Greek art

…or reserved for priests; in ancient Greece it contained an accessible cult image, but services were held outside the main facade; and in the ancient Near East and in the Mayan and Aztec architecture of ancient Mexico, where the temple was erected at the summit of pyramidal mounds, only privileged…

…Renaissance architecture retained the ancient Greek orders as decoration partly for this reason, using them to break up huge masses into more comprehensible parts. In entirely different styles of architecture, such as the Gothic, where the expressive function requires immeasurable proportions, there is still a measurable module given in the…

The increased wealth of Greece in the 7th century bce was enhanced by overseas trade and by colonizing activity in Italy and Sicily that had opened new markets and resources. Athens did not send out colonists and did not engage in vigorous trade, and…

Greek cities, an open space that served as a meeting ground for various activities of the citizens. The name, first found in the works of Homer, connotes both the assembly of the people as well as the physical setting. It was applied by the classical…

The ancient Greeks built magnificent stone temples; however, the horizontal stone slabs that constituted the roofs of the temples could not support even their own weight over more than a very small span. For this reason, one characteristic that identifies a Greek temple is the many closely…

In ancient Greece exedrae were commonly found in the parts of major cities that had been reserved for worship, such as the Acropolis in Athens. Scholars and poets held discussions in the walled recesses, which were also used for rest and contemplation.

…Crete and also on the Greek mainland. The Greeks refined the technique between the 6th and the 4th centuries bc, and ancient decorative pebble mosaics have been found in Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily. Such mosaics were also made of marble, serpentine alabaster, some forms of granite, and other stones…

During the Aegean civilization, as in later Hellenic Greece, springs were frequently considered sacred and shrines were built around them, the water often emerging into artificial basins. In historic Greece, more highly developed fountains existed; both literary references and excavated remains abound. Some were…

Greek ōideion, “school of music”), comparatively small theatre of ancient Greece and Rome, in which musicians and orators performed and competed. It has been suggested that these theatres were originated because early Greek musical instruments could not be heard in the vast open amphitheatres in…

Architectural ornament in classical Greece exemplified the common tendency for mimetic ornament to turn into applied ornament, which lacks either symbolic meaning or reference to the structure on which it is placed. By the 5th century bc in Greece, the details of the orders had largely lost whatever conscious…

…early in the history of Greek architecture (e.g., at Mycenae), plaster of a fine white lime stucco was used. Greek artisans had achieved high quality earlier than the 5th century bce. Plaster was frequently used to cover the exteriors of temples, a technique commonly known as stucco, in addition to…

In ancient Greece, stucco was applied to both interior and exterior temple walls as early as 1400 bce. Architects of ancient Rome stuccoed the rough stone or brick walls of huge monuments, such as the baths at Hadrian’s Villa, erected at Tivoli about 120–130 ce. They also…

Greek architecture, a circular building with a conical or vaulted roof and with or without a peristyle, or surrounding colonnade. In the Mycenaean period, tholoi were large ceremonial tombs, sometimes built into the sides of hills; they were beehive-shaped and covered by a corbeled arch.…

Because gold was not readily available, jewelry was relatively rare in Archaic (c. 750–c. 500 bce) and Classical (c. 500–c. 323 bce) Greece. Examples do exist, however, and certain generalizations can be made. In the 7th and 6th centuries bce the jewelry produced in…

Greek women during the early Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods (i.e., up to about 300 ce). It consisted of a large rectangular piece of material folded vertically and hung from the shoulders, with a broad overfold. During the early periods, it was belted around the…

…conical crown worn in ancient Greece. The petasos worn by men had a rather low crown, while that worn by women had a tall one.

In ancient Greece, bronze, iron, and silver were used for making furniture. Finds that were buried in the ashes of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy included tables with folding underframes and beds made partly or entirely of metal.

