9.3: Early Classical

The Greek Early Classical Period

By Boundless Art History

Architecture & Sculpture

Temple of Zeus at Olympia

The Temple of Zeus at Olympia is a colossal ruined temple in the center of the Greek capital Athens that was dedicated to Zeus, king of the Olympian gods (see Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). Its plan is similar to that of the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Temple of Zeus at Olympia, Wilhelm Lübke’s illustration of the Temple as it might have appeared in the fifth century BCE. (Photo: public domain)

It is hexastyle, with six columns across the front and back and 13 down each side. It has two columns directly connected to the walls of the temple, known as in antis, in front of both the entranceway (pronaos ) and the inner shrine (opisthodomos). Like the Temple of Aphaia, there are two, two-story colonnades of seven columns on each side of the inner sanctuary (naos).The pedimental figures are depicted in the developing Classical style with naturalistic yet overly muscular bodies. Most of the figures are shown with the expressionless faces of the Severe style.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Seer from the east pediment of the Temple of Zeus, c. 470–455 BCE. Marble. Olympia, Greece. (Photo: Angela Monika Arnold, CC BY 3.0)

The figures on the east pediment await the start of a chariot race, and the whole composition is still and static (see Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)). A seer, however, watches it in horror as he foresees the death of Oenomaus. This level of emotion would never be present in Archaic statues and it breaks the Early Classical Severe style, allowing the viewer to sense the forbidding events about to happen. The level of emotion on the seer’s face would never be present in Archaic statues and it breaks the Early Classical Severe style, allowing the viewer to sense the forbidding events about to happen.

Unlike the static composition of the eastern pediment, the Centauromachy (see Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\)) on the western pediment depicts movement that radiates out from its center. The centaurs, fighting men, and abducted women struggle and fight against each other, creating tension in another example of an early portrayal of emotion. Most figures are depicted in the Severe style. However, some, including a centaur, have facial features that reflect their wrath and anger.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\): Centauromachy, west pediment, Temple of Zeus, c. 460 BCE. Marble. Olympia, Greece. (Photo: Joanbanjo, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The twelve metopes over the pronaos and opisthodomos depict scenes from the twelve labors of Herakles (see Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\)). Like the development in pedimental sculpture, the reliefs on the metopes display the Early Classical understanding of the body. Herakles’ body is strong and idealized, yet it has a level of naturalism and plasticity that increases the liveliness of the reliefs.

Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\): Herakles and the Cretan Bull, Temple of Zeus, c. 460 BCE. Marble. Olympia, Greece. (Photo: Joanbanjo, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The scenes depict varying types of compositions. Some are static with two or three figures standing rigidly, while others, such as Herakles and the Cretan Bull, convey a sense of liveliness through their diagonal composition and overlapping bodies.

Editors' Note: Sexual Violence in Greek Art

Many classical works of Greek art highlight tales from Greek mythology. Although many of these stories are highly dramatic, heroic, and even humorous at times, they can also be scary and damaging, as they include grim scenes of treachery, rape, and sexual assault. In many textual sources it is clear that rape was normalized; if anyone was to be blamed, it was the woman. Violence against women is often depicted in artwork across the Western art historical canon, but professors and textbooks alike often gloss over the content in favor of a discussion solely of the works’ formal qualities.

In Cynthia Colburn and Ella Gonzalez’s article How to Teach Ancient Art in the Age of #MeToo, they explore the necessary and nuanced ways that students and faculty can approach such imagery. They argue that “[i]n the wake of the #MeToo movement, it is crucial to reassess the way we teach and write about art historically important works that portray violence against women—violence spanning millennia when viewed through the lens of art history—in order to reinvigorate the role played by art history in contemporary social movements.”

Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Detail from Centauromachy (from the pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia), c. 460 BCE, marble, at the Archaeological Museum of Olympia, Greece. (Photo: Sp!ros, CC BY-NC 2.0)

For instance, when analyzing works that are covered in this chapter such as Centauromachy (from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia; see Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\)) and Ludovisi Gaul (also known as Gaul Killing Himself and His Wife; Figure 9.5.11, it is not only important to consider the medium used, the exquisite lines, the radiating moments of movement, or the other visual elements that make these works stand out. It is also key to dive into the subject of the stories—including abduction, rape, and domestic violence. When viewing these works, educators and students can discuss the stories and subject sociologically too, considering the following: What does showcasing art and stories like this do for a society, both then and now? How does this type of content illuminate cultural values systems, both then and now? How does normalizing such violence against women damage viewers seeing it, both then and now? Through such conversations and discussions, the field of art history can grow, while complicating the very subject of the work depicted.

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Kritios Boy: A Conversation

By Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker

This is the transcript of a conversation conducted at the Acropolis in Athens. Watch the video here.

Steven: We’re in the new Acropolis museum, in Athens, looking at the Kritios Boy.

