9.4: High Classical
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Polykleitos, Doryphoros (Spear-Bearer)
by Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker
For the ancient Greeks, the human body was perfect. Explore this example of the mathematical source of ideal beauty.
Roman copies of ancient Greek art
When we study ancient Greek art, so often we are really looking at ancient Roman art, or at least their copies of ancient Greek sculpture (or paintings and architecture for that matter).
Basically, just about every Roman wanted ancient Greek art. For the Romans, Greek culture symbolized a desirable way of life—of leisure, the arts, luxury and learning.
The popularity of ancient Greek art for the Romans
Greek art became the rage when Roman generals began conquering Greek cities (beginning in 211 BCE), and returned triumphantly to Rome not with the usual booty of gold and silver coins, but with works of art. This work so impressed the Roman elite that studios were set up to meet the growing demand for copies destined for the villas of wealthy Romans. The Doryphoros was one of the most sought after, and most copied, Greek sculptures.
Bronze versus marble
For the most part, the Greeks created their free-standing sculpture in bronze, but because bronze is valuable and can be melted down and reused, sculpture was often recast into weapons. This is why so few ancient Greek bronze originals survive, and why we often have to look at ancient Roman copies in marble (of varying quality) to try to understand what the Greeks achieved.
Why sculptures are often incomplete or reconstructed
To make matter worse, Roman marble sculptures were buried for centuries, and very often we recover only fragments of a sculpture that have to be reassembled. This is the reason you will often see that sculptures in museums include an arm or hand that are modern recreations, or that ancient sculptures are simply displayed incomplete.
The Doryphoros (Spear-Bearer) in the Naples museum (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)) is a Roman copy of a lost Greek original that we think was found, largely intact, in the provincial Roman city of Pompeii.* Recent scholarship suggests that the Doryphoros sculpture in the Naples museum may not have been found in a Palestra at Pompeii. See Warren G. Moon, ed., Polykleitos, The Doryphoros and Tradition , University of Wisconsin Press, 1995. Recent scholarship suggests that the Doryphoros sculpture in the Naples museum may not have been found in a Palestra at Pompeii. See Warren G. Moon, ed., Polykleitos, The Doryphoros and Tradition, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.]
The canon
The idea of a canon, a rule for a standard of beauty developed for artists to follow, was not new to the ancient Greeks. The ancient Egyptians also developed a canon. Centuries later, during the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci investigated the ideal proportions of the human body with his Vitruvian Man.
Polykleitos’s idea of relating beauty to ratio was later summarized by Galen, writing in the second century,
Beauty consists in the proportions, not of the elements, but of the parts, that is to say, of finger to finger, and of all the fingers to the palm and the wrist, and of these to the forearm, and of the forearm to the upper arm, and of all the other parts to each other.
* Recent scholarship suggests that the Doryphoros sculpture in the Naples museum may not have been found in a Palestra at Pompeii. See Warren G. Moon, ed., Polykleitos, The Doryphoros and Tradition, University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
Watch a video of Dr. Beth Harris & Dr. Steven Zucker discussing the Doryphoros.
The Athenian Acropolis
By Boundless Art History
The Parthenon, one of the best-known buildings of the Athenian Acropolis, will be discussed in the following sections.
The study of Classical-era architecture is dominated by the study of the construction of the Athenian Acropolis and the development of the Athenian agora (see Figures \(\PageIndex{2}\) and \(\PageIndex{3}\)). The Acropolis is an ancient citadel located on a high, rocky outcrop above and at the center of the city of Athens. It contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historic significance.
The word acropolis comes from the Greek words άκρο (akron, meaning edge or extremity) and πόλη (polis, meaning city). Although there are many other acropolises in Greece, the significance of the Acropolis of Athens is such that it is commonly known as The Acropolis without qualification.
The Acropolis has played a significant role in the city from the time that the area was first inhabited during the Neolithic era. While there is evidence that the hill was inhabited as far back as the fourth millennium BCE, in the High Classical Period it was Pericles (c. 495–429 BCE) who coordinated the construction of the site’s most important buildings, including the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion, and the temple of Athena Nike.
The buildings on the Acropolis were constructed in the Doric and Ionic orders, with dramatic reliefs adorning many of their pediments, friezes, and metopes.
In recent centuries, its architecture has influenced the design of many public buildings in the Western hemisphere.
Early History
Archaeological evidence shows that the acropolis was once home to a Mycenaean citadel. The citadel’s Cyclopean walls defended the Acropolis for centuries, and still remains today. The Acropolis was continually inhabited, even through the Greek Dark Ages when Mycenaean civilization fell.