Principal furniture forms were couches, chairs (with and without arms), stools, tables, chests, and boxes. From extant examples, the depiction of furniture on vases and in relief carvings, and literary descriptions, much more is known about Greek furniture than about Egyptian. At Knossos, a…

The typical Greek chair, the klismos, is known not from any ancient specimen still extant but from a wealth of pictorial material. The best known is the klismos depicted on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial place outside Athens (c. 410…

…after the large-scale importation of Greek craftsmen in the time of Darius I (reigned 522–486 bce).

…based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity, which invokes harmony, clarity, restraint, universality, and idealism. In the context of the tradition, Classicism refers either to the art produced in antiquity or to later art inspired by that of antiquity, while Neoclassicism always refers to the art produced…

…classicism with archaeological investigation into Greek and Roman architecture. His Gare du Nord, Paris (1861–65), showed brilliantly how a language ultimately inspired by the triumphal arches of ancient Rome could lend an appropriate monumental emphasis to a major metropolitan railway terminus. In Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Paris (1830–46), a church with a giant…

…culture is its relationship to Greek models. The comparison is natural, indeed essential, in light of the massive amount of Greek artifacts, especially vases, that have been excavated in Etruria and the abundant examples of Etruscan imitations, of the pottery especially. It is also certain that Greek craftsmen sometimes settled…

…time, a significant interest in Greek antiquities was emerging, along with a growing belief in the superiority of Greek over Roman architecture that was to result in a Greek Revival in architecture. At about this time the 6th-century Greek ruins at Paestum in southern Italy and in Sicily began to…

The key building in the development of Scandinavian classicism in the period 1830–1930 is the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen, erected in 1839–48 from designs by Michael Gottlieb Bindesbøll. It was built to house the collection of sculpture that the celebrated Danish Neoclassical sculptor

…between the prevailing Attic and Hellenistic models and Italian naturalism. The sculptured portraits on the Ara Pacis (Altar of the Augustan Peace) of 9 bc, for all their lifelike quality, are yet in harmony with the classical poise of the figures, and they strike a fresh note: the stately converging…

…painting, also, owed much to Greek styles and techniques. It emerged, however, as its own distinctive type. The Augustan age had pointed the way that Roman art would go: Italian taste would be imposed on Hellenic models to produce something original. The reliefs of the Augustan Ara Pacis belong to…

It was to Greek artists that the Romans turned when, in the 3rd century bce, they first came into contact with the flourishing Greek cities of southern Italy and the eastern Mediterranean. Contact was usually in the form of war, and soon Greek works of art were being…

525–500 bc) was a Greek painter said to have invented foreshortened or “three-quarter views,” to have introduced depiction of wrinkles and folds in drapery, and to have represented human beings in different attitudes (e.g., looking upward, downward, backward, etc.). He was a native of Cleonae, a city between Corinth…

In Greece and the Aegean, influence from the adjacent areas of western Asia helped promote the rise of small towns by about 3000 bce. The cultural development is usually divided into three separate strands: Minoan on Crete, Cycladic on the islands of the central Aegean, and…

Greek, Indian, and most Italian Renaissance sculptors shaped the forms of their work to receive light in a way that makes the whole work radiantly clear.

… and the coins of ancient Greece are generally considered the supreme achievements in these miniature fields of sculpture.

Greek art no doubt owed much indirectly to the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization (now known in its later stages to have been Greek), which disintegrated at the end of the 2nd millennium bce, partly under the impact of a series of invasions from the Balkans. The period…

Representations of Aphrodite in early Greek art are fully dressed and without distinguishing features that differentiate her from other goddesses. She first attained individuality at the hands of the great 5th-century-bce Greek sculptors. Perhaps the most famous of all statues of Aphrodite was carved by Praxiteles for the Cnidians. The…

Chryselephantine statues were made in Greece from the 6th century bc. Frequently they were colossal cult figures adorning the interiors of major temples; Classical writers record, for example, that the Greek sculptor Phidias made a 40-foot (12-metre) chryselephantine statue of Athena for the Parthenon at Athens and another large figure…

The Greeks invented this formula in the early 5th century bc as an alternative to the stiffly static pose—in which the weight is distributed equally on both legs—that had dominated Greek figure sculpture in earlier periods. There is a clear development from the “Critius Boy” of…

…same, although, as in all Greek art, it evolved from a highly stylized form to a more naturalistic one.

