Ancient Greek art

Ancient Greek art refers to the art and architecture produced by the Greeks during a period from about 1150 BCE to the first century BCE. This timeframe is an approximation, as scholars propose different starting and ending points for the ancient Greek civilization. Generally, the period is considered to encompass more than a millennium from the fall of the Mycenean civilization—the precursors to the ancient Greeks—to the Roman conquest of Greece about 27 BCE; however, some scholars also include the art of the Myceneans and the Minoans, an island civilization that flourished in the Mediterranean Sea.

Ancient Greek art is typically divided into three or four historical periods. Some experts consider the Geometric period to be the first phase of ancient Greek art. It began during the Greek Dark Ages, a time of decline after the fall of the Myceneans. Art in this period was more abstract and functional. The Archaic period began in the seventh century BCE and coincided with the rise of the ancient Greek civilization. Art during this time took on more naturalistic and realistic forms. The Classical period began with the Greek defeat of the Persians about 480 BCE. This period was known for its architecture and sculpture. Finally, the Hellenistic period lasted from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE to about 27 BCE. Hellenistic art was categorized by a diversity in subject matter and a focus on heroic figures and Greek history.

Overview

People had been living in the region of Greece for thousands of years before establishing the first permeant settlements about 6000 BCE. The ancestors of the Myceneans are believed to have migrated to the region in about 3200 BCE. About the same time, a seafaring civilization known as the Minoans began to develop on the Mediterranean island of Crete. The Minoans were the first major civilization in Europe, and by 2000 BCE, had reached the peak of their power as the dominant trading culture in the Mediterranean.

Early Minoan artwork often included geometric shapes but later evolved to feature images of sea life, plant life, and animals. Starfish, octopuses, seashells, and bull’s heads were commonly used on pottery, jewelry, and stone vessels. The Minoans were also known for building large palaces with elaborate artwork painted on the walls and floors. Nature themes were common subjects with images such as monkeys, dolphins, flowers, plants, and bulls. The bull was a popular motif in Minoan art where the animal was seen as a symbol of the Minoan culture.

The Minoan civilization began to decline about 1450 BCE, possibly due to natural disasters or conflict with other cultures. By 1100 BCE, the Minoan civilization had ended. Its fall coincided with the rise of the Myceneans on the Greek mainland. Some experts believe that hostile encounters with the Myceneans played a significant role in the decline of the Minoans.

Historians see the Myceneans as the direct ancestors of later Greek culture. The tales of the Trojan War as told in the Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey and take place during the reign of mythological King Agamemnon of Mycenae. Like the Minoans, the Myceneans also built large palaces whose walls were covered in artwork. Mycenean places were built with a large central hall surrounded by smaller entryways, a style that would later be adapted by the Greeks in their famous temples and shrines.

Designs on Mycenean pottery, jewelry, and wall paintings also featured natural elements such as animals, plants, and human female figures, but used a less-realistic style. Some of their wall paintings reflected the culture’s militaristic philosophy, portraying warriors, battle scenes, and hunting parties. The most famous artwork of the Mycenean period was a golden burial mask that was made about 1580–1555 BCE. The artifact was discovered in 1876 and given the name the Mask of Agamemnon, although it was not a representation of the mythical king.

Sometime about 1200 BCE to 1150 BCE, the cultures of the Mediterranean were impacted by a series of events that caused a rapid decline in the civilizations of the region. The Myceneans were among the civilizations affected by the event, which scholars call the Late Bronze Age collapse. Large Mycenean population centers were abandoned and by 1100 BCE, most of the region’s population lived in about forty scattered villages.

The fall of the Myceneans began a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, in which much of the culture’s writing and literacy were lost. Artwork during the period was purely functional, with figurative artwork virtually non-existent. Pottery styles became less uniform, with various local styles popping up. Most of these styles were of poorer quality than the earlier Mycenean works. In about 1050 BCE, a more complex pottery style known as Proto-Geometric began to take hold in the former Mycenean territories. This style consisted of pottery or burial vases with simple triangles, circles, or wavy lines. In some cases, pottery designs were sparce, with most of the object left bare.

