 House XXXII, plan Priene
77 Stoa of Attalos II (reconstruction) Athens
78 Altar of Zeus Pergamon
79 Athena battling Alkyoneos, Gigantomachy, Altar of Zeus Pergamon
80 Gallic chieftain killing himself and his wife, Epigonos (?), cop of Pergamon
81 Dying Gaul, Roman copy of bronze original (by Epigonos ?) Pergamon
82 Nike of Samothrace Samothrace
83 Venus de Milo, Alelxandros of Antioch-on-the-Meander Melos
84 Aphrodite, Eros, and Pan Delos
85 Sleeping Satyr (Barberini Faun)
86 Seated Boxer
87 Old market woman
88 Demosthenes, Polyeuktos, Roman copy after bronze orig
* Portrait head Delos
89 Laocoon and his sons,
Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes
90 Head of Odysseus,
Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes
Historiography
The first rule of art as well as design history
is that all work is patterned. All work is social, done within
recognized and shared parameters. This is true as early as the first flaked
tools and even the first found tools. Its statements derive their meaning from
systems of thought and action, like words in language. It is the differences
in patterns from one place to another that allow us to tell where things come
from. Or at least that they come from different communities.
The second rule is that these patterns are always changing.
However fast or slow, because we are organic and not machines and each of us
a little different, we repeat even the same motions differently and only mechanical
reproduction can be consistently unchanging. So over time there is always change
in the patterns.
The third rule is that there is pattern to the changes.
It is that pattern of change that historians are able to follow to date things
from the related sets, and to make judgments about the meaning of different
designs in various cultures and the developments of those cultures as the patterns
of design change are compared with other changing social patterns within the
cultures that produce them.
The major historical interest in Hellenistic art has been in its deviation from
Classical patterns and the speeding up of its patterns of change, from the longer
maintained patterns of continuity in the past. The hegemonic historians see
a major disruption of the formerly much more closely regulated Classical canons
in the Hellinistic world and interpret that in part as a matter of the peculiarly
protean nature of Greek creativity—which many measure as the kernel of
“Western” creativity.
To me this is an aristocratic reading. It see some people, or cultures, as inherently
more creative than others. We have seen this idea developing in the analysis
of ancient Egypt and the Fertile Crescent, which emphasized the long lasting
continuity of design ideas there. An alternative, counter-hegemonic, vision
would be more democratic and recognize that design changes everywhere, even
if it does so at differing speeds. The pattern that impresses me most when comparing
the Greeks and those who came before them, like the Egyptians, is the general
shift in the speed of design innovation that develops with regularity over the
long run of history. The further back one goes, the stronger and the longer
the continuities and the closer one comes to the present the swifter the change.
The more interaction there is among the peoples of the world the more innovation
and the faster the innovation everywhere.
This can lead to an analysis of the speed up of design innovation among the
Greeks over the speed of innovation in previous great cultures as more a matter
of the others being earlier than in their being inherently more or less creative.
Ancient Greece
Reading in Slatkin’s chapter on Greece we learn more than we do in Gardner
about the situation of women in Greek society. Why focus on the situation of
women? They are half the society, and in a patriarchal such as ours their contributions
have been regularly denied. How reasonable is it to speak of our society as
patriarchal? Women do have the vote, they can inherit property and serve on
juries. Those who continue to call this a patriarchal society have only to remind
us that conservatives of every active religion in the US say so. Conservative
Christians claim that their god says so. In any case we can recognize that until
relative recently, and in most of the nations of the world the position of women
has been subordinated in significant ways. We have taken the situation of purdha
in Taliban Afghanistan as an atrocity. How close we should wonder was the role
of women to this in the ancient world?
The status of women in Classical Greece was “very low,” according
to Slatkin. Besides strong class distinctions, based upon wealth and citizenship,
the Greeks offered quite different opportunities to their different genders.
To begin with the civic world of the rule of the city state was exclusively
the realm of men. Women were essentially excluded from participation in the
polis. Men dominated warfare and the state. Upper class men dominated
the state. Upper class women were confined to the domestic sphere and this meant
largely confined to their homes, only allowed out for particular reasons and
then in the company of others. “occasional trips to the fountain house
to fetch water or to the graveside to mourn the dead,”(33) They lived
in segregated quarters on houses upper floors. They learned domestic, but received
no intellectual training in things like rhetoric or the arts. Very few women
were literate. Wives were generally a good deal younger than their husbands.
A woman’s social-economic (class) status was that of the mail relatives
she lived with, her father or husband. Marriage was arranged with dowries. That
is, the woman’s family provided a sizable economic contribution to the
family into which she entered. This was to ensure her security, as her new family
was now responsible for her. Women could inherit her parents wealth if there
were no male heirs, but she had to marry her nearest male relative. Women could
acquire property, but they had no legal standing or rights.
The combination of low status within the culture and the high cost of dowries
led to a high level of female infanticide. Men outnumbered women by two to one
in Classical Athens. Women ate an inferior diet. [This, is still true in much
of the world today.]
Women below the elite had the advantage of not being confined to their homes;
they regularly worked at many professions to earn a living. Women in general
were charged with the domestic sphere, so they managed households, though wealthy
women had slaves to perform actual labor.
If nothing else, understanding better the situation of women in ancient Greece should remind us of how different that world was from ours and clarify why they are depicted in such different ways in the arts, and important ways not depicted at all. We have seen important differences like the quite different conventions on nudity: males regularly nude, women nearly always clothed. When women are shown they are normally either goddesses or servants doing something for men. In this regard, Hegeso is an anomaly only before we note that she is identified by her father.
The great example of women appearing in the arts of the ancient Greeks is their representation in the Panathenaic Procession, which we have already glimpsed.
