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See below [A362] for the relationship of this funerary stele to the sculptor Agorakritos, a close disciple of Pheidias.
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Synopsis of the works shown for this unit:
By 454 B.C.,
when the treasury of the Delian League was transferred to Athens, Pericles was
securely in power in Athens. The
Persians (their "evil empire") were no longer a threat and, in
control of the Delian League, Athens had a virtual empire herself. All the contributing states paid to
protect the Aegean world from the Persians; Athens maintained the requisite
fleet of warships. The Acropolis
of Athens a generation after 480 was still in ruins. Athens now could take advantage of another provision of the
Delian League, the restoration of sanctuaries devastated by the Persians. In the sixth century the sons of
Peisistratos had begun a temple for Athena Parthenos that would have been as
large as the Parthenon that Pericles now built (it was destroyed by the
Persians before it was finished).
Technically, what Pericles now undertook was perfectly legitimate, but
it certainly could not have been done without exceptional funds belonging to
the League. For an ancient
economy, an undertaking like the building program on the Acropolis required a
larger fraction of total wealth than the fraction of ours that NASA and NATO
together require. Only the
Parthenon and the Propylaea were built before first the Peloponnesian War (the
other side led by Sparta) broke out and then, in 429, Athens was decimated by
the Plague (we do not know whether it was Bubonic or some other), in which
Pericles himself died. During
breaks in hostilities the Temple of Athena Nike (in the 420s) and the
Erechtheum (beginning in 421 but not finished until the end of the century)
were built. Socrates taught during
this period as well as a number of Sophist philosophers drawn to Athens under
Pericles. Sophocles' plays are of
this date. The writers who belong
to the period of the Athena Nike temple and the Erechtheum are Euripides and
the author of political comedies, Aristophanes (he had a lot to write about);
towards the end of the century, we perceive a change in the sensibility of the
society both in the literature and the visual arts, as Athens loses her
short-lived political leadership in the Greek world. Our written sources continue to bear witness to remarkable
developments in Greek painting, all lost.
What is clear, and very important, is the emergence of artists as
star-quality personalities and as theorists rather than only artisans (another
very "modern" first from Greek culture). One source tells us of a scene painter (making scenes for
the theater backdrop) who made the lines come together at a point to give the
impression of regularly receding distance: it sounds like perspective. Ictinus, one of the architects of the
Parthenon, wrote a treatise on its design. Pheidias not only was placed in charge of Pericles'
undertakings, and made the chryselephantine
Athena Parthenos, but also seems to have been an intimate friend of
Pericles. These developments were
not confined to Athens. The
sculptor Polyclitus, who worked in Argos in the northern Peloponnesos, wrote a
treatise on his canon of human proportions. Like the ratios in the Parthenon, his seem to be related to
the geometry and number theory of Pythagoras of Samos. The artist as philosopher is a novelty
indeed. In this connection, it is
worthwhile to take note of the Athenian attitudes about the individual in his
society, reflected not only in the funeral oration by Pericles (just before his
own death, recorded in the historian Thucydides) and in the frieze around the
cella of the Parthenon but in the beautiful grave stelae which Athenians set up
on family plots in the Kerameikos cemetery near the Dipylon Gate in the late
fifth and fourth centuries B.C.
Selected works from the University Prints for this period
Kresilas's
portrait of Perikles, illustrated for comparison with the portrait of Themistokles at the end of the preceding post (its authorship is well attested to, but we know practically nothing else of
Kresilas), may have been made in his lifetime or when he died in 429 B.C. Like Themistokles' and Anakreon's, it
was a full-length portrait, but we have only several bust-length copies, of
which the one in the British Museum is not only the most attractive and least
restored but, having never been broken at the neck, guarantees that the
inscription, PERIKLES, really belongs to this facial type; it also shows the
tilt of the head, which lends the portrait individual character. Notice, too, how the helmet, pressing
on the thick curls behind the ears, forces the shell of the ear down and out. This portrait suggests not only a
powerful leader but an inner person, though there is little specific about it;
it is perfectly consistent with the character of the astonishing art of the Age
of Perikles. It suggests what
intricate and subtle meaning being Athenian and being Greek had for them at
this time; we get the same impression from reading Thucydides.