It is during the Geometric period that the Acropolis shifted from being the home of a king to being a sanctuary site dedicated to the goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their patron. The Archaic -era Acropolis saw the first stone temple dedicated to Athena, known as the Hekatompedon (Greek for hundred-footed).
This building was built from limestone around 570 to 550 BCE and was a hundred feet long. It has the original home of the olive-wood statue of Athena Polias, known as the Palladium, that was believed to have come from Troy.
In the early fifth century the Persians invaded Greece, and the city of Athens—along with the Acropolis—was destroyed, looted, and burnt to the ground in 480 BCE. Later the Athenians, before the final battle at Plataea, swore an oath that if they won the battle—that if Athena once more protected her city—then the Athenian citizens would leave the Acropolis as it is, destroyed, as a monument to the war. The Athenians did indeed win the war, and the Acropolis was left in ruins for thirty years.
Periclean Revival
It was immediately following the Persian war that the Athenian general and statesman Pericles funded an extensive building program on the Athenian Acropolis. Despite the vow to leave the Acropolis in a state of ruin, the site was rebuilt, incorporating all the remaining old materials into the spaces of the new site.
The building program began in 447 BCE and was completed by 415 BCE. It employed the most famous architects and artists of the age and its sculpture and buildings were designed to complement and be in dialog with one another.
The Propylaea
Mnesicles designed the Propylaea (437–432 BCE), the monumental gateway to the Acropolis. It funneled all traffic to the Acropolis onto one gently sloped ramp. The Propylaea created a massive screen wall that was impressive and protective as well as welcoming (see Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\)).
It was designed to appear symmetrical but, in reality, was not. This illusion was created by a colonnade of paired columns that wrapped around the gateway. The southern wing incorporated the original Cyclopean walls from the Mycenaean citadel. This space was truncated but served as dining area for feasting after a sacrifice.
The northern wing was much larger. It was a pinacoteca , where large panel paintings were hung for public viewing. The order of the Propylaea and its columns are Doric, and its decoration is simple—there are no reliefs in the metopes and pediment.
Upon entering the Acropolis from the Propylaea, visitors were greeted by a colossal bronze statue of Athena Promachos (c. 456 BCE), designed by Phidias. Accounts and a few coins minted with images of the statue allow us to conclude that the bronze statue portrayed a fearsome image of a helmeted Athena striding forward, with her shield at her side and her spear raised high, ready to strike.
The Erechtheion
The Erechtheion (421–406 BCE), designed by Mnesicles, is an ancient Greek temple on the north side of the Acropolis (see Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\)). Scholars believe the temple was built in honor of the legendary king Erechtheus.It was built on the site of the Hekatompedon and over the megaron of the Mycenaean citadel. The odd design of the temple results from the site’s topography and the temple’s incorporation of numerous ancient sites.
The temple housed the Palladium, the ancient olive-wood statue of Athena. It was also believed to be the site of the contest between Athena and Poseidon, and so displayed an olive tree, a salt-water well, and the marks from Poseidon’s trident to the faithful.
Shrines to the mythical kings of Athens, Cecrops and Erechteus—who gives the temple its name—were also found within the Erechtheion. Because of its mythic significance and its religious relics, the Erechtheion was the ending site of the Panathenaic festival, when the peplos on the olive-wood statue of Athena was annually replaced with new clothing with due pomp and ritual.
A porch on the south side of the Erechtheion is known as the Porch of the Caryatids, or the Porch of the Maidens. Six, towering, sculpted women (caryatids) support the entablature (see Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\)). The women replace the columns, yet look columnar themselves. Their drapery, especially over their weight-bearing leg, is long and linear, creating a parallel to the fluting on an Ionic column.
Although they stand in similar poses, each statue has its own stance, facial features, hair, and drapery. They carry egg-and-dart capitals on their heads, much as women throughout history have carried baskets. Between their heads and this capital is a sculpted cushion, which gives the appearance of softening the load of the weight of the building.
The sculpted columnar form of the caryatids is named after the women of the town of Kayrai, a small town near and allied to Sparta. At one point during the Persian Wars the town betrayed Athens to the Persians. In retaliation, the Athenians sacked their city, killing the men and enslaving the women and children. Thus, the caryatids depicted on the Acropolis are symbolic representations of the full power of Athenian authority over Greece and the punishment of traitors.
Temple of Athena Nike on the Athenian Acropolis
by Katarzyna Minollari
The temple of Athena Nike (Athena as a goddess of victory) is the smallest temple at the Acropolis in Athens, placed at its southwest corner, at the edge of a high cliff (see Figures \(\PageIndex{7}\), \(\PageIndex{8}\), \(\PageIndex{10}\), and \(\PageIndex{11}\). Its construction was completed in the year 420 BCE, during the so called High Classical Period, according to the design of Kallikrates (the same architect who was responsible for the construction of the Parthenon). The temple by Kallikrates replaced an earlier small temple, which got completely destroyed during the Persian wars.