Slatkin 5-4, the Peplos Scene from the Panathenaic Procession on the
Parthenon, 447-438 BCE
The state sponsored festival lasted an entire week every year, with special
emphasis every fourth year. This was one of the rare opportunities for upper
class women to appear in public. Indeed they played a major role. They took
particular place in the worship of the goddess. A woman from the Eteoboutadai
clan was the hereditary priestess of Athena Polias, claiming direct descent
from the city’s former royal family. During the year she supervised the
young women who wove the cloth for the ritual robe, the peplos, presented
to the statue housed in the Erichtheion. Two girls, chosen from among the aristocratic
families, spun the yarn. Others participated in the weaving
and the embroidery. The culmination of the procession was the presentation
of the robe to the goddess, in the form of the wooden statue. Other young women
also participated in the preparing of the offering cakes and
as bearers of the basket transporting the cakes up to the altar
on the Acropolis.
The peplos was saffron in color and bore an embroidery of the Gigantomachy.
The rite probably stems back into the bronze age, when cloth was an even more
important craft production than it was by the Classical period. “The weaving
of the peplos was a central ritual for the women of Athens.”
(39) The presentation of the peplos, the peplos scene, was the culmination
of the 534 foot relief circling the temple. It was at the center of the east
facade of the sanctum, beneath which on entered it to witness the giant chryselphantine
image of the goddess. As one looked from the outside it was the image over Athena’s
head. “A man intervenes between the women’s production of the peplos
and the gift of it to the goddess, and this intervention is singled out by the
iconography as essential: a gift from the city as a whole is a gift from men,
for human women may not/cannot represent the city.” (40)
Indeed the truth of the entire situation is that the women do their work, not as themselves or even as women, but as the agents of the men they belong to, or whose families they belong to.
We see it here in Slatkin’s illustration. We see the presentation of the folded cloth by the young women to a male figure. It is a worn image, and we can understand why a book on art may not have wanted to focus on such an esthetically compromised bit. We have to note how a handsome surface trumps all other issues in the choice of images to reproduce.
Which is a point worth noting: a history of art is focally a history of the finest surviving works, however it may offer a particular vision of the history it covers, it does so connecting the dots of the famous works. That is, not connecting the major events or even the most important images. What it connects is the images most famous today in the culture within which it is written. The Germans have the images from Aegina, the British the images from the Parthenon, Americans are part of the English speaking world. The images of Olympia are still in Greece.
Without a question the Parthenon is a design that the history’s of “Western”
art all dote upon for many reasons. When Slatkin and her sources consider it,
they give central place to the role of women in the art and the history. When
our hegemonic histories consider it, they tend to ignore that role. We are still
that patriarchal in our hegemonic vision.
Slatkin 5-1 Women Working Wool, the Amasis Painter (?),
c 560 BCE, 6.5”
One of the more important issues foregrounded by consideration of the Peplos
Scene, is the association of women with textile fabrics. In many cultures this
is the fact; the larger European cultures are typical. Women because of their
situation in child bearing and so domesticity, have been the ones most likely
to be involved in every level of the textile production: spinning, weaving,
sewing, embroidery and to on. In the Greek world this was true of women of all
classes.
Weaving and cloth production activities are used to mark their burial and to
define their lives in the literature. It was the weaving of a tapestry, unwoven
each night, that occupied Penelope as she fended off the suitors, awaiting Odysseus
return. Weaving is the most commonly depicted craft on Greek vases. [So long
as one does not consider warfare a craft.]
Slatkin illustrates one of these. Since weaving and other women’s work was not a major subject of the vases, or of art historians in general, until recently, we get few reproductions of it. And the ones we get tend to be tiny black and white views, such as common in the art histories of my youth. But as the very mention of women’s issues was not in those books, but is now given a slight place in Gardner and the other surveys, it will not be too long until images like this one are sifted through and the best selected for color plates.
Slatkin 5-2 Bridal Procession, Father and Son Bidding Farewell, c 430
BCE, 9”
Athenian men married at around 30. That is, when they had proved their ability
to maintain a family. Girls married between 12 and 15. That is as soon as
they became fertile. Even with the limited mortality in a culture where
the men were all used to combat and tetanus had no cure, women’s life
expectancy was as much as ten years less than men’s. That is 25 % less.
Early child birth, and multiple childbirth were certainly major causes of this.
Slatkin 5-3 Domestic Scene, the Polygnoten Circle Painter, c 430 BCE,
Here we see an upper class woman handing her child to a servant. We also see
a loom. Women were the ones most likely to be doing embroidery in any culture
Thus the decorative patterns we see on the early ceramics and everywhere else
in early art are likely influenced to an important degree by the running decorative
designs of women, found on all clothing and decorative hangings. We cam go back
and realize than much of the work we have scene includes such decorative enframements.
Athena was a special patron to weavers and potters. Though women are associated
with pottery, here and in other cultures, for all the reasons stated for textiles,
once vase making became an elite profession in Greece, they were not allowed
to compete with men on those fabrics.
Style Period: Late Classical: 400 - 323 BC
The Peloponnesian War, between the Athenians Spartans, lasted 431-404 BCE. Athens
lost. Sparta ruled the Greeks, then Thebes, then they lost power to the Macedonians
(338 BCE) under Philip, whose son, Alexander III (Alexander the Great) ruled
till his death (323 BCE). Alexander left almost immediately to conquer the Persian
Empire. “the ultimate revenge for the Persian invasion
of Greece in the early fifth century BCE.”
One must remember that the Macedonians, despite Alexander’s ability to speak Greek and his Greek education, were Barbarians, speaking a non-Greek language. That is: barbarians, just like the Persians! Alexander was possibly the most murderous European before the 20th century. He spent his entire reign at war, conquering the Persian Empire and then its neighbors, raping and killing his way across western Asia as fat south as the Indus river and as far west as Egypt. He only stopped moving his camp from battle to battle when his wounds caught up with him.