[G 40] [G 38] It is hard to imagine what the Acropolis looked like during the generation between the Persian
Sack and the Periklean building of the Parthenon and Propylaia; we know that
the Peisistratid Parthenon was never completed, and much of the marble quarried
for it was used in the Themistoklean Wall, built to protect Athens in the
Persian emergency. The Old Athena
Temple, in the middle of the Acropolis, must have remained standing in part,
however damaged (labelled "Hekatompedon" on [G 40]); it would be torn
down before the Erechtheion was built, beginning in 421. The Periklean Parthenon, or Temple of Athena Parthenos, the Virgin, was begun in
448/7. The principal architect was
Iktinos, who wrote a treatise on his
design of the temple and its proportions, evidence that he thought of himself
as a "philosopher" rather than merely an artisan. Ancient artisans were not also authors. He was assisted by Kallikrates, who may have been a specialist in Ionic design. For the Parthenon, the most famous
Doric temple, is not typically and not entirely Doric; in particular, (1) the
second, west cella had tall Ionic columns instead of double-decker Doric, as in
the main cella; (2) the continuous frieze around the top of the cella wall and
across both porches is Ionic; (3) the porches at both ends of the cella are not
with Doric columns in antis, but Doric prostyle, which is like the plan of porches of the great
Ionic temples at Ephesos and Samos, as well as the Nike Temple and the
Erechtheion here (see [G 69]). It
also is unusually large; the column diameters are comparable with those of the
Temple of Zeus at Olympia, but the façade is eight columns across (with the
flank columns, as usual, twice times plus one, so seventeen). The Parthenon, besides, is designed in
terms of interrelated ratios, 4:9 being the proportion of total length to total
width and of all the larger and smaller proportions throughout the building, instead
of in terms of simple 1:2, like the Zeus Temple at Olympia. Athens has its own mountain of
beautiful marble, Mount Pentele, and the Parthenon, Propylaia, Nike Temple, and
Erechtheion all are built entirely of marble (except for some decorative use of
Eleusinian gray limestone on the Propylaia and Erechtheion). Greek temples were built colonnades
first, then cella and roof, finally the pedimental sculptures, which aren't
structural. The building payment
records are partially preserved, and we know that the metopes were complete by
442 B.C.; the temple was dedicated in 438 B.C., which means that Pheidias's chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Athena in the main
cella, 40' tall, was finished by then--and, of course, the roof over it; [MG
156] shows an old reconstruction model; there is a better one now in the
Canadian Royal Ontario Museum. The
reconstruction of the statue is based on reduced-scale freehand copies and
descriptions, since it was impossible to make pointed copies of a work such as this. Payment records for the pediment sculptures
continue from 438 to 432 B.C.; then the Parthenon, at least, was complete and
then, too, the war with Sparta and her allies, the Peloponnesian War,
began. The architect Mnesikles designed the new gateway to
the Acropolis, the Propylaia,
replacing the sixth-century Archaic Propylaia, and construction began in 437
B.C. This building was not
finished when war broke out; it was never to be finished, although its
appearance was entirely satisfactory, at least in the eyes of later architects;
see [G 39] for its western aspect, a drawing showing what the Acropolis would
have looked like as you approached the Propylaia, with the huge Parthenon on
the highest part of the rock towering over everything else. The inner, east façade of the Propylaia
stood on higher ground than the outer, west façade; in the passageway, to reach
the higher roof of the inner part, Mnesikles availed himself again of the
slenderer Ionic column. In the
Parthenon and Propylaia the seminal idea of using a second, fancier or more
delicate, Order for the interior of a building is first
established. It is possible that
Athens' interest in the architectural Order of the eastern Greeks was connected
with their being her allies, states that paid tribute to a virtual Athenian
empire, monies in return for the protection of the Athenian navy, lest the
Persians return. Owing to a clause
that allowed these funds to be used to restore sanctuaries destroyed by the
Persians, they also helped to pay for these very expensive buildings. The Life of Perikles in Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (the title in John Dryden's
translation from the original Greek) is not unbiased or wholly trustworthy, but
you will find it enlightening and interesting reading; it gives a vivid idea of
the intellectual and artistic life of Periklean Athens. The Nike temple, built in the 420's (its parapet, visible in [G 39],
added about 410), and the Erechtheion,
begun with the temporary Peace of Nikias in 421, interrupted by the debacle of
the Syracusan expedition in 415, and completed between 409 and 406, both are
entirely in the Ionic Order. In
fact, they establish the Athenian version of the Ionic Order which differs from
that of the Greek east, in Ionia itself, in some details. [G 70], your Print showing the three
Greek Orders, actually shows the Ionic of the Athenian Erechtheion, not the
Ionic of Ionia. The name of the
architect of the Nike Temple and the Erechtheion is not given in the literary
sources, but arguably they might have been designed by Kallikrates; a good case
has been made for that attribution.
Both [G 39] and the plans drawn to scale on [G 69] show how small and
delicate the Nike Temple and the Erechtheion are in comparison with the
Parthenon, and [G 69] shows how much more elaborate the plan of the Parthenon
is than that of the Zeus Temple at Olympia.
