Ancient Mediterreanean Rome And Greece Flashcards
Anavysos Kouros
Identification: Anavysos Kouros, Archaic Greek, 530 BCE, marble with remnants of paint
Form: Emulates the stance of Egyptian sculpture, formal, frontal, rigid, idealized, stylized, canon of proportions based on geometric perfection, but is nude; arms and legs are mostly cut free from the stone, rigidly frontal, freestanding and able to move; in contrast, many Egyptian works are reliefs or attached to the stone, hair is knotted and falls in neatly braided rows down back, some paint left, some encaustic, greater life to the sculpture, archaic smile
Function: Grave marker, replacing huge vases of the Geometric Period, sponsored by an aristocratic family
Content: Not a real portrait but a general representation of the dead, named after a young military hero, Kroisos, inscription at the bottom of the sculpture identifies him, symmetry and balance of form (organic and geometric)
Cross cultural comparison: Power figure (27.6), Staff god (28.5a), Donatello, David (15.5)
Peplos Kore
Identification: Peplos Kore, from the Acropolis, Archaic Greek, 530 BCE, marble and painted details
Kore=ideal female youth; named for garb, worn, rectangular linen cloth pinned at the shoulder
Form: Hand emerges into the viewer’s space, breaks out of the mold of static Archaic statues, indented waist, breasts beneath drapery, rounded and naturalistic face, a lot of the encaustic paint still remains, animating face and hair, broken hand was fitted into the socket and probably held something, possibly a goddess, offering to patron deity Athena or Artemis, reconstruction, incomplete, believed to have held bow and arrow or pomegranate= associated with afterlife, traces of red paint, patterns of animals on dress, columnar, canon of proportions, geometric forms, formal, frontal, rigid, body is columnar = vessel
Context: She is named for the Peplos, thought to be one of four traditional garments she is wearing
Theory: Recent theory that she is a goddess, Athena or Artemis; figure is now missing arrows and a bow in her hand, possibly wore a metal diadem.
Cross cultural comparison: Winged Victory of Samothrace (4.8), Seated Boxer (4.10), Victory Adjusting her sandal (4.6)
Polykleitos Doryphoros (Spear Bearer)
Identification: Polykleitos Doryphoros (Spear Bearer), Pompei, Roman Copy of Greek Statue, marble copy of bronze original, 450-440 BCE
Symmetria - mathematical relationship of body parts
Form: Blocky solidity, closed stance, broad shoulders, thick torso, muscular body, idealized body contrapposto, body is both tense and relaxed: left arm and right leg are relaxed, right arm and left leg are tense
Content: warrior and athlete, hand once held a spear, movement is restrained; ideal spartan body, averted gaze; he does not recognize the viewer’s admiration, contemplative gaze
Context: Greek name: Doryphoros, represents Polykleitos ideal masculine figure, considered a canon for classic body types; the general rule for beauty and form probably linked to a no longer existing treatise by the artist
History: Marble Roman copy of a bronze Greek original, found in Pompeii in a place for athletic training, perhaps inspiration for athletes
Cross cultural comparison: Female deity from Nukuoro (28.2), Shova as Lord of Dance (23.6), Braque, The Portuguese (22.6)
Helios, horses and Dionysus (or Heracles)
Helios, horses and Dionysus (or Heracles), 438-432 BCE, marble
Form: Greek classical art; contrapposto, figures seated in the left hand corner of the east pediment of the Parthenon (4.16a), sculptures comfortably sit in the triangular space of the pediment
Function: part of the east pediment of the Parthenon, this grouping contains figures who are present at the birth of Athena, which is the main at the center of the pediment—now lost
Content: Left: the sun god Helios, bringing up the dawn with his horses; the male nude is Dionysus, god of wine, he is lounging, two seated figures may be the goddesses Demeter, and Persephone, reacting to the birth of Athena
Context: Part of the Parthenon sculptures called the Elgin Marbles, Phidias acted as the chief sculptor of the workshop
Cross cultural comparisons: Churning of the ocean of milk (23.8c), Royal Portals at Chartres (12.6), Last Judgement, Sainte-Foy, Conques (11.6)
Contrapposto
Fluid body movement and relaxed stance, unknown in freestanding sculpture before Greek art
Polykleitos
Polykleitos was a sculptor who helped define the idealized bodies of Greek sculpture and whose canon a proportion of the human figure had far reaching effects. Polykleitos wrote that the head should be 1/7 of the body. He also favored a heavy musculature with a body expressing, alternating stances of relaxed and stressed muscles. 