Geometric Period

Beginning about 900 BCE, the Greek peninsula began a slow transformation into what would become the ancient Greek civilization. Scattered villages began to form larger communities, eventually becoming the precursors of the Greek city-states. People began making contact with other cultures and revive trade. It was during this period that literacy and writing made a comeback, and the Greek alphabet was developed.

The era is called the Geometric period after the style of art that was prevalent at the time. Artists in the Geometric period rediscovered naturalistic elements such as animals and heroic warriors, but they were portrayed more abstractly with simplistic geometric shapes. Art from the period continued to consist largely of pottery and other functional objects such as drinking vessels and vases. These were commonly decorated with horses, military battles, and funeral rites. Art from the Geometric period was not inscribed, leaving much of the context of the images unknown. However, it is likely that many featured Greek mythological figures and legendary heroes.

Archaic Period

The end of the Geometric period occurred about 700 BCE and coincided with the end of the Greek Dark Ages. Many historians view this date as the true starting point of ancient Greek art. However, others mark the year 776 BCE—the date of the first Olympic Games—as the end of the Dark Ages and the start of Greek’s Archaic period.

By this time, Greece had established a robust trading relationship with the cultures of Anatolia, the Middle East, and the Black Sea. Greek art began to show the influences of these cultures, adopting more imaginative and figurative images. Rather than the simple straight lines and geometric shapes of earlier Greek art, Archaic pottery, cups, and vases featured more elaborate curvilinear designs. They also began to add mythological creatures such as chimeras, griffins, and sphinxes to representations of humans and more familiar animals. Oftentimes, designs were painted in black silhouette outlines with fine details added in lighter colors. Artists later developed a similar method that used an orange-red color as a silhouette base.

Greek sculpture in the early Archaic period was heavily influenced by the Egyptians and more rigid and focused on a frontal view. Larger sculptures were made from bronze, stone, and terracotta, while smaller sculptures were made from bone and ivory. During the later Archaic period, Greek sculpture lost its rigid format and became more realistic. The most common type of sculpture depicted the young human body. Standing male nudes were known as kouros, while females, known as kore, were sculpted wearing draped fabrics. To the Archaic Greeks, the kouros were considered the more important works of art.

Classical Period

The Classical period began about 480 BCE when the Greek forces defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis, one of the signature naval battles in all of human history. The battle turned the tide in the Greco-Persian Wars and led to the rise of Athens as the dominant Greek city-state. It was during this period that Greek culture reached its Golden Age, producing philosophers, playwrights, and political ideas that would influence future societies for millennia.

The art of Classical Greece saw a marked shift away from pottery and toward sculpture and architecture. Greek pottery from the era took a step back in quality and artistic flair, with the most common style known as the white-ground technique. In this method, designs were painted on vases or jars of white clay.

On the other hand, Greek sculpture reached its peak during the Classical period. Sculptors became obsessed with portraying the human body in the most idealized and realistic way possible, with statues showing “perfect” humans in life-like anatomical detail. In addition to portraying Greek gods, goddesses, and mythological heroes, artists made sculptures of famous athletes. During this period, artists introduced sculptures of female nudes to the more common male statues. Improvements in metalworking allowed sculptures to also be made from marble, although bronze was still the most popular medium for the art.

Greek architecture also reached its height during the Classical period. Just like Classical sculpture, architecture during this period was focused on maintaining perspective and flawless “perfection.” In 480 BCE, the Persian army had invaded Athens and destroyed the city, burning the scared temple complex known as the Acropolis. A few decades later, the Athenian general Pericles funded the city’s artists and architects and tasked them with creating public building and art projects. The largest of those projects was the rebuilding of the Acropolis, which was completed between 447 BCE and 407 BCE. The site’s most famous building, the Parthenon, was a temple to the goddess Athena that was completed in 432 BCE. When it was built, the Parthenon was supported by forty-eight marble columns and contained a 37.7-foot-tall (11.5-meter-tall) statue of Athena.

Hellenistic Period

In 335 BCE, Alexander the Great, the young king of the Greek kingdom of Macedon, began a series of conquests that would eventually see him control one of the world’s largest empires. When Alexander died in 323 BCE, his empire was split up into four sections, each ruled by one of his generals. During his conquests, Alexander had spread Greek culture into parts of northern Africa, the Middle East, and into Asia.