[MG 156] [G 44] [G 41] It is not to its size, cost, and elaborateness, however,
that the Parthenon and its
architect, Iktinos, and its master
sculptor, Pheidias, owe their great
fame, although admittedly the refinements of design that Iktinos required were
highly labor-intensive and demanded master builders, while Pheidias evidently
had first-class marble sculptors, some of them from the Islands, working under
his supervision, not ordinary journeyman carvers. In fact, no two blocks in the Parthenon are interchangeable;
the curvatures (exaggerated to be more visible in [G 44]), for example,
extended through the whole building.
They are so subtle that you don't notice them unless you know they are
there, or measure to be sure, but they are the reason that the temple seems
like living stone, elastic and light.
Yet they are not like the obvious swelling of the column shaft on the
old "Basilica" at Paestum, and do not deprive the building of its appropriate
feeling of stability. When you
climb up the Acropolis, you see the west face of the temple [G 41]; the
east side of the rock is too steep for an ascent, so to approach the front of
the temple, enter the main cella, and see the Parthenos statue by Pheidias, you
walked along the north flank and came around to the east. As [G 44] shows, the column shafts now
are constructed of drums, but in the general view you do not see the joints, so
perfect is the dry-stone joining, in spite of earthquakes and wars and the
abuse it has suffered in being used for subsequent religions.
[A 161]
It is mostly as a consequence of its use as a church, of the Virgin Mary
instead of the Virgin Athena, in the Greek Middle Ages (Byzantine Athens) that
only the metope sculpture on the south flank of the temple is well
preserved. This was because the
south side was walled off, so these particular pagan subjects were of no
concern to the church. As you can
see in the general view, the relief sculptures on almost all the rest were
deliberately chiseled off. With
mixed motives, but partly fearing that the Turks, whose religion abhorred
images, would consign even more marble sculptures to the lime kilns (Greece
would shortly be free, but was still under Turkish rule), Lord Elgin had the
south metopes and much of the frieze and pedimental sculptures transported to
the British Museum, then a new institution. There they remain, a bone of contention ever since Greek
Independence was attained. The
south metopes show Greeks fighting with centaurs, not the Wedding of Perithoos
but single combats, almost emblematic of the struggle between humanity and
bestiality, which the Greeks were fully aware was a battle fought within
us. Each is an original
composition, and it is possible to sort out several different sculptors' hands
among the surviving metopes, though they are also sufficiently alike in scale
and spirit to work together rhythmically as part of the same architectural
decoration. We are told that the
sculptor Pheidias, who was a personal friend of Perikles, was the overseer of
the entire Acropolis project, and unquestionably there is a very great artistic
mind and will behind all this work, however little of it (if any
while he was mainly concerned with the Parthenos statue) he may actually have
executed. Comparing these metopes
with those from Olympia with the Labors of Herakles a generation earlier, we
see not only higher relief and livelier and more varied compositions but a wholly
new attitude. It is very difficult
to describe it adequately, but the Parthenon sculpture makes us feel very
strongly that it is really "about" much more than the subjects that
it so wonderfully represents, that it is about what it means to be human, and
we are astonished that carved stone has been able to impress itself so strongly
on the imaginations of generations of different people in this way,
irrespective of their own ethnic traditions. Asian visitors to Athens or to the British Museum perceive
it just as Westerners do, and just as we appreciate Asian classic art, once we
study it. H. W. Janson in his History of Art says of the
pedimental sculptures, "There is neither violence nor pathos in them,
indeed no specific action of any kind, only a
deeply felt poetry of being".
In this context, such abstract-seeming language is not "mere
words"; he is talking about transcending naturalism as such, making poiesis out of mimesis, as we said above in discussing the Bologna-Dresden Athena
(the word "poetry" comes from Greek poiesis). When the
Romans called this art "Classic", the Latin word only meant that it
was top-notch, but since the late 18th or 19th century in the art historical
and critical literature pertaining to this art and High Renaissance art, it has
come to connote the qualities that we have been trying to describe. The metopes are already Classical in
this fuller sense, but it applies a fortiori to the great Panathenaic frieze
around the whole cella and to the pedimental sculptures.
[A 135] [A 145] [A 159] [A 157] The west frieze can be seen in its relation to the exterior order in [A
135], where we get a good idea of the back wall of the pediment with its floor
formed by the horizontal geison above
the frieze (notice the mutules with
18 guttae on the underside of the geison and the little regulae, one under each triglyph, each with only six guttae). Notice that the architrave
is three blocks deep on a temple of this size. Compare the capitals with those of the Temple of Aphaia at
Aegina; here the echinus is
smaller. The west frieze runs
across the prostyle west porch; notice that, although it is a feature borrowed
from the Ionic Order, it has a taenia
and regulae and guttae below it to go with the Doric columns supporting it; this
kind of formal logic is essential to Greek architecture. [A 145] shows one of the slabs of the
west frieze; the cavalcade begins at the southwest corner of the continuous
frieze and extends most of the length of the north and south friezes also. The great artist responsible for its
overall design, possibly Pheidias himself, was intent on giving it both
decorative unity, as architectural sculpture, and variety and interest; in some
places, as here, the horsemen barely overlap, in others, they are bunched up,
even four abreast; it is wonderful that we never feel that they are flat or
crowded but believe what the sculptor intends, that one horseman could rush
past the other that he overlaps.