Thus the 4th century was a period of comparative chaos, during which the relative
peace of the 5th was shattered and the confidence of the Greeks in mathematical
balance and the possibility of ideal perfection was troubled. The hegemonic
view is that “Disillusionment and alienation followed. Greek thought and
Greek art began to focus more on the individual and on the real world of appearances
rather than on the community and the ideal world of perfect beings and perfect
buildings.” (139)
It is a favorite of archaeological logic to divide cultural periods into early, middle and late. This is often translated into the organic metaphor of youthful or immature, mature and decadent. What we should always remember about this application of a biological growth pattern in plants to social development is based upon the viewer’s decision about what is an important or interesting phenomena, that the viewer declares a period and then brackets with framing periods of its coming into being and its passing away. It is a phenomena of the viewer’s analysis, not the subjects actual development.
Thus we have had the old Classical Period of Greek art, the 5th century, divided fixed on the high moment of Athens glory and its fading divided into Early Classical 480-450 BCE, High Classical 450-400 BCE, and Late Classical 400- 338 BCE. Late Classical is thus taken to be the period in which the “perfection” of the Athenian ideal was abandoned.
60 Aphrodite of Knidos, Roman copy of Praxiteles’s original marble
of c 350-340 BCE, , 6’8” sort of...
Praxiteles is the master associated with the movement beyond Classical idealism
to a somewhat more naturalistic canon—what our authors call a “humanization.”
The direction of change is said to be from “solemn grandeur” toward
“worldly sensuousness.” [Go figure!] According to the Roman
writer Pliny it was “superior to all the works...in the whole world.”
[A fine compliment, though not a possible category.] Significantly
Pliny points to its being viewable from all sides. and even more significantly,
our book points out, it caused a sensation because it presented a completely
nude female figure on a monumental scale.
She is shown removing her garment before her bath. The object below the garment
is her jar of water. Her right hand is placed modestly before her. She looks
modestly down, away from eye contact. We are told by Lucian that Praxitiles
original had “dewy eyes,” and by our author that this is a ”rather
mechanical Roman copy.”
Though we may generally assume such images are characteristic of Classical Greek art, we now have to realize that they don’t occur before the 4th century BCE! There are male nudes going back for centuries, but not females till now. Those few females shown nude earlier are lower class women in slight works. This was a temple goddess.
It is thus clear that male nudity was uncontroversial, in fact highly admired. It removed social class from the figures, by eliminating garments identifying it. But why were women not shown nude, humans or goddesses? One reason is that, as the myth of Pygmalion points out, female nudity can be seen as distinctly erotic to men. And it is clear that actual social status in ancient Greece meant that men were not only the only significant artists, but also the only significant audience for art.
Still, this doesn’t deal with the fact that some men also respond to nudity in males erotically, and male homosexuality was openly accepted, if somewhat controversial, in ancient Greece.
We know from the number of copies that this is the pose of Praxiteles’ Aphrodite from Knidos, and its essential look. It is a handsome figure. It is also worth noting that this particlar piece is included in the art historical canon because of its academic centrality, more than its authenticity. It is actually a composite of two separate copies of the famous work, the head from one and the body from another, to which the nose, the neck, the arm, and the strategic right hand have been added in the 17th and 18th centuries.
61 Head of a woman, 1’2”, c 320-300 BCE, Chios
This fragment of a head found at Chios seems closer to a fine master’s
work in Praxitiles style. IT has the softness of contour and delicacy of effect
that the ancients spoke of and copies apparently try to emulate. The hard generalization
of the Severe Archaic was melted into the more human, if still somewhat abstract
and impersonal Classical. This now takes us a step more human to a softly sensuous,
with no lines or sharp ridges. It seems more casual and so more personal.
Now, as at the time, this is thought of as Praxiteles contribution. If he is the master most associated with the development, it is still the logical step in a development that goes back for more than a century and continues on.
62 Hermes and the infant Dionysos, copy of Praxiteles’ original
for the temple of Hera at Olympia, of c340 BCE, 7’1”
This was long considered by the master himself, but more recently called a close
copy, effectively representing the master’s style. The ∫ curve of
the body is more accentuated than Polykleitos canon (5-38). The figure ideal
slighter. The god is shown dangling grapes over the head of the infant Dionysos,
perched on his left arm. The modeling of the flesh is more subtly organic, more
delicate. The hair is more lifelike, as it is looser.
It is as if the military ideal has been replaced by a more sensuous and comfortable one.
63 Head of Heraklese or Telephos, c340 BCE Tegea
Here is a fragmentary head, now lost to thieves, that shows the sunken-eyed,
emotion evoking style of Skopas. Historians see more individualistic styles
in the Late Classical period than they do earlier. It seems that artists
individuality and egos were growing, as already indicated by painters and potters
signing their work, and being identifiable. Skopas of Paros was particularly
known for the intense emotionalism projected by his images. This piece is close
to that ideal, coming from the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea. If not by Skopas,
it is in his style and from the temple he designed and supervised.
The head’s abrupt turn, its deep set eyes, its apparently anguished or
questioning expression, all fit Skopas ideal. .
64 Grave stele of a young hunter, 5’6”, c 340-330 BCE,
Athens
The Grave Stele of the young hunter fits this same mold. Our author reads strong
difference between the living philosopher (?) and the dead youth. The young
deceased resembles the head we’ve just seen. A child weeps at his feet;
his dog hangs it head. The older man at the right looks on pensively. The youth
himself looks out somewhat blankly and yet inviting our interest.
Typical of this art and that of a number of cultures, the subordinated figures have more lifelikeness than the main, more important and so formal figures.
The Archaic and Early to High Classical ideal, of expressing no emotion, but eternal calm, despite the emotions that should accompany event, is dropped in the Later Classical.
65 Apoxyomenos (Scraper), Roman copy of bronze, of a bronze by Lysippos, of c 330 BCE, 6 9”
What does it mean to study particular masters’ Greek bronze styles through the Roman copies in marble of centuries later? It give us the chance to see the general development of the period. There are enough written descriptions, multiple copies, and fragments of contemporaneous works of less importance or fragmentary nature—like the head from Tegea—to demonstrate that our models are correct, even if second hand examples.
And most of the illustrated pieces became part of our hegemonic art historical canon in the year before they were recognized to be copies, when many were thought to be originals.