Sculpture was still the dominant artform in the Hellenistic period, which was named for the Ancient Greek word for Greece, Hellas. However, its subject matter began to diversify with sculptures of animals, children, and ordinary people becoming more common. Gods and heroes were no longer portrayed as idealized “perfect” humans but were presented in a more emotional and personalized context. Part of the reason for this diversity was that Greek art was in high demand throughout Alexander’s former empire and wealthy families would often commission sculptures for their private use.

As Greek society also became more secularized, the people across the empire began to develop a deep interest in Greek history. Heroes of Greek legend had always been popular subjects of art, but now they were portrayed in more expressive and realistic sculptures and paintings. The Gods and goddesses were also portrayed in a less idealized light. As the market for Greek art expanded, its quality began to suffer as artists produced more to meet the demand. In some cases, sculptors began focusing on large-scale projects, most notably, the Colossus of Rhodes, a large stature overlooking the seaport at the Greek city of Rhodes. The statue was more than 100-feet tall and was completed about 220 BCE. It was later destroyed in an earthquake.

With the splitting of the empire, Greek architecture also began to suffer in quality. The smooth, simple Doric style of architecture, such as that used to build the Parthenon, was replaced by the flashier Ionic and Corinthian styles. These styles featured more ornate and carved stylized designs.

Further Insights

Except for pottery, almost all the works of art from Ancient Greece have been lost over time. Most of what modern experts know about Greek art comes from copies made by the Romans. Greek culture made such a deep imprint on the Romans that they adopted many elements of Greek art. The two cultures are so intertwined that modern historians often refer to the period of Classical antiquity as the Greco-Roman world.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century CE, Europe entered a period of political and societal turmoil. Much of the knowledge and culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans was lost in Europe but preserved in Jewish and Islamic sources in the Middle East and the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople.

Prior to the fourteenth century, encounters between the Europeans and the cultures of the Middle East and Asia had begun to increase, partly because of trade and the series of religious wars known as the Crusades. As a result, the Europeans were exposed to a wealth of new ideas. In the fourteenth century, an Italian scholar named Petrarch rediscovered an ancient text written by the Roman philosopher Cicero. Petrarch’s discovery touched off a desire for Europeans to re-examine the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

This led to an artistic rebirth in Europe known as the Renaissance as artists tried to recapture the Classical styles of antiquity. Chief among these styles was the obsession with the proportion and anatomical correctness of the human body. This idea had first appeared during the Greek Archaic period and reached its height in the Classical period. Artists were also inspired by the Greek ideal of humanism, which placed more importance on human beings than the divine or supernatural.

Greek influences can be seen in the work of Renaissance artists such as and Michelangelo who incorporated realistic depictions of the human body in their work. Donatello was a fifteenth-century Italian sculptor best known for his bronze sculpture David, which he completed in the 1440s. David, a nude representation of the biblical figure, is reminiscent of the “perfect” Greek hero sculptures of the Classical period. Michelangelo, an Italian sculptor and painter who lived from 1475 to 1564, also created a statue of David. His David, which was carved of marble in about 1504, is an even better representation of the Greek ideal of proportion and the ideal male body. In addition to David, Michelangelo also painted the famous religious imagery on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. His work, which he completed in 1512, includes numerous Biblical scenes such as the iconic Creation of Adam. This scene again draws upon ancient Greek styles of proportion and physical realism to illustrate the story of God and Adam as told in the book of Genesis.

The influence of ancient Greek art continues to influence current-day artwork. A common observation is that contemporary art always draws inspiration from previous eras. This statement is accurately reflected in ancient Greek art as its aesthetic of humanist realism has been replicated throughout the centuries. Timeless artists such as Picasso are known to have drawn inspiration from Greek art, particularly in what is referred to as Picasso’s classical period of the early twentieth century.

About the Author

Richard Sheposh graduated from Penn State University in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and journalism. He spent twenty-three years working in the newspaper industry as a writer and an editor before entering the educational publishing business.

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