2.2 Greece (600–30 BCE) 🇬🇷

Archaic (600–480 BCE)

Sculpture

• Kouros and kore figures (sculptures of young men and women, respectively) are popular and are usually made from marble and paint 🎨
• Humans are shown standing upright with straight, squarish shoulders and knotted hairdos.
• Sculptures of humans usually have an Archaic smile (slight smile where the sides of the lips are barely upturned 🙂), which is meant to add liveliness to the rather stiff looking work.

Image Courtesy of Nikos Daniilidis. Peplos Kore.

Classical (480–323 BCE)

Architecture

• Three orders of columns, from least to most complex: Doric, Ionian (columns with spiral volutes on their capitals), and Corinthian (columns with leaves 🍃on their capitals)
• Buildings were used in everyday life (like the Athenian Agora), commemorated historical events (like the Temple of Athena Nike ⚔️), and/or were dedicated to mythological figures (like the Altar of Zeus and Athena at Pergamon).
• Amphiprostyle temples (only having columns at the front and back) are commonly seen
• Architects used geometry 📐 when constructing their buildings.

Image Courtesy of Mark Cartwright on Ancient History Encyclopedia (CC BY-NC-SA).

Sculpture

• Less stiff-looking than Archaic sculptures, since artists used contrapposto (arrangement of the human body where most of the weight is put on one leg AKA the engaged leg, while the other is slightly bent at the knee)
• Polykleitos' canon of proportions: idealized bodies with large muscles 💪 and wide torsos, mix of stressed and relaxed muscles, head is 1/7 the size of the body
• Rules become more relaxed as time goes on.

Image Courtesy of Sutori. Helios, Horses, and Dionysus.

Pottery

• Greek potters believed that form follows function, which means that something's appearance should match how it's going to be used (we'll be revisiting this term when we get to unit 4 🤗).
• Black figure (black figures on red clay background) and red figure vases (red clay figures on black background) become popular in the Archaic period.

Image Courtesy of Polytropon Art. Types of ancient Greek pottery.

Image Courtesy of OHS APAH. Niobides Krater.

Hellenistic (323–30 BCE)

Sculpture

• Artists begin to focus on human emotion by showing figures in less stiff positions, depicting movement, and carving different facial expressions 😧onto their sculptures.
• Most sculptures (with the exception of reliefs) were meant to be seen from all sides, rather than just from the front.

Image Courtesy of Elam's Art/History. Seated Boxer.

Painting

• Depict historical or mythological battle scenes in a glorious way (as seen below ⬇️)

Image Courtesy of AP Art History Go!. Alexander Mosaic from the House of Faun.