The Apoxyomenos is one of the most famous of these “close copies.” You will look a long time before you find a survey of Greek or Classical or European art that lacks it. Being in the Vatican collection means it will be seen by every serious scholar. Being chosen early meant that it was sought for the Vatican collection. A particular mark of this collection is the fig leaf over the figures penis, a Vatican bowdlerization of the 19th century, since removed from those pieces where it could be.
Lysippos is another of the great names with distinctly identifiable styles.
So famous was he in his own day, Alexander chose him as a court artist and got
him to produce the official portrait, which is recognizable in copies from around
his empire. such as illustrated in figure 67. Lysippos produced a new canon,
more slender and taller than Polykleitos’s. This copy of his most famous
bronze work displays it. It is a body eight heads tall, where the other is around
7. It is also less broadly stable and balanced. It’s smaller head and
leaning, rather than striding, stance seems a bit off balance, which give the
design some energy.
Its arm extended into space on a second plane. It may even suggest being seen
from more than one ideal point of view.
66 Weary Herakles, Roman copy by Glykon of Athens, after a bronze original by Lysippos, c 320 BCE, 10’5”
How is an image made by an Athenian Roman? I don’t know. It is a marble copy and it was fond in or near Naples, where it is now in one of the major museums of the art of classical antiquity. [As our book I’ll used the uncapitalized classical to refer to the entire Greco-Roman period.
To grasp the full meaning of this work, our book avers, one must walk around
it. The Romans displayed it at the Baths of Caracalla. The exaggerated muscular
development is “poignantly ironic” they say. The right hand is unseen,
unless you circle the piece. It holds the apples of the Hesperidies he has just
been awarded. His mood is dejected.
I don’t see this at all, but I for some reason, don’t like the piece at all. There is something too massive n the body, for my taste, and the geared head is somehow too brutal. But this is my personal taste, and not widely shared, i would guess.
76 Head of Alexander the Great, c 200-150 BCE, 1’, Pella
“Alexander was a man of singular character, an inspired
leader with boundless energy and an almost foolhardy courage. He regularly personally
led his army into battle on the back of Bucephalus, the wild and mighty steed
only he could tame and ride.” 144
Tell me that you didn’t think this came directly from a movie advertisement. There is no way anyone could have survived such a habit for more than a few days, much less over a decade of continual warfare. It is his court propaganda. The lines about the wild horse that only he could tame was originally written for the sort of public inscriptions that were placed in famous sites. The fact is, this is a man who possibly killed nearly as many as Hitler or the British empire.
This is the Lysippan Alexander, originally done full length in bronze with the
inscription: “I place the earth under my sway; you, O Zeus, keep Olympus.”
The lion’s mane of hair is Lysippan. The sharp turn of head and sunken
eyes are due to Skopas. The delicate softness of the flesh are owed to Praxitiles.
Is the look a little wild?
77 Stag hunt, Gnosis, 10’2”, c300 BCE, Pella
& Stokstad 5-71 the Pella mosaic with its decorative borders.
This is a pebble mosaic, from a wealthy residence in Pella, Macedonia. Mosaic’s
are images formed by assembly of colored bits set into ground. Here it is tiny
pebbles. Details are controlled with strips of lead and terra cotta. This is
a lavish floor decoration, and it is signed, “Gnosis made this.”
This medium gives the artist certain opportunities not available in painting
on ceramics. If they can’t show of control over refined linear gestures
that make vase painting so interesting, they can use variation in color and
shading (skiagraphia) for the modeling of mass, that is impossible
in ceramics.
And that is what we see here. It is not surprising to see a fine sense of the
proportions of the human body and in portraying it in motion. What is most interesting,
because we haven’t had the opportunity to see it before—due to the
fragility of most surface decoration media—is control over the picture
plane and modeling of imagery. These figures are modeled by a graduation of
tone, from light to dark, that produces convincing masses and the articulation
of internal details. Take any element and it is shaded darker and lighter in
a convincing parallel to what one sees optically.
We can only imagine what the more skilled painters, so famous there names— like Apelles—have been recorded, working with more subtle colors on more pliable surfaces were capable of.
69 Battle of Issus, Philoxenos of Eretria, Roman mosaic copy of Greek
original of c 310 BCE, 16’9” Pompeii
The most famous Greek painting to survive from antiquity is the Battle of
Issus, by Philoxenos of Eretria. It survives, not in the original, but
once again in a Roman copy, this time in a tesserae mosaic. The subject is one
of Alexander’s most famous battles, in which he forced the king of Persia,
Darius III, to flee the field in his chariot. “It is widely believed to
be a reasonably faithful copy of a famous panel painting of ca. 310 B.C. that
Philoxenos of Eretria made for King Cassaner, one of Alexander’s successors.”
Tesserae are carefully cut bits of stone and glass that give their mosaic makers
much more control over their final product than those confined to found pebbles
can have. The size of the piece gives us the chance to see a detailed version
of what the original probably portrayed. Philoxenos was noted for his ability
to portray objects in space with optical conviction. So we see the black horse
pulling Darius chariot turning to the side or the rearing tan horse, between
us and Darius, in three-quarter foreshortening from behind. Here is use of shaded
surface modeling put to a dramatic effect.
Even more interesting are details demonstrating the care with which artists
are looking and demonstrating that to their patrons. The fallen figure to the
right of the tan horse holding a shield for protection, is shown with his face
reflected in the polished shield. The figures depicted are shown with their
shadows, cast on the ground beneath them. These details show us a materialistic
interest in how light plays across the real world and how that can be incorporated
in a scene to make us believe it, that is quite impressive.
But what the historians have most admired here is not that quality of observation
and portrayal of optical details, but the compositions total ability to capture
human psychological drama. Alexander is shown charging from the left, as Darius
flees toward the right in a chaos of the battle’s details, and yet we
are caught by the expressions on the two faces, connected magnetically by their
gazes. The human subject, Alexander’s victory over Darius, is captured
and nailed in our minds by the expressions on the faces of the main protagonists,
sticking up over the battle and connected by the line of sight between them,
while all the myriad enhancing details of the struggle play around them, supporting
their climax without detracting from it. Thus even in the roughness of a mosaic
copy we get a striking impression of the heights of dramatic success Greek painting
was capable of.