Beth: We’re in the very late archaic period. Some call this the severe style. We might even call this early classical.

Steven: It’s really this transition between the late archaic and the early classical. The sculpture is such a great embodiment of that.

Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\): Kritios Boy, c. 480 BCE. Marble, 3' 10" high. Acropolis Museum, Athens, Greece. (Photo: Marsyas, CC BY-SA 2.5)

Beth: It allows us to see the transition between the archaic kouros, and the much more naturalistic, movement-filled figures that we find on the Parthenon, for example, on the frieze or in the metopes.

Steven: This sculpture was probably broken originally when the Persians invaded Athens and desecrated the Acropolis. This was a huge blow to the Greeks, and when they finally recovered this territory, they took the sculptures that had been destroyed, and they buried them. So it’s ironic that the reason that these sculptures are preserved is in part because they were destroyed, but to make the story even more complicated, before the Greeks had been defeated by the Persians, they had an earlier victory at Marathon.

Beth: Where an overwhelming force of Persians was defeated.

Steven: That first victory by the Greeks, over the Persians, is important to understand, in relationship to the sculpture, because some art historians have suggested that the new-found naturalism that we see in the sculpture is a result of the new sense of self; the new sense of self-determination, that came in the wake of the victory over the Persians.

Beth: And a sense of Athens as the leader among the Greek city-states, who united against the Persians.

Steven: So like the earlier kouros figures, this is marble; it’s a standing nude; he’s relatively still, although there is this potential for movement.

Beth: With the kouros figures, we had a figure that was both standing still and moving simultaneously, but we have incipient movement. Movement about to take place. We have a sense of process, and I think it’s that unfolding of time, that makes this figure seem so much a part of our world, instead of the timeless world of the kouros.

Steven: The kouros figures were depicted as stick figures. There were mechanical joints, that were suggested, but did not really exist.

Beth: Didn’t really work.

Steven: That’s right. There was no way for those figures to actually move, whereas this figure, the much more naturalistic renderings of the volumes of the body; the understanding of the musculature; the understanding of the bone structure; and especially the transitions from one part of the body to the next, make the potential for movement believable.

Beth: Although we don’t see the feet, and the right side, we don’t see the calf, there is a sense that this figure is standing in a pose that art historians call contrapposto. That is, his weight is shifted onto one leg, and here’s the important part; as a result, other things happen within the body, so that one shift in one part of the body affects the rest of the body, so the body acts in unison.

Steven: We can see that very clearly with the knees. The weight-bearing knee is higher than the free-leg knee, and that’s because that knee droops down a little bit. The axis of the hips are no longer aligned. The weight-bearing leg has a hip that juts upward, into the torso, where the free leg, the hip hands down.

Beth: The shoulder above the weight-bearing leg actually drops down slightly, and that compresses the torso in between. His lifelikeness is carried into the head, which shifts a little bit, so we don’t have that strict frontality that we saw in the kouroi. The symmetry of the body is broken. In actuality human beings are never symmetrical, right? Our bodies move and shift.

Steven: That’s why the kouroi seem so artificial.

Beth: Exactly; they seem transcendent and timeless, but because the Kritios Boy is asymmetrical, we have a sense of his engagement with the world. Gone is that archaic smile, that seems to transcend reality, but one of the really interesting things about the Kritios Boy is, if we look from the side, we see an arch in his back, and there’s a sense that he’s moving forward, and holding himself back at the same time. He’s a bit of a tease.

Steven: He’s in a very relaxed pose.

Beth: We should mention that the Greeks had started to make bronze sculptures just before this, and bronze allowed artists to create sculptures with limbs more separated from the torso, or limbs lifted into space.

Steven: And you can see why that could be tricky in marble. In fact this figure has lost its leg, and it’s lost its arms. On his left hip you can still see a fragment of the strut or bridge that would have helped support the arm that would have been next to it. That also lets us know that the arm really was at his sides, very much like a traditional kouros.

Beth: We see the desire on the part of the Greeks, on the part of this artist, to create a sculpture that’s more open, where the limbs and the torso are more separated from one another, but in marble that’s really hard to do.

Steven: One more point about the interest in bronze. Unlike so much marble sculpture, here we have eyes that have been hollowed out. They would have been inset, probably, with glass paste eyes, that would have been very lifelike, and that’s a technique that was commonly used in bronze. In traditional marble sculptures, you actually have the eye as part of the solid piece of marble, and they would have just been painted. There is this interesting reference to the technique of bronze casting, even here in a marble sculpture, and I should mention that the reason we call the Kritios Boy is because the Kritios sculptor was an important sculptor in bronze at this time, of which this is very stylistically similar.

In the entire body, we’ve moved away from the linear representation of symbols of the body, and we now have these smooth, beautiful, volumes, that represent this Greek ideal of the athletic male youth.