There is no indicator for measured space; they are carved so that the
figures themselves create the sense of air and space. It is easy to say how the sculptors carving the frieze did
this; they varied the amount and the angle of undercutting to create sharp or
soft shadows, not according to any formula or system but with visual intuition
based on practiced skill. It is most
extremely difficult to try to emulate it.
For variety, the riders (representing the youth of Athens who could
afford to keep horses) are wrapped in cloaks or half draped or nearly nude, and
with or without flying capes; this is not a record of one year's cavalcade in
the Panathenaic Festival but a representation of the essence of the Panathenaic
procession. (That the riders have
no saddles or stirrups, on the other hand, is due to their not having been introduced
yet, but the reins either were painted or to be imagined; we do not know
exactly how color was used in the frieze, beyond the usual practice of making
the background dark and picking out a few details in color). As the procession approaches the east
end of the cella in the north and
south friezes, we have dignitaries on foot and youths carrying hydrias [see
MA 74] full of water. Most
people's first impulse is to admire the realism of the bodies in 3/4 view with
their natural-looking draperies and convincing handling of the heavy water
jars; it is convincing,
especially since each boy handles his hydria slightly differently (how
radically different from the rows of identical bodyguards at Persepolis!). It is not how real boys, in real
mantles, carrying real burdens would look. Classical art has such mastery of its means that the
sculptor can (and does) make formal beauty of the contours (which he
simplifies), and of the shapes of space between figures and of the hollows and
ridges and rumpled effects in their drapery, without our noticing, unless we
have trained ourselves to notice, what he has done. It is the "art which conceals art". From the varied hand and arm positions
and the varied drapery arrangements and the relations of the figures to each
other the sculptor makes a quiet but lively rhythm. (Note that this slab, and some others, of the north frieze
have remained in Athens and are in the Acropolis Museum; there are also some
slabs in the Louvre in Paris). [A
157] is one slab from the east frieze,
also in the Acropolis Museum, one of the very loveliest pieces of Parthenon
sculpture. An assembly of principal Greek gods is represented in
the east frieze over the main prostyle porch of the temple. They are not separated from the mortal
Athenians, but they are represented relating only to one another, and they are
seated; seated they occupy the full height of the frieze block, and they would
be taller than the mortals if they should stand. You could say that they are present substantially but not
physically, or that their presence is on a different plane of reality from that
of the Athenians celebrating Athena's festival (yet we noticed that the
procession, too, is an essential, not an anecdotal representation). This is truly an astonishing kind of
religious art; it certainly does not instruct the uninformed in the way that
Christian church art often does.
It does not represent the gods according to their myths as Archaic art
had done. The head and shoulders
of Artemis are particularly
beautiful; notice the new way of rendering the crinkly linen of the chiton, the
grooves making a rich texture of light and dark lines.
[G 42]
We have been looking at the east frieze; as this view of the east front of the Parthenon shows, the
front of the temple is much less well preserved than the rear; on the spot, we
can only see where the six prostyle
columns of the east porch stood.
The cella had been gutted long before, but some of the worst damage
occurred in 1687, when the Acropolis was under siege. The Turks had their gunpowder magazine in the cella of the
Parthenon, and the temple was blown up when a Venetian cannonball hit it. The Greek Archaeological Service cares
devotedly and skillfully for the temples on the Acropolis; since World War II,
they have re-erected the columns on the north side that had lain in rows of
(chipped) drums on the ground since they were blown out in 1687. The east front is, however, well enough
preserved that we get a good sense of the grace and majesty of the temple front
as one stands in front of it, and in the corners, where part of the raking geison is preserved (with some of the sima, rain gutter, and a lion's head water spout at the north, or
right-hand, corner), casts of the reclining god and the horses (heads)
of the chariots of the Dawn and the (setting) Sun have been placed to show how
they fit in the pediment and how they look when viewed from the ground; these
originals are in the British Museum.
[MA 5]
Even before the explosion of 1687 the centers of the pediments were
badly damaged, that of the east pediment lost. Fortunately, in 1674 a Frenchman, Jacques Carrey, who was no
great artist but had enough skill to make careful, well proportioned sketches,
visited Athens and made drawings of both pediments. Only one figure, the reclining nude god, today still has a
head; in 1674, there were at least eleven more, and the "Laborde
Head" in the Louvre is pretty surely one of the goddesses, but we have no
way of determining which one.
