Greek Sculpture Research Articles

Euripides, monumental painting, and the portrayal of space in the fifth century BCE*

Technical advances in the visual arts were a routine occurrence over the course of the fifth century BCE after the Persian wars, the period which encompasses the lifetime of the Athenian tragedian Euripides (c.485-407 BCE). They seem to have come steadily and in rapid sequence, with each new development rendering obsolete all previous notions about representation, and bringing the art of painterly mimesis to the very threshold, or so it must have seemed, of nature itself. Whereas the developmental history of Greek sculpture may be said to peak just after mid-century with the invention of the Polykleitan canon, developments in painting gain momentum in the second half of the century, leading to the great flowering of the next. It is important not to underestimate, for the period in question, the cultural and intellectual weight of changes wrought on the history of painterly representation by individual artists, and their potential to captivate, to challenge and, occasionally, to offend, an engaged, inquisitive populace. The methodical transformation of a two-dimensional surface into a unified pictorial field of vision, or, to put it somewhat differently, the replication of optic reality through a series of calculated falsifications — in short, the painting of space — was the result of one of the most radical visions ever entertained by a small segment of humankind. The equally methodical dismantling of their achievement in the early years of the twentieth century constitutes one of the greatest acts of homage in the history of art.

Ancient Greek Sculpture: Offering in Memory of the Sculptor Stelios Triantes. By D. Damaskos.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsAncient Greek Sculpture: Offering in Memory of the Sculptor Stelios Triantes. By D. Damaskos.Konstantinos KopaniasKonstantinos Kopanias Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 110, Number 3July 2006 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/AJS40024562 Copyright © 2006 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

MAKING AN IMPRESSION: REPLICATION AND THE ONTOLOGY OF THE GRAECO‐ROMAN SEAL STONE

The debate on replication in ancient art has traditionally concentrated upon Roman ‘copies’ of famous Greek sculptures and paintings. This article explores a different, but no less significant, kind of replication – the use of intaglio gems as seals to create wax impressions. The mechanical transmission of a glyptic image from one medium to another played an important role in Graeco‐Roman society, conferring authority upon the seal as an individual or state signature employed in legal, political and personal exchange. The direct relationship between seal and impression was also appropriated by Greek philosophers as a metaphor for unmediated sense perception – the ‘impressions’ made by material objects upon the soul. However, as a comparison with the ontological issues surrounding the modern photograph shows, the seemingly unproblematic relationship between image and impression is more complex than may initially seem: the seal's philosophical appeal lay ultimately more in its social significance – as a guarantor of authenticity and marker of the self – than in its true ontological status.

Greek Sculpture, Function, Materials, and Techniques in the Archaic and Classical Periods ed. by Olga Palagia (review)

Greek Sculpture, Function, Materials, and Techniques in the Archaic and Classical Periods ed. by Olga Palagia (review)