…proportions—they gradually took on distinctly Greek characteristics. Unlike the Egyptian sculptures, the kouroi had no explicit religious purpose, serving, for example, as tombstones and commemorative markers. They sometimes represented the god Apollo, but they also depicted local heroes, such as athletes.

…was a common subject in Greek art, as was its theft in literature.

…important image in Egyptian and Greek art and legend. The word sphinx was derived by Greek grammarians from the verb sphingein (“to bind” or “to squeeze”), but the etymology is not related to the legend and is dubious. Hesiod, the earliest Greek author to mention the creature, called it Phix.

The first time theatre truly freed itself from religious ritual to become an art form was in Greece in the 6th century bce when the dithyramb was developed. This was a form of choral song chanted at festivals in honour of…

…of supposed acting in ancient Greece was that of the actor Polus performing in the Electra of Sophocles, at Athens in the 4th century bc. The plot requires Electra to carry an urn supposed to contain the ashes of Orestes and to lament and bewail the fate she believed had…

The Old Comedy of Greece, introduced into Dionysian festivals in 487 bc and surviving in the works of Aristophanes, adhered to a rigid structure within which some variation was allowed. The plays begin with a prologos, which outlines the dilemma of the plot, followed by the parodos, or chorus…

…the clown flourished in ancient Greece—bald-headed, padded buffoons who performed as secondary figures in farces and mime, parodying the actions of more serious characters and sometimes pelting the spectators with nuts. The same clown appeared in the Roman mime, wearing a pointed hat and a motley patchwork robe and serving…

Hindu theatre differed from its Greek counterpart in temperament and method of production. The three unities rigidly followed by the Greeks were totally unknown to Sanskrit dramatists. Less time was consumed by a Greek program of three tragedies and a farce than by a single Sanskrit drama, with its subsidiary…

…were an innovation of the Greek poet Thespis in the 6th century bce, and theatrical costumes were long called “the robes of Thespis.” Athenians spent lavishly on the production and costumes at annual drama contests. Each poet was given a wealthy citizen, the chorēgos, who, encouraged by the honour of…

…out of the chorus in Greek theatre in the 6th century bce, smeared his face with white lead and red cinnabar. He may have done so, but the very large size of some of the Greek theatres (containing up to 15,000 spectators) made the use of the masks a more…

Descriptive evidence of the earliest Greek theatre indicates that music, mostly sung by a chorus, was essential but not continuous. At drama festivals the poet wrote his own music (as well as being actor, producer, and choreographer), probably based on some kind of traditional repeated formula. Later Greek theatre, after…

…is first known from ancient Greece.

In Greek Old Comedy, for example, an actor speaking for the author might cajole, advise, or challenge the spectators. By contrast, the naturalistic actor plays as though a “fourth wall” closes off the room of the stage. Between these two extremes fall a variety of relationships.…

The Greek city-state and the medieval town organized their productions in a strikingly similar way, with the municipality exercising control. Until at least the 4th century bce, however, the Athenians presented new plays every year, whereas the medieval townspeople annually reenacted the same plays or variations…

Greek drama, the first or leading actor. The poet Thespis is credited with having invented tragedy when he introduced this first actor into Greek drama, which formerly consisted only of choric dancing and recitation. The protagonist stood opposite the chorus and engaged in an interchange…

The first identification of theatre as a distinctive art form in the city-state of Athens can be dated to 534 bce, when the first prize in a competition for tragedy was awarded. The Roman writer Horace, writing 500 years later, believed that…

…5th century bc, when the Greeks developed deus ex machina (q.v.), by which an actor could be lowered to the stage. During the Hellenistic period, the Greeks also used movable scenery, mounted on wheels or on revolving prisms called periaktoi (see periaktos). The Romans elaborated on these devices, adding traps…