Carrey could not have guessed when he made them how important to us his
drawings would be.
[A 136] [A 137] The east pediment
represented the Birth of Athena with
the other gods in attendance, the chariot of the Dawn rising in the south
corner, the Sun's setting in the north corner; this is a new device for these
tight corners, in which we are asked to imagine the horses disappearing behind
the floor of the pediment, doubtless inspired by new illusionistic devices in
Classical painting. The nicknames,
"Fates" and "Theseus", that 19th-century Guidebooks gave
these sculptures are not to be
perpetuated. The three females are
goddesses, and the young male god is
either Dionysos or Herakles; the rock that supports his elbow is covered with an
animal pelt as well as a cloth drape, and the animal is a large cat: Dionysos's
panther or else Herakles' Nemean Lion skin. Herakles was a Hero, not a god, but he had an apotheosis when he died: he became as
a god and dwelt among them. Either
one of them would have been shown bearded in the Archaic period, and Dionysos
would have been clothed, but in the Classical period the very idea of the gods
changes. The Artemis in the east
frieze is certainly not the image of a killer of Aktaion or a slayer of
Niobids. In these pedimental
sculptures more than in any others we see what Classical art is intent on and
does. Mastery of the organic
structure of the human body and of the behavior of draped cloth in relation to
bodies by now is so perfect as to permit the sculptor to use the properties of
the bodies and of drapery for purely poetic ends. He convinces the casual viewer that they look
"perfectly natural", but the massive limbs and torsos of these three
goddesses are larger and simpler than natural bodies, the easy seeming pose,
with one goddess reclining in another's lap, would be awkward and unendurably
uncomfortable in nature, and in the "realistic" drapery the sculptor
has taken his profound and detailed knowledge of all the kinds of lines and
folds and pockets that cloth over bodies can make, and he has made a great
abstract formal art out of it, using hollows in bunched folds for interesting
shadows, using stretched cloth to emphasize the thrusts and basic forms of the
limbs, which in all three goddesses together make a rhythmic composition. And this great abstract formal art
makes the sculptured figures become somehow the essence of divinity, and of
humanity ideally considered. The
Dionysos/Herakles is more than a representation of one particular god with a
particular cult and myths. As
mentioned above, even so skillful a writer as H. W. Janson could say nothing
more concrete about this figure than "deeply felt poetry of
being". Notice, too,
considering it as a human nude, that it is not, certainly, devoid of sex, like
an angel, but its nudity and its beauty transcend rather than deny all the everyday
urges. This is indeed divine
nudity, not a state of undress.
The sculptor's mastery of anatomy permits him to lengthen the lower
torso to give the figure a longer curve and a greater sense of ease without in
any way distorting it.
[MA 76]
In the Lykaon Painter's Boston pelike (see [MA 74]), the University
Prints once again selects, to exemplify Classical red figure, a vase with a
picture probably derived from a panel or mural painting of this period painted
in full color and with some indication of terrain. Although such vase-paintings are not so attractive,
considered as vase decoration, as the compositions made up by the vase-painters
themselves with the whole shape of the vase in mind, it is most valuable in
showing how lost Classical painting, like the surviving sculpture, embodied the
new ethos in art, trying to suggest
what it is like to be a mere shade (Elpenor, at left) temporarily revitalized
by the hot blood of the two rams that Odysseus has sacrificed to call him up,
and what it means to Odysseus actually to speak with him; for this is a Nékyia, a calling up of the souls of the
dead (Odyssey, Book XI), and Hermes
as guide of souls supports Odysseus in this endeavor. Fifth-century Athenians, of course, did not think that you
could really call up the souls of the dead, but this is an illustration of
Homer's Odyssey, which the Classical
Greeks valued somewhat as we do the Hebrew Bible (the "Old
Testament"--not "old" to Jews!). The figures compare closely with the Parthenon frieze; the
vase was made about the time when the Parthenon was completed.