Browning's Painters

This essay examines all Browning's poems about paintings in order to explore his (not always consistent) view of art history, particularly of the importance of Greek sculpture and mythology in later centuries, and of how medieval painting changed into that of the Renaissance. Discussion of Pictor Ignotus and (especially) of Andrea de Sarto has often been influenced by psychoanalytic thinking, but the problems in applying psychoanalysis to poems have not always been recognized. Finally, a discussion of One Word More enables us to explore Browning's (or his wife's) uneasiness with the dramatic monologue. Gerard de Lairesse was a seventeenth-century Dutch painter who went blind and then wrote a large book, The Art of Painting in all its Branches, translated from Dutch into English in 1778. Browning, like posterity, was unimpressed by his paintings, but claimed that as a child he had read Gerard's Art of Painting more often than any other book. Gerard was a fanatical disciple of Greek classicism, painted nothing but mythological scenes, and dismissed those Dutch painters we now admire, considering them incapable of nobility because of the ordinariness of their subjects. In the poem in which he parleys with Gerard, Browning imagines himself taking one of the imaginary 'Walks' which Gerard took through the Dutch landscape, turning Holland into Dreamland. He imagines himself seeing the mythological episodes that Gerard favoured and tried to paint: Jove's eagle pouncing on its prey, a vision of Artemis, a satyr at noon consumed with longing for a nymph, and Alexander in battle with Darius. The noon landscape in which the satyr's longing is described is a set piece of verbal scene-painting that does not often occur in Browning: Noon is the conqueror,--not a spray, nor leaf, Nor herb, nor blossom but has rendered up Its morning dew; the valley seemed one cup Of cloud-smoke, but the vapour's reign was brief, Sun-smitten, see, it hangs, the filmy haze-- Grey-garmenting the herbless mountain-side, To soothe the day's sharp glare: while far and wide Above unclouded burns the sky, one blaze With fierce immitigable blue, no bird Ventures to spot by passage [...]. (With Gerard de Lairesse, ll. 262-71) (1) The poet not only accompanies Gerard on his walk, he sees with Gerard's eyes, turning the dull Dutch landscape into vivid classical myths. It is a surprise, then, to read on and find that the poem is an attack on Gerard's mythologizing habit: Let things be-not seem, I counsel rather,-do, and nowise dream! Earth's young significance is all to learn: The dead Greek lore lies buried in the urn Where who seeks fire finds ashes. (ll. 389-93) The moral of the poem is that instead of revelling in mythology we should live firmly and realistically in the present; past modes of seeing are left behind as humanity progresses: 'Nothing has been which shall not bettered be Here | after' (ll. 371-72). And so the poem ends with a brief un mythological nature poem : 'rhyme | Such as one makes now' (ll. 421-22). To begin a discussion of Browning's painters with Parleyings with Certain People of Importance in their Day is no doubt eccentric but has certain advantages. The Parleyings appeared in 1887, only two years before Browning's death, and like many of the other late poems is now read by no one except a few specialists. The syntax, as is usual in late Browning, is tortured to the point of bewilderment, leading us to wonder if he should be regarded as a proto-modernist--though comparison with, say, Pound or Hart Crane soon returns him to the Victorian age where he belongs. And the opinions are often as eccentric as the syntax. Two of these poems deal with painters, the other being a Parleying with the equally forgotten Francis Furini, who painted nudes until he gave up art to become a very conscientious parish priest. …

Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg and the German Romantics by Eleoma Joshua

886 Reviews a reading of Kleist that attempts not to look through, but rather to see through, the 'grine Glaser' of simultaneously limited and gendered perceptions of reality. SCHWABISCH GMUJND KATHERINE EBISCH-BURTON Friedrich Leopold Graf zu Stolberg and theGerman Romantics. By ELEOMA JOSHUA. (British and Irish Studies inGerman Language and Literature, 36) Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang. 2005. 2o6 pp. ?39.70. ISBN 3-03910-257-5. In the only other study to date devoted exclusively to Stolberg and Romanticism, Pierre Brachin concludes: 'Ihn zum Vor- oder auch nur zum Mitlaufer der Roman tikmachen zu wollen, ist, von vereinzelten Ubereinstimmungen abgesehen, grund falsch' ('Friedrich Leopold von Stolberg und die deutsche Romantik', Literaturwis senschaftliches Jahrbuch, n.s. i (I960), II7-3I (p. I3I)). Stolberg, ifmentioned at all by critics, tends to be associated instead with such eighteenth-century literary groupings as the Gottinger Hain and the Sturm und Drang. Eleoma Joshua's mono graph attempts a revision of the poet's life and work. Joshua analyses various writings by Stolberg in detail, arguing that he should in fact be regarded as an important precursor of the Romantic movement. The main body of Joshua's monograph consists of four chapters, each covering a different aspect of Stolberg's ceuvre. The first examines Stolberg's essays on poetry. Joshua outlines the contents of four essays, describing how Stolberg places stress on the emotions as a crucial factor in poetic activity. At the end of the chapter, she points to links with Novalis, particularly in their respective essays on 'Begeisterung'. It is perhaps regrettable that she discusses Novalis only briefly, especially as she also refers to differences in their theories and mentions Novalis's obvious debt to Herder and Hamann. The next chapter focuses on the poetry itself. Joshua gives a fascinating account of Stolberg's influence on the early lyrical work of Novalis andWackenroder. She argues that Novalis in particular drew heavily on the older poet, showing for example how his 'Anmein Schwerdt' is actually a reworking of two Stolberg poems. The following chapter on travel writing forms one of the central parts of Joshua's the sis. She draws attention to the avant-garde nature of Stolberg's writings on art, which arose from his journey to Italy in the early 179os. By questioning the idealization of classical Greek sculpture as promoted by Goethe and Schiller and championing instead Christian art of the Renaissance, Stolberg anticipates the aesthetic thinking of the early Romantics and their 'Kunstreligion' of the later 1790s. The final chapter deals with Stolberg's conversion to Catholicism and his essay 'Uber den Zeitgeist'. Joshua maintains that the very public change in Stolberg's religious and political views from around I8oo influenced such writers as Friedrich and Dorothea Schlegel, and testifies to his affinity with the Catholic, conservative ideals of that generation. It is the material she covers in these last two chapters which leads her to conclude that Stolberg not only had an important impact on the Romantics but 'points for ward to developments which go beyond Romanticism and beyond Germany' (p. I83), suggesting, for example, that Stolberg's privileging of Renaissance art is echoed in current thinking on art history. Joshua makes a strong case for a reassessment of Stolberg and his works, convinc ingly countering Brachin's earlier judgement. She offers detailed descriptions of the texts in question and places them knowledgeably in context. The study should serve to draw attention to a significant writer whose contributions to literary and cultural developments inGermany have often been overlooked. UNIVERSITYOFWALES SWANSEA HILARY BROWN ...