Beth: That represented the peak of human achievement, and also the qualities of the divine.

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Riace Warriors

by Dr. Jeffrey Becker

Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\): Head and torso (detail), Statue A, from the sea off Riace, Italy, c. 460-450 BCE (?). Bronze, 198 cm high. Museo Archaeologico Nazionale Reggio Calabria, Italy. (Photo: Luca Galli, CC BY 2.0)

The Riace Warriors (also referred to as the Riace bronzes or Bronzi di Riace) are two life-size Greek bronze statues of naked, bearded warriors. The statues were discovered by Stefano Mariottini in the Mediterranean Sea just off the coast of Riace Marina, Italy, on August 16, 1972 (see Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\)). The statues are currently housed in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in the Italian city of Reggio Calabria. The statues are commonly referred to as “Statue A” and “Statue B” and were originally cast using the lost-wax technique (see Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\)).

Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\): The discovery of the Riace bronze statues in 1972. (Photo via Smarthistory)

Statue A

Figure \(\PageIndex{9}\): Statue A (foreground) and Statue B (background), from the sea off Riace, Italy, c. 460-450 BCE (?). Bronze, Statue A, 198 cm high, Statue B, 197 cm high. Museo Archaeologico Nazionale Reggio Calabria, Italy. (Photo: Robert and Talbot Trudeau, CC BY-NC 2.0)

Statue A stands 198 centimeters tall and depicts the younger of the two warriors. His body exhibits a strong contrapposto stance, with the head turned to his right. Attached elements have been lost – most likely a shield and a spear; his now-lost helmet atop his head may have been crowned by a wreath. The warrior is bearded, with applied copper detail for the lips and the nipples. Inset eyes also survive for Statue A. The hair and beard have been worked in an elaborate fashion, with exquisite curls and ringlets.

Statue B

Statue B depicts an older warrior and stands 197 centimeters tall. A now-missing helmet likely was perched atop his head. Like Statue A, Statue B is bearded and in a contrapposto stance, although the feet of Statue B and set more closely together than those of Statue A.

Severe style

The Severe or Early Classical style describes the trends in Greek sculpture between c. 490 and 450 BCE. Artistically this stylistic phase represents a transition from the rather austere and static Archaic style of the sixth century BCE to the more idealized Classical style. The Severe style is marked by an increased interest in the use of bronze as a medium as well as an increase in the characterization of the sculpture, among other features.

Interpretation and chronology

Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\): Statue A, from the sea off Riace, Italy, c. 460-450 BCE (?). Bronze, 198 cm high. Museo Archaeologico Nazionale Reggio Calabria, Italy. (Photo: Luca Galli, CC BY 2.0)

The chronology of the Riace warriors has been a matter of scholarly contention since their discovery. In essence there are two schools of thought—one holds that the warriors are fifth century BCE originals that were created between 460 and 420 BCE, while another holds that the statues were produced later and consciously imitate Early Classical sculpture. Those that support the earlier chronology argue that Statue A is the earlier of the two pieces. Those scholars also make a connection between the warriors and the workshops of famous ancient sculptors. For instance, some scholars suggest that the sculptor Myron crafted Statue A, while Alkamenes created Statue B. Additionally, those who support the earlier chronology point to the Severe Style as a clear indication of an Early Classical date for these two masterpieces.

The art historian B. S. Ridgway presents a dissenting view, contending that the statues should not be assigned to the fifth century B.C.E., arguing instead that they were most likely produced together after 100 BCE. Ridgway feels that the statues indicate an interest in Early Classical iconography during the Hellenistic period.

Figure \(\PageIndex{11}\): A conjectural restored view of the two warriors. (Photo: Leomonaci121198, public domain)

In terms of identifications, there has been speculation that the two statues represent Tydeus (Statue A) and Amphiaraus (Statue B), two warriors from Aeschylus’ tragic play, Seven Against Thebes--about Polyneices after the fall of his father, King Oedipus, and may have been part of a monumental sculptural composition. A group from Argos described by Pausanias, the Greek traveler and writer, is often cited in connection to this conjecture: “A little farther on is a sanctuary of the Seasons. On coming back from here you see statues of Polyneices, the son of Oedipus, and of all the chieftains who with him were killed in battle at the wall of Thebes…” (Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.20.5).

The statues have lead dowels installed in their feet, indicating that they were originally mounted on a base and installed as part of some sculptural group or other. The art historian Carol Mattusch argues that not only were they found together, but that they were originally installed—and perhaps produced—together in antiquity.

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Articles in this section:

• Boundless Art History, “The Greek Early Classical Period.” (CC BY-SA)
• Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris, "Kritios Boy," in Smarthistory, December 13, 2015. (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Dr. Jeffrey A. Becker, "Riace Warriors," in Smarthistory, August 8, 2015. (CC BY-NC-SA)