[A 113] [A 454] The Naples copy of the Doryphoros (Spearbearer) was found in Pompeii; we have a couple of dozen copies
of the body and more of the head; the most recently surfaced was acquired by Minneapolis. Because the Spearbearer is over
lifesize, it has been thought to represent the hero Achilles, rather than a
simple mortal. A slide of a bronze
cast, made with molds from the Naples copy, shows that the material does
matter, also how the tree-trunk prop spoils the walking rhythm. Polykleitos
was the only sculptor of this generation who was as famous as Pheidias, though
he was an Argive (of Argos) rather
than an Athenian. The Spearbearer
is contemporary with the design and building of the Parthenon, and Polykleitos
also wrote a treatise on the proportions of an ideal body, exemplified by this
statue, which thus got the nickname, kanon (=rule, Latin regula), just as Iktinos wrote a
treatise on the Parthenon. Here,
likewise, the proportions are based on interrelated
ratios, rather than modules, or a grid, such as the Egyptians used. We no longer possess the treatise, only
brief quotes from it, but Polykleitos seems to have measured a number of the
best proportioned athletes, collated and compared the measurements, and sought
from these data the ratios that should account for the effect of harmonious
beauty in living bodies that approximated to the perfect relationships. The unquestioned assumption that bodies
incorporating interrelated ratios will be most beautiful and may serve as the
basis of harmonious art forms is highly significant; it is fairly described as
a Pythagorean kind of mind-set.
What is interesting is finding artists involved in it; the assumption
that mathematics and art must have a common
basis is far from universal.
The middle joint of the longest finger : length of hand :: length of
hand : forearm--and so forth through the entire body. But there is more than proportions to consider in the
Spearbearer. He does not stand
like the "Kassel Apollo" and Riace Warrior A, with the free leg
forward. With the free leg behind
and the weight thrown forward onto the standing leg, the pose is more like
walking; it is as if the figure were about to bring the free leg forward and
take a step; it gives motive to contrapposto. Like the Parthenon pedimental
sculptures, the Spearbearer looks convincingly natural, but in light of
Polykleitos's procedure in determining his proportions we are not surprised to
observe that the sculptor has fortified the torso (Sir Kenneth Clark called
this the "classical thorax", because it is an abstraction derived
from real pectoral and abdominal musculature). Later, Polykleitos was famous for this blocky torso, which
gives solidity to the midsection of the statue. Like the Parthenon pedimental sculptures, again, the
Spearbearer does not express any particular idea or feeling; a photo of a copy
of the head alone, however, suggests that Polykleitos's statue embodied profound
commitment to an ideal of young manhood.
If it is Achilles, reading the first book of the Iliad will show that it was a complex ideal; certainly, there is
nothing vapid about the Spearbearer.
[MA 67]
One group of classical statuary that reached Rome without being shipwrecked en route represented the story of
the Niobids, as on the Niobid
Krater, but these date from the time of the Parthenon frieze or pediments. At least three Niobids, one in Rome [MA
67] and two in Copenhagen, belong to this group, which probably was a pedimental
group and possibly should be
associated with another pedimental group which was re-used in the pediment of a
Roman temple in the reign of Augustus.
We do not know where any of these sculptures came from, but it has been
argued rather persuasively that the style of carving is of the island of Paros,
an important school of marble sculpture, since Paros had perhaps the very
finest marble. Our Dying Niobid is a daughter in early
adolescence, falling to her knees as she tries to remove an arrow from her
back; her drapery falls off, giving the sculptor the opportunity to show her
still somewhat childish body and the poignancy of her unmerited painful
death. It is a masterpiece by an
unknown sculptor. The arrangement
of her hair and the "pool" of fallen drapery (which has the practical
advantage of strengthening the base of the sculpture) perhaps recommend dating
her in the 430's. In a pediment,
Apollo and Artemis, a little larger than mortals, would stand in the center,
shooting left and right; Niobids, smaller and taller, running, stumbling,
falling, fallen, and dead provide an ideal array for filling the low triangle
of a pediment. The Dying Niobid is
an reminder that, although in the third quarter of the fifth century Athens
attracted artists from all over the non-Dorian (not allied with Sparta) Greek
world, very important work was being done elsewhere, too--not necessarily on
Paros, even if the style is Parian,
for Parian sculptors travelled.
[A 362]
One Parian sculptor who travelled was Agorakritos, who is named as an associate and favorite pupil of
Pheidias; it may have been Agorakritos who carved the group of Poseidon,
Apollo, and Artemis on the east frieze of the Parthenon [A 157]. One of the most beautiful grave stelai
in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens is unmistakably closely related
to those gods on the east frieze, only just perceptibly later, so if the east
frieze is Agorakritan, so is the stele, his or from his workshop. Once the Parthenon was finished, there
were underemployed sculptors with unprecedented levels of skill and taste
available in Athens. The stele with the deceased youth holding up a
bird in a cage just above a cat (his pet) perched on a stele (his?) with a
small boy (brother or child slave?) disconsolately leaning against it far exceeds
the standard of quality of even the best grave stelai; it is to be dated ca.
430 B.C. The extremely refined
carving of the drapery and the restrained expression of grief and loss (of a
youth still concerned with pet animals, like the boys on the Late Archaic
Cat-and-Dog and Athletics statue base that we compared with Euphronios) are
remarkable. It reminds us once
again that the Greek concept of death was not a matter of rewards and
punishments or a life like this in the beyond; their monuments commemorate and
try to deal with the senselessness of a fine boy's dying when he had only begun
to live.