Phryne: cnidian Venus to movie star

Phryne, probably the most renowned Greek courtesan (especially because of the famous trial where she was defended by the public speaker Hyperides), was a source of artistic inspiration not only for the Greek sculptor Praxiteles, but also for modern painters, such as Angelica Kauffman, J.M.W. Turner and the French pompiers. In the XX century, Phryne has been discovered also by filmmakers. After the successful 'Altri tempi' by A. Blasetti (1952) where a gorgeous Gina Lollobrigida starred as a modern Phryne, Mario Bonnard directed a peplum entitled Frine, cortigiana d'Oriente (1953) starring Elena Kleus. Spite of the absurd title, probably chosen by the production with commercial purposes, the movie is not totally lacking in historical interest: Phryne is represented as a war refugee and as a fierce enemy of Alexander the Great, who had destroyed Thebae, chief town of the region where Phryne was born. As a matter of fact, a main role in the screenplay and direction appears to be due to young Sergio Leone.

Patrons of Athenian Votive Monuments of the Archaic and Classical Periods: Three Studies

In three studies of votive offerings, the author explores the role played by private patrons in the production of art and inscriptions in Athens in the Archaic and Classical periods. The studies concern additive sculptural groups produced by the contributions of multiple dedicators, a form of display explained within the context of votive religion; epigraphical evidence for collaboration between East Greek sculptors and Athenian patrons on 6th- and 5th-century votive monuments; and dedications that have either been misidentified as belonging to Athenian potters and vase painters or erroneously reconstructed as metal or stone vases.

Patrons of Athenian Votive Monuments of the Archaic and Classical Periods: Three Studies

In three studies of votive offerings, the author explores the role played by private patrons in the production of art and inscriptions in Athens in the Archaic and Classical periods. The studies concern additive sculptural groups produced by the contributions of multiple dedicators, a form of display explained within the context of votive religion; epigraphical evidence for collaboration between East Greek sculptors and Athenian patrons on 6th- and 5th-century votive monuments; and dedications that have either been misidentified as belonging to Athenian potters and vase painters or erroneously reconstructed as metal or stone vases.