The spot, highly vulnerable to attack but also well placed for defense, was very appropriate for the worship of the goddess of victory. There is some archaeological evidence, that the location was used for religious rituals already in Mycenaean age (Mycenaean was a period of early Greek history, roughly from 1600 to 1100 BCE). Mycenaeans also raised the first defensive bastion on the spot; its fragments are preserved in the temple’s basement.
An Ionic gem
The temple of Athena Nike, built in Ionic order of beautiful white Pentelic marble, has columns at the front and back but not on the sides of the cella; this kind of floor plan is called an amphiprostyle. Because of the small size of the structure, there are only four columns on each side. The columns are monolithic, which means that each one of them was made of a single block of stone (instead of horizontal drums, as it is in the case of the Parthenon).
This small and elegant structure is sometimes called the pearl of the Acropolis, since it was designed and decorated with great care. For example, interestingly, its side columns have volutes both in the front and at the side, in order to create a pleasant view from any viewpoint (see Figure \(\PageIndex{11}\)). The Greeks considered their temples as a kind of monumental sculpture, which was supposed to be viewed from all sides and experienced in connection to its surroundings. The Romans later had a different concept—for them, the frontal view was most important (for example, the Roman Temple of Portunus).
Another interesting detail is that the columns of the temple of Athena Nike are not as slender as those of many other Ionic buildings. Usually the proportions between the width and the height of an Ionic column was 1:9 or even 1:11. Here the proportion is 1:7—and the reason for that choice might have been the intention to create a harmonious whole with other buildings nearby. The temple of Athena Nike stands just next to the Propylaea (see Figure \(\PageIndex{13}\)), a heavy, monumental gateway to the Acropolis, built in the Doric order. To visually counteract this massive structure, the architect may have decided to widen the columns, otherwise the building might feel out of place, and too delicate in contrast to the neighboring architectural mass of the Propylaea. We know that the ancient Greeks were very aware of mathematical ratios while constructing architecture or creating statues, feeling that the key to beauty lies in correct proportion.
Victory
The temple of Athena Nike, as with all Greek temples, was considered a home of the deity, represented in its statue, and was not a place where regular people would enter (see Figure \(\PageIndex{14}\)). The believers would simply perform rituals in front of the temple, where a small altar was placed, and could take a glimpse of the sculpted figure of the goddess through the space between the columns. The privilege of entering the temple was reserved for the priestesses, who held a respected position in Greek society. As the name suggests, the temple housed the statue of Athena Nike, a symbol of victory. It probably had a connection to the victory of the Greeks against the Persians around half a century earlier. Nike usually had wings, but in this case we know that the statue had no wings, hence it was called Athena Apteros (without wings). The ancient Greek writer Pausanias later explained that the statue of Athena had no wings, so that she could never leave Athens.
The history of this architectural monument has been quite tumultuous. In the 5th century CE the temple was converted into a Christian church, then in the 17th century it was completely dismantled by the Ottoman Turks who needed its material to build fortifications. The temple was later reconstructed after Greece regained independence in 1832. In the 1930s the building was restored again. Very recently, new concerns about the structure’s integrity prompted a new conservation project. First, a team of specialists completely dismantled the temple. Each of its parts was examined and mended, and eventually the entire building was reassembled using the original pieces, with some fill wherever it was needed. These additions can be easily recognized since they are of a lighter color than the original marble.
The temple of Athena Nike featured beautiful sculptural decoration, including a typical continuous Ionic frieze, which on the eastern side represented a gathering of gods. On the southern wall, the sculptor decided to show a battle between Greeks and Persians, and on the remaining sides, battles between Greeks and other warriors. Sculptures on the pediments, almost entirely lost, most probably depicted the Gigantomachy and Amazonomachy. Best known are reliefs from the outside of the stone parapet that surrounded the temple at the cliff’s edge. These represented Nike in different poses and could be admired by people climbing the stairs to the Acropolis. Most famous of these is the Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (see Figure \(\PageIndex{15}\)) which presents the goddess in a simple, everyday gesture, perhaps adjusting her sandal (or maybe taking it off) as she prepares to enter the sacred precinct. Whatever she is doing, the relief is still charming in its elegance and simplicity. Both Nike Adjusting Her Sandal and parts of the frieze can be admired today at the Acropolis Museum.
The Parthenon, Athens: 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 looking at the Parthenon. This is a huge marble temple to the goddess Athena.
