Text 4. Arts: architecture, sculpture

Assignment. Read and translate the text. Compare it with texts 1, 2 and explain the difference in the number of special terms used in the texts.

Walk around any capital city in Europe, America or Australasia and the influence of ancient Greek art and architecture is plain to see. It’s there in the civic buildings, in the monumental public sculptures, in the plan of the city streets themselves. The product of a truly extraordinary civilisation, the humanism and purity of form of Greek art has inspired artists and architects throughout history.

Ironically, the influence of Greek art has spread throughout the world due to a reality that many travellers (and indeed the Greeks themselves) find unpalatable. This is the fact that many of the greatest works of ancient Greek art haven’t had a home in Greece itself for hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years. From the Parthenon frieze taken by Lord Elgin and now displayed in the British Museum to the famous Nike (Winged Victory of Samothrace) in Paris’ Louvre museum, the work of the Greek masters is held in the collections of the great museums of the world. Many of the great ancient Greek buildings, too, are found in countries other than Greece as they date from the time of the expansive ancient Greek world, which encompassed parts or all of countries such as Italy, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Libya.

Travellers to Greece itself shouldn’t despair, however. There’s plenty left to see! The buildings, paintings, pots, sculptures and decorative arts of ancient Greece can be found in the country’s streets, cities and islands, as well as in its wonderful museums. They may not be in their original form - it takes a stretch of the imagination to envisage the Hermes of Praxiteles with arms, and the magnificent and austere form of buildings such as the Parthenon overlaid with gaudily coloured paintings and sculptures -but they manage to evoke the early history of the Greek nation more powerfully than a library of history books ever could.

Architecture

Of all the ancient Greek arts, architecture has perhaps had the greatest influence. Greek temples, seen throughout history as symbols of democracy, have been the inspiration for architectural movements such as the Italian Renaissance and the British Greek Revival.

One of the earliest known architectural sites of ancient Greece is the huge palace and residential complex at Knossos on Crete, built in the Minoan period. Its excavation and reconstruction was begun by Sir Arthur Evans in 1900. Visitors today can see the ruins of the second residential palace built on this site (the first was destroyed by an earthquake in 1700 ВС), with its spacious courtyards and grandiose stairways. They can also marvel at the many living rooms, storerooms and bathrooms that give us an idea of day-to-day Minoan life. Similar palaces on Crete, usually of two storeys and built around a large courtyard, have since been excavated at Phaestos, Agia Triada, Malia, Gournia and Zakros.

The Minoan period was followed by the Mycenaean. Instead of the open, labyrinthine palaces of the Minoans, the Mycenaeans used their advanced skills in engineering to build citadels on a compact, orderly plan, fortified by strong walls.

The next great advance in ancient Greek architecture came with the building of the first monumental stone temples in the Archaic and classical periods. From this time, temples were characterised by the famous orders of columns, particularly the Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. These orders were applied to the exteriors of temples, which retained their traditional simple plan of porch and hall but were now regularly surrounded by a colonnade or at least a columnar facade.

Theatre design was also a hallmark of the classical period. The tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the comedies of Aristophanes were written and first performed in the Theatre of Dionysos, built into the slope of Athens’ Acropolis in the 5th century ВС. Other theatres dating from this period can be found throughout Greece.

During the Hellenistic period, private houses and palaces, rather than temples and public buildings, were the main focus of building. The houses at Delos, built around peristyled (surrounded by columns) courtyards and featuring striking mosaics, are perhaps the best examples in existence.

Sculpture

Taking pride of place in the collections of the great museums of the world, the sculptures of ancient Greece have extraordinary visual power and beauty.

The prehistoric art of Greece has been discovered only recently, notably in the Cyclades and on Crete. The pared-down sculptures of this period, with their smooth and flatfish appearance, were carved from the high-quality marble of Paros and Naxos in the middle of the 3rd millennium ВС. Their primitive and powerful forms have inspired many artists since, particularly those of the 20th century.

In the Mycenaean period, small terracottas of women with a circular body or with arms upraised were widely produced. These are known to modern scholars as phi (φ) and psi (ψ) figurines from their resemblance to these letters of the Greek alphabet.

Displaying an obvious debt to Egyptian sculpture, the marble sculptures of the Archaic period are the true precursors of the famed Greek sculpture of the classical period. The artists of this period moved away from the examples of their Oriental predecessors and began to represent figures that were true to nature, rather than flat and stylised. Seeking to master the depiction of both the naked body and of drapery, sculptors of the period focused on figures of naked youths (kouroi), with their set symmetrical stance and enigmatic smiles. At first the classical style was rather severe; later, as sculptors sought ideal proportions for the human figure, it became more animated.

Unfortunately, little original work of the classical period survives. Most freestanding classical sculpture described by ancient writers was made of bronze and survives only as marble copies made by the Romans. Looking at these copies is a bittersweet experience. On the one hand, they are marvellous works of art in their own right. On the other, they make us aware of what an extraordinary body of work has been lost. Fortunately, a few classical bronzes, lost when they were being shipped abroad in antiquity, were recovered from the sea in the 20th century and are now in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens.

The sculpture of the Hellenistic period continued the Greeks’ quest to attain total naturalism in their work. Works of this period were animated, almost theatrical, in contrast to their serene Archaic and classical predecessors. The focus was on realism. Just how successful the artists of this period were is shown in the way later artists, such as Michelangelo, revered them. Michelangelo, in fact, was at the forefront of the rediscovery and appreciation of Greek works in the Renaissance. He is said to have been at the site in Rome in 1506 when the famous Roman copy of the Laocoön group, one of the iconic sculptural works of the Hellenistic period, was unearthed.