If we pause here for a moment, we can reframe our consideration of this work from the famous example of Greek Classical art it can remind us of to what it actually is: a Roman floor decoration of a few centuries later. No Greek painting has survived, outside the miniature linear craft on ceramics, but our hegemonic historians wish to see and acknowledge this famous work so much, they offer us this dim copy of a post-Classical work in the unquestionably cruder media of mosaic, done by a Roman artist two to four centuries later to portray it!
While for the historian this is a valuable recreation of the past that gives us useful insights into otherwise lost phenomena, for the art critic this is Elvis impersonation. We have to look here for information, not brilliance of effect.
70 Theater, Polykleitos the Younger. c 350 BCE, Epidauros
The Greed theater was designed on a strict and elegant geometric mode. The dramas
performed in them were staged only once, during a sacred festival. A number
of them are in use today. At the center is a circular stage called the orchestra
(dancing place). The actors and chorus performed there. Spectators sat on the
overlooking slope in the theatron (place for seeing). The simple rise
of the circling seats made the performers visible and was apparently of decent
acoustics.
71 Tholos, Theodoros of Phokaia, c 375 BCE, Delphi
The Tholos at Delphi is a circular temple. It had a circular Doric colonnade
of 20? columns. It is shown here (apparently) to introduce its Corinthian capitals.
72 Corinthian capital, Polykleitos the Younger, c 375 BCE, Epidarous
The Corinthians capital was designed in the second-half of 5th century BCE by
Kallimachos. They were used only rarely before the 2nd century BCE , and then
only on interiors. A Corinthian capital is composed of a four equivalent faces
organized around a circular drum. Each face has three levels. At the base is
a ring of curling acanthus leaves, rising behind and above these is a taller
ring of curling acanthus leaves, placed in between those below. In the top half
are four more, linear scroll volutes, higher ones at the corners and slightly
lower, opposed ones at the center.
I just wrote this while reading the photo in our book and checking it against a set of slides of the first century CE temple of Zeus in Athens. For forty or fifty years I’ve just supposed they were acanthus leaf capitals or irregular arrangement. But I took this moment to read carefully through a couple, and it turns out that they are quite simple for all the busyness of the curling leaves.
The Corinthian order was the same as the Ionic, only the capital being different.
According to the hegemonic view it became popular because it eliminated certain
problems of both Doric and Ionic orders. Some found the diagonally placed volute
of the Ionic at a corners unsatisfying. The Doric also had a problem for many
at corners. Its rules were that a triglyph must stand over the center of each
pillar, each intercolumniation, and at the end of the frieze. This was difficult
if not impossible. The Ionic / Corinthian order has not triglyphs, but a continuous
frieze, and the corners of the Corinthian are all the same.
73 Choragic Monument of Lysikrates, 334 BCE, Athens
The earliest example on an exterior is fond on Lysikrates’s Choragic Monument,
a structure created to commemorate his victory. It is a round structure, like
the tholos, but a mural one. Its pillars, therefore are engaged, relief depictions
of pillars. We can see the Corinthian capitals on these reliefs, and the ruins
of a crowning on top. As common in the Corinthian / Ionic order, there is a
figurative frieze in the entablature.
Style Period: Hellenistic: 323 - 31 BC
The Hellenistic world is the “Greek world after Alexander.” “Alexander’s
the Greate’s conquest of India, the Near East and Egypt...ushered in a
new cultural age...” It is reckoned as the period from Alexander’s
conquest [of Greece] to the fall of the Greek world to the
Roman Empire. This is an interesting political-historical period, for its recognizing
of an international spread of Greek based culture into regions where all sorts
of foreign elements are absorbed into the Greek cultural base. It is reasonable
to call it Greek, as this is the language in which most of its practitioners
spoke and the cultural model they practiced. Looking at the visual arts we get
a graphic depiction of what this spread of Greek and absorption of other cultural
elements meant.
Though no lasting state came out of Alexander’s destruction of the Persian Empire, a widely dispersed set of Greek-ruled local states were left in the wake of his retreat, and combined with the trading institutions already a staple of Greek culture, but greatly expanded in the service of Alexander and his surviving generals, the produced a Hellenistic archipelago stretching from the Adriatic to the Indus.
Its major centers were outside the Greece we have been considering, in Antioch
(Syria), Alexandria (Egypt), and Pergamon, while Athens faded in importance.
The hyperbola continues with Alexander, who you know of as “Great” even though you don’t know why or how. And I have complicated. You will have time to measure all I tell you, now or later. Alexander did battle across the Indus region on India’s far west, but “conquered” only Kandahar, the southern most satrapy of the Persian empire, located in modern Afghanistan.
What the hegemonic history of the always heroic “west” doesn’t make clear, in its zeal to associate all fame and virtue with Greece, which is being groomed here as the representative of “Western” civilization, is that Greece was Alexander’s first conquest. He was—despite his having a Greek tutor, Aristotle—after all an Macedonian barbarian. And besides crushing the Persian Empire, it was he who reduced the wealth of Athens, upon which its esthetic flourishing was based.
74 Temple of Apollo at Didyma, Phaionos of Ephesos & Daphnis of
Miletos, C 313 BCE
One mark of the Hellenistic world was the growth of scale and luxury as new
rulers strove to compete with those of the past. The temple of Apollo at Didyma
was built on the site of one destroyed by the Persians in 494 BCE. So vast was
the work that it continued for 500 years without reaching completion. [Or
we can say, because it means exactly the same thing: so weak was the financing.]
In order to demonstrate the power of its creators, it included two encircling
rows of pillars instead of one, at twice the height of those on the Parthenon.
Its axial doorway was too high to enter, and served instead as a stage for oracular
presentations, while entrance was had on the sides. It lacked a roof. And in
many ways typical of the Hellenistic period, departed freely from the more rigid
formulas of the Classical period.