Beth: We’re on the top of a rocky outcropping in the city of Athens very high up overlooking the city, overlooking the Aegean Sea.
Steven: Athens was just one of many Greek city-states and almost everyone had an acropolis. That is, had a fortified hill within its city because these were warring states.
Beth: In the fifth century, Athens was the most powerful city-state and that’s the period that the Parthenon dates to.
Steven: This precinct became a sacred one rather than a defensive one. This building has had a tremendous influence not only because it becomes the symbol of the birth of democracy, but also because of its extraordinary architectural refinement. The period when this was built in the fifth century is considered the High Classical moment and for so much of Western history, we have measured our later achievements against this perfection.
Beth: It’s hard not to recognize so many buildings in the West. There’s certainly an association especially to buildings in Washington D.C. and that’s not a coincidence.
Steven: Because this is the birthplace of democracy—a limited democracy, but democracy nevertheless.
Beth: There was a series of reforms in the fifth century in Athens that allowed more and more people to participate in the government.
Steven: We think that the city of Athens had between 300,000 and 400,000 inhabitants, and only about 50,000 were actually considered citizens. If you were a woman, obviously, if you were a slave you were not participating in this democratic experiment.
Beth: This is a very limited idea of democracy.
Steven: This building is dedicated to Athena and, in fact, the city itself is named after her and of course there’s a myth. Two gods vying for the honor of being the patron of this city. Those two gods are Poseidon and Athena. Poseidon is the god of the sea and Athena has many aspects. She’s the goddess of wisdom, she is associated with war. A kind of intelligence about creating and making things. Both of these gods gave the people of this city a gift and then they had to choose. Poseidon strikes a rock and from it springs forth the saltwater of the sea. This had to do with the gift of naval superiority.
Beth: Athena offered, in contrast, an olive tree. The idea of the land of prosperity, of peace. The Athenians chose Athena’s gift. There actually is a site here on the acropolis where the Athenians believed you could see the mark of the trident from Poseidon where he struck the ground and also the tree that Athena offered.
Steven: Actually the modern Greeks have replanted an olive tree in that space. Let’s talk about the building. It is really what we think of when we think of a Greek temple but the style is specific. This is a Doric temple.
Beth: Although it has Ionic elements which we’ll get to.
Steven: The Doric features are really easy to identify. You have massive columns with shallow broad flutes, the vertical lines. Those columns go down directly into the floor of the temple which is called the stylobate and at the top, the capitals are very simple. There’s a little flare that rises up to a simple rectangular block called an abacus. Just above that are triglyphs and metopes.
Beth: It’s important to say that this building was covered with sculpture. There was sculpture in the metopes, there was sculpture in the pediments and in an unprecedented way a frieze that ran all the way around four sides of the building just inside this outer row of columns that we see. Now, this is an Ionic feature. Art historians talk about how this building combines Doric elements with Ionic elements.
Steven: In fact, there were four Ionic columns inside the west end of the temple.
Beth: When the citizens of Athens walked up the sacred way perhaps for religious procession or festival. They encountered the west end and they walked around it either on the north or south sides to the east and the entrance. Right above the entrance in the sculptures of the pediment, they could see the story of Athena and Poseidon vying to be the patron of the city of Athens. On the frieze just inside they saw themselves perhaps at least in one interpretation involved in the Panathenaic Procession, the religious procession in honor of the goddess Athena. This was a building that you walked up to, you walked around and inside was this gigantic sculpture of Athena.
Steven: These were all sculptures that we believe were overseen by the great sculptor Phidias and one of my favorite parts are the metopes. Carved with scenes that showed the Greeks battling various enemies either directly or metaphorically. The Greeks battling the Amazons, the Greeks against the Trojans, the Lapiths against the Centaurs, and the Gigantomachy. The Greek gods against the Titans.
Beth: All of these battles signified the ascendancy of Greece and of the Athenians of their triumphs. Civilization over barbarism, rational thought over chaos.
Steven: You’ve just hit on the very meaning of this building. This is not the first temple to Athena on this site. Just a little bit to the right as we look at the east end there was an older temple to Athena that was destroyed when the Persians invaded. This was a devastating blow to the Athenians.
Beth: One really can’t overstate the importance of the Persian War for the Athenian mindset that created the Parthenon. Athens was invaded and beyond that, the Persians sacked the Acropolis, sacked the sacred site, the temples. Destroyed the buildings.
Steven: They burned them down. In fact, the Athenians took a vow that they would never remove the ruins of the old temple to Athena.
Beth: So they would remember it forever.
Steven: But a generation later they did.