[G 50] [G 51] Mnesikles'
wonderful design for the Propylaia
was too complex, with several rooms and with the two façades at different
levels, for refinements involving inward tilting and curvature, but its Doric
Order otherwise is comparable with that of the Parthenon (and with the smaller
temple, the Hephaisteion, on the hill overlooking the Agora of Athens). It also had to have an extra wide
intercolumniation for the passage through the center; ruts worn in the rock
going through the passage prove that chariots were driven through the Propylaia
up onto the Acropolis, presumably in the Greek period. The lower gate that we see when we
climb up to the Propylaia today is part of the Late Roman fortification
(compare [G 39]), and the small amphiprostyle
Ionic temple on the southwest bastion (never forget that the Acropolis is a
citadel, which back in the Mycenaean age resembled Tiryns and Mycenae) is the Temple of Nike. The Propylaia itself is better
appreciated today looking back at its east façade after we have reached
the top of the Acropolis [G 51].
The questions associated with its unfinished parts need to be studied in
the upper-division course in Greek art.
[G 52]
The Athenians had built purely
in the Ionic Order before the Temple of
Athena Nike (a stoa at Delphi and
another small temple down by the Ilissos River), besides using Ionic columns in
the Parthenon's west cella and in the passage of the Propylaia, but this is the
first Athenian Ionic temple in this course. Its plan is given on [G 69], a cella amphiprostyle fore and aft.
The undercut steps of the stereobate,
the lathe-turned column bases (and notice that the wall has a molding to
match), the column shafts with deeper flutings separated by fillets, the volute
capitals, of course, and the continuous frieze distinguish Ionic. The sculptures of the frieze have
suffered; the frieze on so small a temple is only about fourteen inches
tall. It had geisons and pediments and a roof, of course, but they are lost, and
the temple might be wholly lost but its blocks were built into the Late Roman
defensive wall hastily thrown up against the Germanic barbarians in the third
century A.D. A hundred years ago,
piece by piece, the Nike Temple was recovered from that fortification and
reconstructed on its own foundations, as you see. It is very gracefully proportioned and beautifully made,
even for Ionic; it dates from the 420's when we begin to see another of those
stylistic shifts in Athenian art, to a more delicate, less exalted style. It has been called "Post-Pheidian
Mannerism", it has been called "feminine", but let us merely
note that Athenian art in the last quarter of the fifth century, after the death
of Perikles, throughout the second part of the Peloponnesian War does differ from Periklean art and
shifts toward gracefulness.
[G 46] [G 45] [G 48] [G 49] [G 47] [A 166] Anyone visiting the Acropolis who feels
overpowered by the Parthenon (as indeed we ought) may turn left (standing with
one's back to the Propylaia) and regard a unique and lovely temple, the Erechtheion. From this vantage point, we see its back side, the
only side without a porch of its own, where the architect, furthermore, had the
most difficult task in harmonizing the differing levels and scales of the north
and south porches (the small porch with caryatides,
maidens, is the south porch), but it is here that we can best grasp what the
architect has done. So far as
housing cults was concerned, the Erechtheion (named for Erechtheus, the
legendary king of Bronze Age Athens) would seem to have replaced the Old Athena
Temple, which also had several cellas for several cults, but the new temple was
built to the north, farther from the Parthenon, where the architect had to deal
with the Acropolis rock's sloping away; either he had to do extensive
extra-solid terracing under the foundations or find a creative solution to deal
with the slope and multiple cellas at the same time. Consider how very conservative temple design is, and you
will appreciate the audacious originality of his solution; there never had been
and there never would be another Greek temple like this one. The Erechtheion has just been taken
apart and reassembled (in the 1980's), the five caryatides that remain in Athens (Lord Elgin took one to the
British Museum [A 166]) have been removed to the Acropolis Museum and replaced
with very good casts, to save them from automobile exhaust, and the east façade
once again is complete with six columns.
Like the Nike Temple, the Erechtheion is pure Athenian Ionic (notice,
for example, the wall base moldings that go with the lathe-turned column
bases); the uses of maidens for columns is a standard option in Ionic, as we
already saw in the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi. The Ionic palmette-and-lotus moldings at the top of the
cella wall are most exquisitely carved.