To include the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos (as one of the 7 Wonders of World, itself a Greek canon) in the Greek world, it was located by our authors in Caria or Asia Minor. Now for the Hellenistic international sites in Ionia and Caria are labeled “Turkey.”
75 City of Priene, (model), 4th C BCE
Priene was crushed by the Persian Empire in the early 5th century BCE, but rebuilt
after the Persian’s defeat, according to the type of plan developed by
Hippodamos of Miletos, on a strict rectilinear grid layout of thoroughfares
and uniformly sized blocks. This was the rational, Greek, norm. The plan included
a “zoning” of particular regions for particular functions
76 House XXXII, plan Priene
Houses were built on rectilinear grids, around open courtyards, within closed
walls, as inward looking.
77 Stoa of Attalos II (reconstruction), c150 BCE Athens
A stoa is a covered colonnade. An agora, an open public square.
[Don’t pass any words you don’t understand without looking them
up in the glossary or a dictionary. You aren’t reading meaningfully if
you don’t know the meaning of the words you are reading.] Athens was not
a new city planned from scratch, but the result of a village grown into a town
and then a city over centuries of irregular development. It lacked the simple
regularity of a planned city. Though over time there were developments, like
the adding of stoas on the sides of its agora, the contributed to improved civil
life.
The Stoa of Attalos II was a gift to the city of Athens by the king of Pergamon.
It has been carefully reconstructed by the American School of Classical Studies
in Athens. It mixes Doric columns on the ground floor with Ionic above.
78 Altar of Zeus, c 175 BCE Pergamon
The kingdom of Pergamon was founded by Philetairos, in the second century BCE.
It controlled southwest Asia Minor (the region now occupied by modern Turkey.
The Altar of Zeus, on the city’s acropolis, contained the most renown
sculptural decoration of the Hellenistic period. The altar was on a raised platform
surrounded by colonnades, entered by a braad staircase flanked by colonnaded
wings. The basement of the colonnade was coursed by almost 400 feet of sculptured
relief depicting the Gigantomachy, the battle between the gods led by Zeus and
the Giants.
The entire edifice has been moved to the State Museum in Berlin. The British have their classical temple sculpture and the Germans have a couple of their own. We’ve already seen the pediment sculpture from Aegina
79 Athena battling Alkyoneos, Gigantomachy, Altar of Zeus Pergamon,
c 175 BCE. 7’6” high
The victory of the Greed gods over the Giants was here a reference to the victory
of Pergamon over the Gauls, a barbarian army passing through the region on its
way toward Europe. [Without charge we get another gratuitous reference to
Athens versus the Persians.]
The style is characteristic of Hellinistic arts departure from the Classical.
The relief is very high, reaching full round in parts. The overall composition
is filled with diagonal movement, unlike the stable rectilinear grid underlying
Classical reliefs, the underlying grid here is diagonal, and the major figures
play off it in violent motion. Athena here grabs the Giant Alkyoneos’
by his hair, he stretching in one direction and her balancing it stretching
in the other, where she is met with a Nike leaning toward her. The scene is
a quotation of the same subject as found on the East Pediment of the
Parthenon.
It would be necessary to see this image to understand the comparison. It is hard to imagine such a passionate figure group, filled with deep undercutting, and the shadows they produce, and such vigorous patterns of rushing wings and shifting figures, on the more staid, rectilinear and calm Parthenon.
This style shifting the static verticals and solemnity of the Classical ideal
to a diagonal filled, agitated design of competing diagonals and deeply dark
shadows and light contrasts inform and stressed emotions in content, are regularly
called “baroque” after the 17th century style of Rome, which has
first claim on that title. The baroque can be seen as a reaction to, or a development
from, the Classical.
80 Gallic chieftain killing himself and his wife, marble
copy after Epigonos (?) bronze of c 230-220 BCE, 6’11”
A set of free standing figures from a two generations earlier, on an equally
monumental, passionate and dynamic scale, preserve an example of the Hellenistic
ideal in the round. These are the wounded Gauls commemorating the victory of
Attalos I, over a barbarian “tribe” on Pergamon’s frontier.
The images survive in the form of Roman marble copies of bronze images thought
to be by the sculptor Epigonos.
This dynamic pair is among the most dramatic. The figures are united in contrasting
axes. His figure moves in one direction and hers crosses it at ta 90 degree
angle. Here is the baroque in a free standing example. In contrast to Classical
sculpture’s emphasis on a pose visible from a single angle, this work
requires us to walk around to all sides, to fully appreciate it. The subject
is one of extreme emotion and action. The warrior at the end of a losing cause
has just slain his wife and is about to committing suicide by plunging his sword
into his chest.
81 Dying Gaul, Roman copy of bronze original by Epigonos (?), Pergamon,
c 230-220 BCE. 3’ high
The dying Gaul is the most famous piece from the ensemble to survive. Its location
in the Capitoline Museum in the center of modern Rome has given it great visibility
and led to great celebrity. It is a good example Hellenistic arts other major
characteristic: optical realism. What is psychologically reserved Classical
sculpture and physically idealized, come in the Hellenistic period to be emotionally
dramatized and articulated in physical detail. The bushy hair, the mustache
and the torque at the neck here are recognizable depictions of the Gaul’s
non-Greek identity. The pained expression on his face and detailed rendering
of the veins in his arms and legs, with the inelegant twisting of his body tell
a story far more personal than the one found on the pediments of Aegina (5-28).
One not meant to be seen from thirty feet below, but one the viewer can walk
right up to, and even stand immediately above, as clear from the figure’s
trumpet curled on the ground below him.
As an image of pathos it ranks for me with the Dying Lioness of Nineveh (2-25). I can’t remember that the experience of the Assyrian piece was any more compelling in person than in photographs. The dying Gaul I did find seriously moving, when I saw it for the second time last Fall. That is one of the things I have been going to collections and sites in search of. Do the great works hold the particularly moving “quality” that their inclusion in the canonical discussions suggest they will. This one does, for me. Of course I went expecting it to, and that has an effect. But then, many works, prestige on no, disappoint.