Beth: They did, well there was a piece that was established with the Persians and some historians think that that allowed them to renege that vow and Pericles, the leader of Athens embarked on this enormous, very expensive building campaign.
Steven: Historians believe that he was able to fund that because the Athenians had become the leaders of what is called the Delian League. An association of Greek city-states that paid a kind of tax to help protect Greece against Persia but Pericles dipped into that treasury and built this building.
Beth: This alliance of Greek city-states, their treasure, their tax money, their tribute was originally located in Delos hence the Delian League, but Pericles managed to have that treasure moved here to Athens and actually housed in the Acropolis. The sculpture of Athena herself which was made of gold and ivory Phidias said if we need money we can melt down the enormous amount of gold that decorates this sculpture of Athena.
Steven: Since that sculpture doesn’t exist any longer we know somebody did that. We need to imagine this building not pristine and white but rather brightly colored and also a building that was used. This was a storehouse. It was the treasury and so we have to imagine that it was absolutely full of valuable stuff.
Beth: In fact, we have records that give us some idea of what was stored here. We think about temples or churches or mosques as places where you go in to worship. That’s not how Greek religion work. There usually was an altar on the outside where sacrifices were made and the temple was the house of the god or goddess, but with the Parthenon art historians and archeologists have not been able to locate an altar outside so we’ve wondered what was this building? One answer is it was a treasury.
Steven: It also functions symbolically. It is up on this hill. It commands this extraordinary view from all parts of the city, and so it was a symbol of both the city’s wealth and power.
Beth: It’s a gift to Athena. When you make a gift to your patron goddess you want visitors to be awed by the image of the goddess that was inside and of her home.
Steven: This isn’t any goddess. This is the goddess of wisdom so the ability of man to understand our world and its rules mathematically, and then to express them in a structure like this is absolutely appropriate.
Beth: Iktinos is a supreme mathematician. I mean we know that the Greeks even in the archaic period before this were concerned with ideal proportions.
Steven: Pythagoras.
Beth: Or the sculptor Polykleitos and his sculpture of the Doryphoros searching for perfect proportions and harmony and using mathematics as the basis for thinking that through.
Steven: We have that here.
Beth: To an unbelievable degree.
Steven: What’s extraordinary is that its perfection is an illusion based on a series of subtle distortions that actually correct for the imperfections of our sight. That is, the Greeks recognize that human perception was itself yawed and that they needed to adjust for it in order to give the visual impression of perfection. Their mathematics and their building skills were precise enough to be able to pull this off.
Beth: Every stone was cut to fit precisely.
Steven: When we look at this building we assume it’s rectilinear, it’s full of right angles, and in fact, there’s hardly a right angle in this building.
Beth: There’s another interpretation of these tiny deviations that these deviations give the building a sense of dynamism. The sense of the organic that otherwise, it would seem static and lifeless. The Greeks had used this idea that art historians call entasis before in other buildings- slight adjustments. For example, columns bulge toward the center. This is not new but the degree to which it’s used here and the subtlety in the way it’s used is unprecedented.
Steven: For instance, in those Doric columns you can see that there’s a taper and you assume that it’s a straight line but the Greeks wanted ever so slight a sense of the organic. That the weight of the building was being expressed in the bulge, the entasis of the column about a third of the way from the bosom. In this case, every single column bulges only 11/16th of an inch the entire length of that column. The way that the Greeks pulled this off is they would bring column drums up to the site. They would carefully carve the base and the top and then they would carve in between.
Beth: We see this slight deviation in the columns but we also see it not only vertically but also horizontally in the building.
Steven: That’s right. You assume that the stylobate, the floor of the temple, is flat but it’s not. Rainwater would run off it because the edges are lower than the center.
Beth: But only very, very slightly lower.
Steven: Across the long side of the temple the center rises only 4 3/8 of an inch and on the short side of the temple on the east and the west side the center rises only by 2 3/8 inches. What happens is it cracks. Our eye would naturally see a straight line seem as if it rises up at the corners a little bit so it seems to us to be perfectly flat. The columns are all leaning in a little bit.
Beth: You would expect the columns to be equidistant from one another but in fact, the columns on the edges are slightly closer to one another than the columns in the center of each side.
Steven: Architectural historians have hypothesized that the reason for this is because the column at the edge is in the sense an orphan. It doesn’t have anything past it. Therefore, it would seem to be less substantial. If we could make that column a little bit closer to the one next to it it might compensate and it would have an even sense of density across the building.
Beth: Placing of the columns closer together on the edges create a problem in the levels above. One of the rules of the Doric Order is that there had to be a triglyph right above the center of a column or in between each column.