The frieze was made in an unusual way; instead of painting a dark blue
background to set off the white marble reliefs, they brought grey limestone
from Eleusis, twelve miles away, and made half-round white marble figures which
were attached to the blue-grey frieze blocks with bronze pins, thus obtaining a
dark background that could never fade or flake. You can see the pin holes on the frieze blocks, and in the
museum a number of the half-round figures are exhibited pinned to new blocks of
Eleusis limestone. The famous north porch is a full storey lower than
the east façade, as you can see in [G 45]; here you see the Athenian Ionic
columns that appear in most textbook diagrams. They are exceptionally elaborate, with guilloches on the upper torus
of the Ionic bases and palmettes (similar to those at the top of the cella
wall) for a necking around the top of each column shaft. If you look up into the porch, you can
see how the coffered ceiling is made (these are only rarely preserved, so we
almost forget that Greek temples even had
ceilings!). The North Door [G 49] is probably the most
influential door design in western architecture, especially after accurate
architects' drawings of it were published in the 18th century, but before then
there were doors designed resembling it owing to Roman architects' having used
it and their doors having been
published in drawings by Renaissance architects. It is all over Washington, D.C. The Erechtheion is entirely gutted, its interior
arrangements even uncertain; the Turkish Pasha built his harem into it. Although today all six of the caryatides outdoors on the south porch are casts (subtly colored
to blend with the ancient marble), we no longer have the ugly poles in between
them. The old cast of the one in
the British Museum (second from left in front) did not match so well. Since these statues have to look
capable of doing the work of a column, they retain the massive proportions of
the three goddesses from the east pediment of the Parthenon, but details of
their drapery and the round faces betray their date, after 415 B.C. They need to be closely similar for
reasons of architectural design, but they are not replicas; the sculptor worked
out the drapery over the breast and falling over the bent leg differently on
each. For his villa at Tivoli, the
emperor Hadrian in the second century A.D. had copies of the caryatides of the Erechtheion made to
stand along the edge of a long pool in its landscape architecture, but they
were designed to bear an entablature and look incomplete standing by
themselves.
[A 170]
The last fifth-century component of the Acropolis at Athens was the parapet around the Nike temple that we have already noticed in the reconstructed view
[G 39]. A great deal survives, on
view in the Acropolis Museum, but one slab is especially famous, by one of the
three best sculptors who worked on the parapet. It shows Nike, winged, adjusting her sandal (whether
she is fastening or unfastening it, and whether the gesture has special
iconographic significance, is difficult to decide). This relief is one of the finest examples of the fashion of
doing "wet drapery" at the end of the fifth century, although it had
begun a bit earlier. Like the
changes in kouroi in the Archaic
period, this fashion has at once a natural and a stylistic component. Its natural cause was the introduction
of silk culture (ultimately, all the way from China); fine silk, dampened by
perspiration and blown against the body, is more clinging than linen. Its stylistic component was as part of
the trend to a graceful, delicate, and sensuous style in the last quarter of
the century. It is a brilliant
development. The sculptor has all
the advantages of nudity in using the forms of the body as his composition and
all the advantages of drapery in providing rhythmic lines and shaded hollows
and interesting textures, and he has them together Compare her with the Parthenon frieze and pediments; they already have consummate virtuosity,
but the Nike adjusting her sandal some thirty years later uses virtuosity in a
different, daintier way, which one might characterize as lyrical.
[A 108]
The Louvre "Genetrix"
is one of many copies, full scale and statuettes (some of the statuettes of
terracotta), of one of the most popular images of Aphrodite in antiquity.
The original surely dated from the very end of the fifth century, and it
may be the type that the Romans used for the cult image of their Venus
Genetrix. The "wet
drapery" clings so closely that a person who worried about nudity might
protest, why bother? Yet the
purpose of its clinging is the same as in the Nike Parapet relief: the rather
Polykleitan pose and proportions and rhythm are clearly shown in the limbs and
torso, while the lines of the drapery across her body and thighs and the long
plumb lines of the unbroken folds framing her legs impart both stability and
grace to the composition. Only in
the fourth century will the Greeks for the first time represent Aphrodite
completely nude; it is funny how many people have a nude Aphrodite as their
stereotype of Greek art, and we have yet to see one. The Louvre statue has the whole right arm (lifting her
drapery) and the left forearm restored; their style is weak and
affected, but the pose and her holding an apple are correct, because several of
the small statuettes preserve these.
As a freestanding statue of a goddess, the "Venus Genetrix" is
not so slender and delicate; indeed, as you stand in the Louvre and look up
into her face, she seems veritably saucy-faced and wholesome; in this statue,
the sense of grace and lyrical feeling comes from the wonderful lines of the
drapery, so we hardly notice that the body is actually massive.
The Louvre "Genetrix" has recently been beautifully studied and cleaned; the Print is from a very old photograph, but even my photo taken to show her "saucy" face is a quarter century old:
Note: The Greek Orders ought not to be shown only as columns, but this old drawing is good so far as it goes:
And the plans of the classical temples is genuinely useful, being pretty much to scale:
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