Plaque of the Eragastines
Identification: Plaque of Eragastines, 447-438 BCE, marble
Form: Isocephalism: the tradition of depicting heads of figures on the same level, figures stand in contrapposto, carved in high relief, which reflects the placement; the more three-dimensional the relief, the better it could be seen from below
Content: Six ergastines, young women in charge of weaving Athena’s peplos, are greeted by two priests
Context: Part of a frieze from the Parthenon that depicts some 360 figures, scene from the pantheistic Frieze depicting the Panthenaic Procession, held every four years to honor Athena, this is the first time in Greek art that human events are depicted on a temple, the scene contains a religious procession of women dressed in contemporary drapery and acting nobly, the procession began at the Dipylon gate, passed through the agora, and ended at the Parthenon, athenian placed a new peplos on an ancient statue of Athena
Theory: not the Panthenatic procession, but the story of the legendary Athenian King Erechtheous, who sacrificed one of his daughters to save the city of Athens; told to do so by the Oracle of Delphi
Cross, cultural comparison: Churning of the Ocean of milk (23.8c), Coyolxauhqui (26.5b), Lintel 25 of Structure 23 from Yaxchilán (26.2b)
Victory adjusting her sandal, from the Temple of Athena Nike
Introduction: Victory adjusting her sandal, from the Temple of Athena Nike, 410 BCE
Form: graceful winged figure modeled in high relief, deeply incised with drapery lines reveal body; wet drapery
Context: part of the Valley Street on the temple of Athena Nike, a war monument, one of many figures on the Ball Street; not a continuous narrative, but a sequence of independent scenes, the importance of military victories was stressed in the images on the Acropolis
Cross, cultural comparisons: Shiva as Lord of dance (23.6),Nio guardians figure (25.1 C, 25.1 D), turning of the ocean of milk (23.8 C) 
Grave Stele of Hegeso, 410 BCE, marble and paint, attributed to Kallimachos
Identification: Grave Stele of Hegeso, 410 BCE, marble and paint, attributed to Kallimachos
Form: classical period of Greek art, use of contrapposto in the standing figure, jewelry painted in, not visible, architectural framework, text includes the name of the deceased
Function: grave marker, and geometric and archaic periods, Greeks used kraters and koroi to mark graves in the classical. Stelae were used.
Content: commemorate the death of Hegso; an inscription identifies her and her father, genre scene: Hegeso examines a piece of jewelry from a jewelry box handed to her by a standing servant; may represent her dowry, standing figure has a lower social station, place before a seated figure
Context: erected in the Dipylon cemetery in Athens, attributed to the sculptor Kallimachos
Cross, cultural comparisons: Taj Mahal (9.17 a, 9.17 B), sarcophagus of the spouses (5.4), Tutankhamen tomb (3.11) 
Winged Victory of Samothrace
Identification: winged victory of Samothrace, hellenistic Greek, 190 BCE, marble
Form: monumental figure, dramatic twist, and contrapposto of the torso, wet drapery, look imitates water playing on a wet body, illusion of wind on the body
Function: meant to sit on a fountain representing a figure head on a boat; the fountain/water around the figure
Content: large heroic figure of Nike placed above the marble pro of a naval vessel, Nike is wearing several garments, some of which are folded inside out to show the force of the wind, it is been suggested that Nike held a trumpet, a wreath, or a fillet in her right hand. However, the hand sound in Samothrace, in 1950, has a open palm and two outstretched fingers, suggesting that she was not holding anything and was simply holding her hand up in a gesture of greeting.
Context: probably made to commemorate a naval victory in 191 BCE; that he is the goddess of victory, the boat at the base is an ancient battleship with oar boxes, and traces of a ram,
History: found in 1863 in situ on Samothrace, reassembled in the louver Museum in Paris, and placed at the top of a grand staircase, only one wing was found. The other is a mirror image, only one breast was found, the other is a construction, the right hand has been found, but it cannot be attached because no arms have been found.