Steven: They also wanted the triglyphs to be at the very edge so one triglyph would abut against another triglyph at the corner of the building. If in fact, you’re placing your columns closer together you can actually solve for that problem, you can avoid the stretch of the metope in between those triglyphs that would result, but because the columns are placed so close together they had the opposite problem which is to say that the metopes at the ends of the building would be too slender. What Phidias has done in concert with Iktinos and Kallikrates the architects is to create sculptural metopes that are widest in the center just like the spaces between the columns and actually the metopes themselves gradually become thinner as you move to the edges so that you can’t really even perceive the change without measuring.
Beth: The general proportions of the building can be expressed mathematically as X = Y x 2 + 1. Across the front, we see eight columns and along the sides 17 columns. That ratio also governs the spacing between the columns and its relationship to the diameter of a column. Math is everywhere.
Steven: If we look at the plan of the structure we see the exterior colonnade on all four sides. On the east and west end, it’s actually a double colonnade and on the long sides, inside the columns a solid a solid masonry wall. You can enter rooms on the east-west only. The west has a smaller room with the four Ionic columns within it but the east room was larger and held the monumental sculpture of Athena. It’s interesting. The system that was used to create a vault that was high enough to enclose a sculpture that was almost 40 feet high was unique. There was a U shape of interior columns at two storys. They were Doric and they surrounded the goddess. The sculpture is now lost but the building is almost lost as well. Here we come to one of the great tragedies of western architecture. This building survived into the seventeenth century and was in pretty good shape for 2000 years and it’s only in the modern era that it became a ruin.
Beth: First it was as we know an ancient Greek temple for Athena then it became a Greek Orthodox church then a Roman catholic church and then a mosque In a war between the Ottomans who were in control of Greece at this moment in history in the seventeenth century and the Venetians. The Venetians attacked the Parthenon, the Ottomans used the Parthenon to hold ammunition, gunpowder. Gunpowder exploded from the inside, basically ripping the guts out of the Parthenon.
Steven: Then to add insult to injury in the eighteenth century, Lord Elgin received permission from the Turkish government to take sculptures that had already fallen off the temple and bring them back to England. The lion’s share of the great sculptures by Phidias are now in London (see Figure \(\PageIndex{20}\)). Greece recently has built a museum just down the hill from the Acropolis specifically intended to house these sculptures should the British ever release them.
Beth: Some have argued that Elgin saved the sculptures that would have been further damaged had he not removed them, but what to do about the future is uncertain.
Steven: At least one theory states that this building was paid for by plundered treasury from the Delian League so there’s a long history of contested ownership.
Beth: As we stand here very high up on the Acropolis overlooking the Aegean Sea, islands beyond and mountains on this glorious day, I can’t help but imagine standing inside the Parthenon between those columns, which we can’t do today.
Steven: The site is undergoing tremendous restoration. There are cranes, the scaffolding to maintain the ruin and not let it fall into worst disrepair.
Beth: But if we could stand there what would it feel like?
Steven: There is this beautiful balance between the theoretical and the physical. The Greeks thought about mathematics as the way that we could understand the divine and here it is in our world.
Beth: There’s something about the Parthenon that is both an offering to Athena, the protector of Athens, but also something that’s a monument to human beings, to the Athenians, to their brilliance, and by extension, I suppose, in the modern era, human spirit generally.
The Parthenon, Athens
by The British Museum
Athens and democracy
By around 500 BCE, ‘rule by the people,’ or democracy, had emerged in the city of Athens. Following the defeat of a Persian invasion in 480-479 BCE, mainland Greece and Athens in particular entered into a golden age. In drama and philosophy, literature, art and architecture Athens was second to none. The city’s empire stretched from the western Mediterranean to the Black Sea, creating enormous wealth. This paid for one of the biggest public building projects ever seen in Greece, which included the Parthenon.
The temple known as the Parthenon was built on the Acropolis of Athens between 447 and 438 BCE. It was part of a vast building program masterminded by the Athenian statesman Perikles. Inside the temple stood a colossal statue representing Athena, patron goddess of the city. The statue, which no longer exists, was made of gold and ivory and was the work of the celebrated sculptor Pheidias.
Parthenon sculptures
The building itself was decorated with marble sculptures representing scenes from Athenian cult and mythology. There are three categories of architectural sculpture. The frieze (carved in low relief) ran high up around all four sides of the building inside the colonnades. The metopes (carved in high relief) were placed at the same level as the frieze above the architrave surmounting the columns on the outside of the temple. The pediment sculptures (carved in the round) filled the triangular gables at each end (see Figure \(\PageIndex{22}\) Iris as an exaple of such a pediment sculpture).