So I am suggesting, look carefully at this image. It shows us what war was like in the time before it meant bodies blown apart and scattered to the winds and plastered upon the walls of metal bunkers and burnt out vehicles. Still, you can feel the human pain here in the right arm stretched against the death of horizontality, and the body slowly giving in to it.
The great skill, most admired by patrons and sought after by artists of the Classical world, was the portrayal of human emotions and experiences through the medium of the human body. So read this figure and see what it tells you. See what its author has to tell you about the human condition.
Bronze has the fine metal property of taking fine detail in sculpture, and not corroding. It also has the great drawback, of being capable of being melted down to produce any number of other things, most commonly war hardware or images of conquering generals.
82 Nike of Samotrace, 8’1”, c 190 BCE, Samotrace
The Nike of Samothrace is set on the prow of a warship, reminding us that Athens’
great power, and indeed that of the Greeks as a civilization, came from their
maritime power as a trading culture and navel fleet that gave Greek armies an
unmatchable mobility. She was originally part of an elaborate fountain.
Despite the loss of most of its composition, including the goddess’s head and arms the work captures amazing abstract interest. The original image was intended to be seen with one arm extended before her, raising a crown over a naval hero. It would undoubtedly look a good deal different than the fragment we have preserved today.
But what we do have captures so handsomely the rustle of the cloth robe across the figure of the vigorously striding woman that we read her upraised wings as a magnificent rising figurative and emotional crescendo, rather than a monstrous anatomical oddity. Thus we have one of Hellenistic art’s greatest qualities, the human figure used to express human emotion, in the clothed figure of a woman as effectively as in the naked figure of a male. The viewer can lean look up, lean back and seee for themselves, through the image poised above them, what it would feel like to rush into the wind and rise up on wings of victory.
*94 Venus de Milo, Alelxandros of Antioch-on-the-Meander Melos, 6’7”, c 150-125 BCE
Here is another of the famous fragments of Greek art, so familiar that we may forget we are looking at a ruin. It is one of the interesting contradictions of viewing cultural trophies in museums, and the bourgeois category of art in the abstract, that we fetishize fragments of human expressions as examples of “quality” for abstract aesthetic pleasure. So satisfying is viewing this handsome body in its gesture of turning gently toward its left, while revealing the magnificent expanse of its hips against the counter weight of its full breasts swaying back to the right, that we ignore the fact of its missing arms. Indeed the lack of the arms contributes to our ability to concentrate on the amazing movement of the torso. The face above is pleasingly handsome. Even the counter twisting pose of the legs below, swathed in flowing drapery can catch and hold our attention.
We have learned to look at human anatomy and human gestures as abstract expressions of the human condition, and the very existence of human craftwork, in stone carving, as an abstract expression of what it means to be human.
Our book places the next three examples under that category of “Hellenistic Eroticism.” Praxitiles undressing of the female form in public monumental art, as distinct from small private images, opened a doorway that Hellenistic culture moved through with interest. [Though when compared to today’s magazines, motion pictures and even museum sculpture, is quite reserved and modest indeed.]
As I pointed out in our first lecture here, the Venus de Milo—Alexandros of Antioch-on-the-Meander’s Aphrodite—was intended to be seen as sexually potent. I made the point as I discovered it, when I had the opportunity to walk around behind it. I wasn’t aware of it from earlier survey reading, or the course I took in the art of the ancient Greeks, or even from enjoying the regular perusal of those lovely breasts and hips for years in photographs! Somehow I had learned, precisely as I was taught, to think of the human form in classical sculpture as nude and not naked. I had learned to abstract it esthetically. I had learned to see it as art or pure skill rather than as skill at rendering human experience.
But there is here also the artist’s intention to tease the viewer with
the flowing of cloth that is about to drop away to reveal more. There is a forthright
appeal to our interest in the flesh.
84 Aphrodite, Eros, and Pan, 4’4” , c 100 BCE, Delos
Here is a more playful piece, but equally one with erotic interests.
I have side stepped, so far at least, the meanings and uses of nudity in Greek sculpture in general. It is clear enough that it isn’t simply a matter of eroticism, though the erotic potential of nude bodies is clearly evident to all concerned, because of the difference in the ways they treated male and female nudity. But I don’t understand this issue well. It clearly demands a good deal of thought if one has the interest.
Our text begins by pointing out that the Aphrodite here is a rather free quote
of the famous Aphrodite of Knidos, by Praxitiles of 250 years before (5-60).
The hanging right arms and their strategically located hand is a mirror image
of that form, though there are other variations as well. She is resisting that
goat legged Pan with her sandal, though hardly with much effort. Maybe playfully?
Maybe this no is intended to mean maybe? The Eros streaming out from her shoulder
suggests that the artist is trying to have her convey other messages.
The statue was commissioned by Dionysos of Berytos (modern Beirut) to be erected
in a local businessmen’s club. [Are we talking locker room here?)]
Our authors call it whimsical.
85 Sleeping Satyr (Barberini Faun), 7’1”, c 230-200 BCE.
(Rome)
* The Louvre’s 17th century copy of the Barberini Faun
This is an ancient image excavated (?) in Rome in the 17th century and restored
by Gianlorenzo Bernini, the major sculptor of the Baroque era. Scholars have
fond problems with his restoration. The subject is a drunken satyr, that is,
a lustful and drunken follower of Dionysos. The hegemonic consensus is that
sensuality doesn’t emerge in the monumental Greek nude until the imagery
of Praxiteles and the Hellenistic period. Comparing this satyr, with his “wantonly
spread large focus[ing] attention on his genitals,” to the Hermes of Praxiteles
(5-62) it is clear that there is a distinct shift in emphasis. Even more interesting
than the spread legs may be the furrowed brow that leads us to wonder what his
dream may be.