Cross cultural comparison: Smithson, spiral jetty (22.26), dome of the rock(9.12a, 9.12 B), lanzon Stone (26.1 B)
Athena, from the great altar of Zeus and Athena at Pergamon
Identification: Athena, from the great altar of Zeus and Athena at Pergamon, Hellenistic Greek, 175 BCE, marble
Form: deeply carved figures overlap on each other; master handling of spatial illusion; figures break into the viewer space from the freeze, dramatic intensity of figures and movement; her musculature
Function: Gigantimachy on the base of the Pergamon altar, illustrates the victories of the goddess, Athena, who’s worshiped at the altar
Content: describes the battle between the gods and the Giants; the Giants depicted as helpless are dragged up the stairs to worship the gods, Athena grabs Alkyoneos by the hair and dragged him up the stair to worship Zeus, Nike on the right ground Athena and victory, Gaia the goddess of the Earth looks on in horror and pleads for the fate of her sons. The Giants
Context: the God‘s victory of the Giants offer a parallel to Alexandria the great defeat of the Persians, also X as an allegory of a Greek military victory by Eumenes the second
Cross, cultural comparisons: narmer palette (3.4), anthropomorphic steele(1.2), pixus of Al mughira
Seated boxer
Introduction: seated boxer, Hellenistic, Greek, bronze
Form: older man, passed his, looks defeated, smashed nose; lips sunken suggesting broken teeth, cauliflower, ears, nude fighter; hands wrapped in leather bands, figure events, sadness, stoicism, and determination.
Function: may have been a good luck, charm for athletes; evidence of toes worn away by being touched
Materials: rare surviving Hellenistic bronze, blood, denoted in copper, drips from His face and onto his right arm and thigh, copper used to highlight his lips and nipples, the straps on his leather gloves and wounds on his head.
Context: may have been part of a group or perhaps, a single sculpture, the head turned to face and unseen opponent, found in a Roman bath in Rome
Cross, cultural comparison: Goya, and there’s nothing to be done(20.2), Kitchener, self portrait as a soldier (22.3), munch, the scream (21.11)
Athenian agora, archaic through Hellenistic Greek
Identification: Athenian agora, Athens, Greece, archaic through Hellenistic Greek, 600-150 BCE, stone
Function: a plaza at the base of the Acropolis in Athens with commercial, Civic, religious, and social buildings for ceremony took place, setting for the panthenatic festival, ceremonies, and parades to honor Athena, the panathenatic way cuts through high terrain from the Northwestern to the south eastern corners.
Content: surrounding the plaza were important buildings, including: a bouleutrion, a chamber used by a council of 500 citizens, called a boule who were chosen by lot to serve for one year, a tholos, a round structure demanded by a group of senators 24 hours a day for emergency meetings; served as a dining hall, where the prytaneis (executives) of the boule often met, several stoas. A stoa is it covered walkway with columns on one side and a wall on the other
Cross, cultural comparisons: presentation of fijian maths, and tapa cloths to Queen Elizabeth II(28.10), Aka elephant mask (27.12), the Kaaba (9.11)
3 Greek column capitals
Doric Capital (masculine)
Ionic Capital (feminine)
Corinthian Capital (way too feminine and decorative)
Iktnos and Kallikrates, the Parthenon
Identification: Iktnos and Kallikrates, the Parthenon, Athens Greece, 600-150 BCE, marble
Form: Greek love of algebra is represented in the layout of the building, parts can be expressed as x=2y+1, thus there are 17 columns on the side (x) and 8 columns in the front (y) and the length to width ratio is 9:4, identical proportions for the cella, unusually light interior, 2 windows in the cella, the center of the floor curves upward to drain water and prevent an perception of sagging at the corners, columns at the ends are surrounded by light so they are made thicker to look like the rest of the columns, there are ionic columns in the rear room and an ionic frieze
Function: interior built to house a massive statue of Athena and held the treasure of the Delian League, the stature was made of gold and ivory over a wooden core, no longer exists
Context: constructed under the leadership of Pericles after the Persian sack of Athens in 480 BCE, destroyed the original acropolis, Pericles used the extra funds in the Persian war treasury to build the Acropolis, Greek allies were furious that the funds were not returned to them
History: Built as a Greek temple dedicated to Athena, patroness of Athens
- the story: Athena and Poseidon wanted control over Athens and offered the people gifts to entice them(story on the west pediment of the Parthenon), Poseidon made a saltwater spring for them on the Acropolis and Athena gave them olive trees
The Erechtheum was built around the mark where Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and the sacred olive tree grew, after the Greek period, the Parthenon became a Greek Orthodox Church, a Roman Catholic Church dedicated to Mary, then a Mosque during the Islamic period, then destroyed by the Venetians in an attack against the Turks, then half the sculptures were removed to England by lord Elgin in the 19th century
Cross cultural comparisons: Jefferson Monticello (figures 19.5a, 19.5b), Porta Il Gesù (16.6a), Venturi House New Castle County (22.27a, 22.27b)