Ekrem Akurgal, 1911-2002

Previous articleNext article No AccessNecrologiesEkrem Akurgal, 1911-2002Crawford H. Greenewalt Jr.Crawford H. Greenewalt Jr. Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 109, Number 3July 2005 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 5Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.3764/aja.109.3.561 Views: 5Total views on this site Copyright © 2005 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Misunderstood Gestures: Iconatrophy and the Reception of Greek Sculpture in the Roman Imperial Period

Abstract Anthropologists have defined iconatrophy as a process by which oral traditions originate as explanations for objects that, through the passage of time, have ceased to make sense to their viewers. One form of iconatrophy involves the misinterpretation of statues' identities, iconography, or locations. Stories that ultimately derive from such misunderstandings of statues are Monument-Novellen, a term coined by Herodotean studies. Applying the concept of iconatrophy to Greek sculpture of the Archaic and Classical periods yields three possible examples in which statues standing in Greek sanctuaries may have inspired stories cited by authors of the Roman imperial period as explanations for the statues' identities, attributes, poses, or locations. The statues in question are the portrait of the athletic victor Milo of Croton at Olympia, a bronze lioness on the Athenian Acropolis identified as a memorial to the Athenian prostitute Leaina (“lioness”), and the Athena Hygieia near the Propylaia of Mnesikles.Inscriptions on the bases of Archaic and Classical statues in Greek sanctuaries typically named the dedicator, the recipient deity, and the sculptor, but did not include the subject represented or the historical occasion behind the dedication. These “gaps” left by votive inscriptions would only have encouraged the formation of iconatrophic oral traditions such as the examples examined in this article.

Clinical observation: movement quality and classical art. Greek sculpture as a tool in understanding the phenomenon of movement quality by Skjaerven L., Gard G., Kristoffersen K., July 2004 JBMT 8(3): 227–236.

Studying the possibilities of movement in artistic representations of the human body can expand the knowledge of body therapists and movement teachers and deepen our understanding of the quality of movement. The study from L.H. Skjaerven, G. Gard and K. Kristoffersen attempts to demonstrate this aspect and therefore deserves a thorough reading. The essay's content also attracted my attention, as I have been working on the same subject for many years. When first starting out, I had chosen ancient Egyptian art as my main focus of study and compared it with classical Greek art. 1 Brecklinghaus, Hans Georg (2002). The Human Beings are awoken, you have set them upright. Body Structure and Conception of Man in Ancient Egyptian Art and the Present Day, Lebenshaus Verlag, Freiburg (Germany) and La Vergne/TN (USA). 1Brecklinghaus, Hans Georg (2002). The Human Beings are awoken, you have set them upright. Body Structure and Conception of Man in Ancient Egyptian Art and the Present Day, Lebenshaus Verlag, Freiburg (Germany) and La Vergne/TN (USA). Author's replyJournal of Bodywork and Movement TherapiesVol. 9Issue 1PreviewWe want to thank H.G. Brecklinghaus for sharing interest and knowledge to the subject of movement quality; a phenomenon in need of clarification and research. It has been of great interest to read the comments from a colleague working with ancient Egyptian art as a main focus comparing it with classical Greek art. Full-Text PDF

Phidias und Polyklet im agon: Die neueren archäologischen und kunsthistorischen Forschungen zur Rezeption griechischer Bildhauer in der Renaissance

Classical archiaeology and art history have established different methods when interpreting the interest in Polykleitos, Phidias, Lysippos and other Greek sculptors that emerged in late trecento humanism and art. After the art historian Julius von Schlosser had considered Ghiberti's reception of ancient sculpture as evidence for the rising of artistic individuality in the early Renaissance, the archaeologist Henning Wrede introduced the Greek sculptor as an authority orexemplum for the arts of both sculpture and painting around 1400. Biographical approaches as well as analyses of thetopoi of artistic skill can therefore be traced in recent scholarship. The review concludes that the early Renaissance does not understand the Greek sculptor as a biographical unity, but as atopos of the rediscovered categories of ancienttechne.

Dorothy Burr Thompson, 1900-2001

Previous articleNext article No AccessDorothy Burr Thompson, 1900-2001Jaimee P. UhlenbrockJaimee P. Uhlenbrock Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 108, Number 4October 2004 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 1Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.3764/aja.108.4.631 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright © 2004 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Light on stone: Greek and Roman sculpture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: a photographic essay

In 1999, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's renowned collection of Ancient Greek sculpture was reinstalled in dramatic new galleries. This volume features specially commissioned photographs of these monumental marble sculptures in their new setting, which is beautifully enhanced by natural light. An informative essay serves as an introduction to the Greek sculpture collection and complements the photographs, which feature details as well as overall views of sculptural groups. The images are in black and white, sepia and colour. An illustrated checklist provides informative descriptions of the sculptures from the author's personal perspective.