Although the building was to undergo a number of changes, it remained largely intact until the seventeenth century. The early Christians turned the temple into a church, adding an apse at the east end. It was probably at this time that the sculptures representing the birth of Athena were removed from the centre of the east pediment and many of the metopes were defaced. The Parthenon served as a church until Athens was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the fifteenth century, when it became a mosque. In 1687, during the Venetian siege of the Acropolis, the defending Turks were using the Parthenon as a store for gunpowder, which was ignited by the Venetian bombardment. The explosion blew out the heart of the building, destroying the roof and parts of the walls and the colonnade.
The Venetians succeeded in capturing the Acropolis, but held it for less than a year. Further damage was done in an attempt to remove sculptures from the west pediment, when the lifting tackle broke and the sculptures fell and were smashed. Many of the sculptures that were destroyed in 1687, are now known only from drawings made in 1674, by an artist probably to be identified as Jacques Carrey.
Marble metope from the Parthenon
The sculpted decoration of the Parthenon included ninety-two metopes showing scenes of mythical battle (see Figure \(\PageIndex{23}\)). Those on the south flank of the temple included a series featuring human Lapiths in mortal combat with Centaurs. The Centaurs were part-man and part-horse, thus having a civil and a savage side to their nature. The Lapiths, a neighboring Greek tribe, made the mistake of giving the Centaurs wine at the marriage feast of their king, Peirithoos. The Centaurs attempted to rape the women, with their leader Eurytion trying to carry off the bride. A general battle ensued, with the Lapiths finally victorious.
Here a young Lapith holds a Centaur from behind with one hand, while preparing to deliver a blow with the other. The composition is perfectly balanced, with the protagonists pulling in opposite directions, around a central space filled by the cascading folds of the Lapith’s cloak.
Fragment from the frieze
This block was placed near the corner of the west frieze of the Parthenon, where it turned onto the north. The horsemen have been moving at some speed, but are now reining back so as not to appear to ride off the edge of the frieze (see Figure \(\PageIndex{24}\)). The horseman in front twists around to look back at his companion, and raises a hand (now missing) to his head. This gesture, repeated elsewhere in the frieze, is perhaps a signal. Although mounted riders can be seen here, much of the west frieze features horsemen getting ready for the cavalcade proper, shown on the long north and south sides of the temple.
Pediment sculpture
The east pediment of the Parthenon showed the birth of goddess Athena from the head of her father Zeus. The sculptures that represented the actual scene are lost. Zeus was probably shown seated, while Athena was striding away from him fully grown and armed.
Only some of the figures ranged on either side of the lost central group survive. They include these three goddesses, who were seated to the right of centre (see Figure \(\PageIndex{25}\)). From left to right, their posture varies in order to accommodate the slope of the pediment that originally framed them. They are remarkable for their naturalistic rendering of anatomy blended with a harmonious representation of complex draperies.
The figure on the left is on the point of rising and tucks her right foot in to lever herself up. To the right another figure cradles a companion reclining luxuriously in her lap. They are perhaps, from left to right, Hestia, goddess of the hearth and home, Dione, and her daughter Aphrodite. However, another suggestion is that the two figures on the right are the personification of the Sea, Thalassa, in the lap of the Earth, Gaia.
Painting in the Greek High Classical Period
by Boundless Art History
The Classical Era was a 200-year period in Greek culture that lasted from the fifth through fourth centuries BCE. This Classical period, following the Archaic period and succeeded by the Hellenistic period, had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire and greatly influenced the foundations of the Western Civilization. Much of modern Western politics and artistic thought, such as architecture, scientific thought, literature, and philosophy, derives from this period of Greek history.
Panel Painting
Panel painting is the painting on flat panels of wood, either a single large piece or several joined together. Because of their organic nature many panel paintings no longer exist. Panel paintings were usually done in encaustic or tempera and were displayed in the interior of public buildings, such as in the pinacoteca of the Propylaea of the Athenian Acropolis.
The earliest known panel paintings are the Pitsa Panels that date to the Archaic period between 540 and 530 BCE; however, panel painting continued throughout the Classical Period (see Figure \(\PageIndex{26}\)).
The painter Apollodorus was considered by the Greeks and Romans to be one of the best painters of the Early Classical period, although none of his work survived. He is credited for the use of creating shadows by a technique known as skiagraphia. The technique layers crosshatching and contour liners to add perspective to the scene and is similar to the Renaissance technique of chiaroscuro.
Tomb Painting
Tomb painting was another popular method of painting, which due to its fragile nature has often not survived. However, a few examples do remain, including the 480 BCE Tomb of the Diver and the wall paintings from the royal Macedonian tombs in Vergina that date to the mid-fourth century BCE. A comparison between the paintings demonstrate how painting followed sculptural development in regards to the rendering of the human body.