It is clear that homosexuality had a different meaning in the Hellenistic Mediterranean
than it does in 21st century America, but then, it is as clear that we don’t
know exactly what its meaning is in either place, since the subject is still
largely taboo, along with much discussion of sexuality.
86 Seated Boxer, c 100-50 BCE, 4’2”, (Rome)
The Hellinistic period was an extremely protean one, devising all sorts of imagery and styles of imagery never seen before in the Greek world. One reason for this is its wide geographic and so cultural spread, well beyond the limits of Classical Greece. Another, however is a change in taste. Where the Classical Greeks seemed satisfied to depict the subjects of traditional mythology, the world of Hellenistic art extended into all sorts of observation of the world at large. That is, the elite subjects of official ritual were superseded to a degree by more common subjects of the human sphere.
It may be no accident that this piece and the Sleeping Satyr were both collected at Rome. Rome was in continual trade with the Hellenistic world, and greatly respectful of its art. And these works may be as likely Roman as Hellenistic, since the difference between the two is ambiguous at best in the last centuries before the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BCE. Such a realistic image of physical travail is characteristic of Republican Rome.
The Seated Boxer is the first image we’ve seen in the classical world
that is not thoroughly idealized. His body is certainly the usual perfected
athlete, but his face betrays the ravages of the arena, as the body does its
weight. His upward gaze has been interpreted as looking the gladiator who has
just defeated him. His nose is broken, his teeth are too. His ears are battered.
“Inlaid copper blood drips from the cuts on his forehead, nose, and cheeks.”
87 Old market woman, 4’, c 150-100 BCE.
Here is another type example of the Hellenistic period’s flight form the
idealized toward the real, if melodramatic. Common people, wounded people, and
as here aged and decaying people. Now the great skill at observation and at
depicting the human body through its rustling cloth garment, and human experience
through the human body is striking. An old and tired woman is shown with her
wrinkled face and sagging, yet quite powerful body. She carries a dead chicken
and a basket of vegetables (?).
88 Demosthenes, Polyeuktos, Roman copy after bronze orig. of c 280
BCE, 6’ 7”
Here is an example of the personal portrait, that focuses upon a man’s
actual features, not the ideal features or the abstract ideal. There is little
doubt that Kresilas portrait of Pericles (5-39) is essentially an ideal type.
But with the Hellenistic period we come to portraits interested in specific
individual idiosyncrasies and specifics. [As we shall see, this was for
the Romans a ritual necessity.] Polyeuktos’ bronze statue of Demosthenes
, the Athenian who warned his city for so long against the advances of the Macedonians,
before and after Philip and Alexander’s imperial rise. The work is highly
specific, though we need to note that it was done four decades after the man’s
passing.
We see a frail, and indeed very normal, of 40 or 50 years, which then was relatively old. What is most interesting here is not the decay of the Boxer or the Old Market Woman, but a normal human physique. These are not desperate or decayed shoulders, just he shoulders and arms of a regular person, shown in a normal human pose.
If this is Demosthenes, his modes pose is unquestionably one where the hands
are wrung for the passing of democracy, that the imperial Macedonians usurped.
The Roman general Flaminius defeated the Macedonian army, freeing the Greek
city states in 197 BCE. Roman’s intervened in Greece more often after
than, and in 146 BCE, after their third defeat of the Macedonians and the destruction
of Corinth, the next the region of the major Greek cities.
* Plato’s Cave Portrait head, 13” c 80 BCE, Delos
To quote the Janson’s History of Art, the other best selling survey, “Individuals likenesses were inconceivable in Classical art, which sought a timeless ideal.” They are, on the other hand quite characteristic of the Hellenistic. The type emerges in the mid-fourth century. And though it is know mostly through Roman copies, a few originals in bronze have survived, and since we have a relatively full set of views of this one, we can examine it.
It was not created as a fragment of “art” but as part of a full figure, now lost. Characteristic of the period it is shown with a prominent emotion, a “troubled look,” Janson calls it. He says “the uncertain, plaintive mouth, and the unhappy eyes under furrowed brows reveal an individual beset by doubts and anxieties—an extremely human , unheroic personality.” (162) This is a complex human character, unparalleled in the art of previous history, though known to us well enough from the literature of Hellenistic and earlier Greek culture.
A different person might read the specifics of the emotions differently, but there is no question that we reach with this are a level of intimate plumbing of the human personality and the human experience that is we have not found earlier and that still finds resonance in viewers today. This is a psychological realism that combined with the optical realism of the period not only shows a very careful observation of the human form, but the human personality.
89 Laocoön and his sons, 7’ 10”, 1st century C.E.,
Rome
Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes
This complex group depicting the deaths of Laocoön, the priest of Troy
along with his sons, is the work of the Greeks, Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and
Polydoros of Rhodes. It appears to be an original marble statue created for
the emperor Titus, who ruled 79-81 CE (of the Common Era, the contemporary multicultural
historian’s version of A.D. The Common Era is the same as A.D., but it
avoids declaring the era Ano Domini “year of our lord”.
Which has a benefit even for Christians, since Christ is now accounted to have
been born after around 7 CE.).
The work seems to be a Roman reworking of an earlier Greek bronze in which Laocoön
had only one son, since the Roman version of the story in Vergil’s Aeneid,
requires two sons. The Greek gods sent the snakes to strangle the priest, who
had warned the Trojans not to bring the wooden horse into the city. The Romans
officially traced their lineage back to the Trojans, and so had a serious interest
in the story and their relations with the Greeks. The intention is to show the
great suffering that the priest and his sons underwent.
90 Head of Odysseus, 2’, first century CE,
Athanadoros, Hagesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes
Pliny reported the artists and their work, as he had seen them, and this has
been confirmed since by the appearance of other works by the same trio of Rhodian
artists on Homeric subjects, in a first century Roman context.
We are reminded that the last of the Attalids willed Pergamon to Rome. And as
we can see here the baroque Pergamon’s Hellenistic style continued there.
It is a difficult and complex issue of definitions we must consider, if we are to separate Roman art of the Hellenistic period from the art of the rest of the Hellenistic world. As we shall see.