Greek sculpture as a tool in understanding the phenomenon of movement quality

Abstract Previous research has shown that movement quality may be described as offering a general impression of a whole unified person, understood as a relation between postural stability, free breathing and awareness, which combined produce a refinement of movement as well as enhancing well-being. The phenomenon could further be structured in terms of four movement dimensions: structural, physiological, psychological/relational and a purely human dimension. So far we have little knowledge about these dimensions. The aim of this study is to deepen the understanding of the phenomenon of movement quality through close observation of Greek sculpture, reflection and literature studies relating to Greek sculpture. The aim was to see if these methods could be a tool for achievement of a deeper understanding of movement quality, in clinical observation and reasoning. A phenomenological method was used to study the essence of the phenomenon of movement quality. A study of Greek sculpture was chosen because of the way ancient Greek sculptors sought to express several dimensions of human existence. The results show that close observation, reflection and literature studies of Greek sculptures deepened the knowledge of the four dimensions of movement quality and provided a way in which this knowledge could be expressed in words. These methods may represent a tool for achieving a deeper understanding of movement quality in clinical observation and reasoning.

Right–left and the scrotum in Greek sculpture

The scrotum in humans is asymmetric, the right testicle being visibly higher than the left in most men. Paradoxically, it is also the case that the right testicle is somewhat larger, rather than smaller, as might be expected. Greek classical and pre‐classical art, which took great care in its attention to anatomical detail, correctly portrayed the right testicle as the higher, but then incorrectly portrayed the left testicle as visibly larger. The implication is that the Greeks used a simple mechanical theory, the left testicle being thought to be lower because it was larger and hence more subject to the pull of gravity. The present study examines data on scrotal asymmetry in more detail, and puts them in the context of Greek theories of functional differences between the right side and the left side.

Sacred Objects/Illusory Idols: The Fake in Freud's "The Moses of Michelangelo"

Before earning the status of a great original, began his career as a forger. Vasari (1568) recounts that the young artist made copies of Old Master drawings, smoking and staining them to give them an authentic appearance. He later fashioned a statue of a sleeping Cupid, which Lorenzo di Medici allegedly encouraged him to pass off as an ancient artifact. Vasari argues that the believability of his forgery was a major catalyst in establishing Michelangelo's reputation (421- 23). Subsequent biographies of include fasci- nated descriptions of the artist as forger, attributing other fakes to the master's corpus. According to one of these accounts, after making a bust of the goddess Ceres, breaking off its arm, and burying it, informed a group of archeologists that he had discovered an ancient statue, which, upon examination, they attributed to the Greek sculptor Praxiteles. As they were admiring their find, produced the broken arm, showed that it fit the amputated body perfectly, and exclaimed, I am Praxiteles! (Eudel 1884, 387; Demeure 1951, 120-21). Whether this seductive narrative of the birth of as artist is itself true or feigned, it presents authorship as a category that must be dismantled before it can be established. As the statue must first be broken before it can be recognized as a whole, so the author or artist needs to fragment his identity in order to monumentalize it; I am Praxiteles thus becomes the most direct way of asserting, I am Michelangelo. Freud adopts this deconstructionist model of author- ship in Moses of Michelangelo (1914). The essay is

Greek and Roman sculpture and inscriptions from Cyrene: recent joins and proposed associations, including a ‘new” private portrait statue, and some recent epigraphic discoveries

AbstractThis article presents a number of joins and associations recently made in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum on sculpture excavated by Robert Murdoch Smith and Edwin Augustus Porcher during their expedition to Cyrene in 1861. The connections were made during an on-going programme within the Greek and Roman Department to provenance and, wherever possible, join the large collection of fragmentary sculpture originating from the big excavations of the 19th century. In addition, some tentative associations between sculpture in the British Museum and others still at Cyrene will be proposed, and some recent epigraphic discoveries made during a visit to the site will also be presented.

Posthumous Copies of Ancient Greek Sculpture: Roman Taste and Techniques

Posthumous Copies of Ancient Greek Sculpture: Roman Taste and Techniques