The Tomb of the Diver is from a small necropolis in Paestum, Italy, which was then the Greek colony of Poseidonia, and dates from the beginning of the Classical period (see Figure \(\PageIndex{27}\)). The tomb depicts a symposium scene on its walls and an image of diver on the inside of the covering slab.
The images are painted in true fresco with a limestone mortar. The scene of the diver is simple image with a small landscape of trees, water, and the diver’s platform. The diver is nude and his body is simply defined through the use of line and color. The bodies of the men at the symposium more accurately demonstrate an Archaic reliance on line to model the form of the body and the draping of their clothing.
Compared to the wall paintings from the tombs at Vergina, the Early Classical tomb painting is static and rather Archaic. The frescos from Vergina depict figures in a full-painted version of the High Classical style.
For example, there is an image believed to depict King Philip II on a chariot pulled by two horses (see Figure \(\PageIndex{28}\)). The fresco is poorly preserved but one is able to see on Philip’s horse the modeling of the animals produced by the color shading and a suggestion of perspective when looking at the chariot. The artist relies on the shades and hues of his paints to create depth and a life-like feeling in the painting.
One of the quintessential wall paintings at Vergina is Hades Abducting Persephone. The painted scene appears similar to the Late Classical sculptural style and the dynamic, emotion-filled composition seems to predict the style of Hellenistic sculpture.
The scene depicts Hades on his chariot, grasping on to Persephone’s nude torso as the pair ride away (see Figure \(\PageIndex{29}\)). The colors are faded and faint, but the bright red drapery worn by Persephone is still easily identifiable. Lines and shading emphasize its folds.
The style appears almost impressionistic, especially when examining Persephone’s face and hair. Persephone and Hades create a tension filled chiastic composition, as Hades races to the left, against the pull of Persephone’s outward, desperate reach to the right.
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedonia (356–323 BCE), better known as Alexander the Great, very carefully controlled and crafted his portraiture. In order to maintain control and stability in his empire, he had to ensure that his people recognized him and his authority.
Because of this, Alexander’s portrait was set when he was very young, most likely in his teens, and it never varied throughout his life. To further control his portrait types, Alexander hired artists in different media such as painting, sculpture, and gem cutting to design and promote the portrait style of the medium. In this way, Alexander used art and artisans for their propagandistic value to support and provide a face and legitimacy to his rule.
Alexander Mosaic
The Alexander Mosaic is a Roman floor mosaic from approximately 100 BCE that was excavated from the House of the Faun in Pompeii. The mosaic depicts the Battle of Issus that occurred between the troops of Alexander the Great and King Darius III of Persia. The mosaic is believed to be a copy of a large-scale panel painting by Aristides of Thebes, or a fresco by the Philoxenos of Eretria from the late fourth century BCE (see Figure \(\PageIndex{30}\)).
The mosaic is remarkable. It depicts a keen sense of detail, dramatically unfolds the drama of the battle, and demonstrates the use of perspective and foreshortening . The two main characters of the battle are easily distinguishable and this portrait of Alexander may be one of his most recognizable. He wears a breastplate and an aegis , and his hair is characteristically tousled. He rides into battle on his horse, Bucephalo, leading his troops. Alexander’s gaze remains focused on Darius and he appears calm and in control, despite the hectic battle happening around him.
Darius III, on the other hand, commands the battle in desperation from his chariot, as his charioteer removes them from battle. His horses flee under the whip of the charioteer and Darius leans outward, stretching out a hand having just thrown a spear. His body position contradicts the motion of his chariot, creating tension between himself and his flight.
Other details in the mosaic include the expressions of the soldiers and the horses, such as a collapsed horse and his rider in the center of the battle, to a terrified fallen Persian, whose expression is reflected on his shield.
The shading and play of light in the mosaic, reflects the use of light and shadow in the original painting to create a realistic, three-dimensional space . Horses and soldiers are shown in multiple perspectives from profile, to three quarter, to frontal, and one horse even faces the audience with his rump. The careful shading within the mosaic tesserae models the characters to give the figures mass and volume.
Articles in this section:
- Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, "Polykleitos, Doryphoros (Spear-Bearer)," in Smarthistory, August 8, 2015.
- Boundless Art History, “The Athenian Acropolis.” (CC BY-SA)
- Katarzyna Minollari, "Temple of Athena Nike on the Athenian Acropolis," in Smarthistory, September 11, 2016.
- The British Museum, "The Parthenon, Athens," in Smarthistory, December 14, 2015.
- Boundless Art History, “Painting in the Greek High Classical Period.” (CC BY-SA)