The Parthenon is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis,Greece,that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of classical Greek art,an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece,democracy,and Western civilization.
Phidias or Pheidias was an Ancient Greek sculptor,painter,and architect,active in the 5th century BC. His Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Phidias also designed the statues of the goddess Athena on the Athenian Acropolis,namely the Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon,and the Athena Promachos,a colossal bronze which stood between it and the Propylaea,a monumental gateway that served as the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens. Phidias was the son of Charmides of Athens. The ancients believed that his masters were Hegias and Ageladas.
The Elgin Marbles are a collection of Ancient Greek sculptures from the Parthenon and other structures from the Acropolis of Athens,removed from Ottoman Greece and shipped to Britain by agents of Thomas Bruce,7th Earl of Elgin,and now held in the British Museum in London. The majority of the sculptures were created in the 5th century BC under the direction of sculptor and architect Phidias.
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons,also called the Laocoön Group,has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and put on public display in the Vatican Museums,where it remains today. The statue is very likely the same one that was praised in the highest terms by Pliny the Elder,the main Roman writer on art,who attributed it to Greek sculptors but did not say when it was created. The figures in the statue are nearly life-sized,with the entire group measuring just over 2 m in height. The sculpture depicts the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents.
The Riace bronzes,also called the Riace Warriors,are two full-size Greek bronze statues of naked bearded warriors,cast about 460–450 BC that were found in the sea in 1972 near Riace,Calabria,in southern Italy. The bronzes are now in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in the nearby city of Reggio Calabria. They are two of the few surviving full-size ancient Greek bronzes,and as such demonstrate the technical craftsmanship and artistic features that were achieved at this time.
The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as,with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery,almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone:the Archaic,Classical (480–323) and Hellenistic. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
The Aphrodite of Knidos was an Ancient Greek sculpture of the goddess Aphrodite created by Praxiteles of Athens around the 4th century BC. It was one of the first life-sized representations of the nude female form in Greek history,displaying an alternative idea to male heroic nudity. Praxiteles' Aphrodite was shown nude,reaching for a bath towel while covering her pubis,which,in turn leaves her breasts exposed. Up until this point,Greek sculpture had been dominated by male nude figures. The original Greek sculpture is no longer in existence;however,many Roman copies survive of this influential work of art. Variants of the Venus Pudica are the Venus de' Medici and the Capitoline Venus.
The Athena Promachos was a colossal bronze statue of Athena sculpted by Pheidias,which stood between the Propylaea and the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. Athena was the tutelary deity of Athens and the goddess of wisdom and warriors. Pheidias also sculpted two other figures of Athena on the Acropolis,the huge gold and ivory ("chryselephantine") cult image of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon and the Lemnian Athena.
Alan John Bayard Wace was an English archaeologist,who served as director of the British School at Athens (BSA) between 1914 and 1923. He excavated widely in Thessaly,Laconia and Egypt and at the Bronze Age site of Mycenae in Greece. He was also an authority on Greek textiles and a prolific collector of Greek embroidery.
Bernard Ashmole was a British archaeologist and art historian,who specialized in ancient Greek sculpture. He held a number of professorships during his lifetime;Yates Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of London from 1929 to 1948,Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at University of Oxford from 1956 to 1961,and Greek Art and Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen from 1961 to 1963. He was also Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum from 1939 to 1956.
Edward Thomas Allington was a British artist and sculptor,best known for his part in the 1980s New British Sculpture movement.
Etruscan art was produced by the Etruscan civilization in central Italy between the 10th and 1st centuries BC. From around 750 BC it was heavily influenced by Greek art,which was imported by the Etruscans,but always retained distinct characteristics. Particularly strong in this tradition were figurative sculpture in terracotta,wall-painting and metalworking especially in bronze. Jewellery and engraved gems of high quality were produced.
Joan Breton Connelly is an American classical archaeologist and Professor of Classics and Art History at New York University. She is Director of the Yeronisos Island Excavations and Field School in Cyprus. Connelly was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1996. She received the Archaeological Institute of America Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2007 and held the Lillian Vernon Chair for Teaching Excellence at New York University from 2002 to 2004. She is an Honorary Citizen of the Municipality of Peyia,Republic of Cyprus.
Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the un-realist use of nudity in classical sculpture to show figures who may be heroes,deities,or semi-divine beings. This convention began in Archaic and Classical Greece and continued in Hellenistic and Roman sculpture. The existence or place of the convention is the subject of scholarly argument.
The Athenian Treasury at Delphi was constructed by the Athenians to house dedications and votive offerings made by their city and citizens to the sanctuary of Apollo. The entire treasury including its sculptural decoration is built of Parian marble. The date of construction is disputed,and scholarly opinions range from 510 to 480 BCE. It is located directly below the Temple of Apollo along the Sacred Way for all visitors to view the Athenian treasury on the way up to the sanctuary.
John Richard "Jaś" Elsner,is a British art historian and classicist,who is Professor of Late Antique Art in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford,Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art at Corpus Christi College,Oxford,and Visiting Professor of Art History at the University of Chicago. He is mainly known for his work on Roman art,including Late Antiquity and Byzantine art,as well as the historiography of art history,and is a prolific writer on these and other topics. Elsner has been described as "one of the most well-known figures in the field of ancient art history,respected for his notable erudition,extensive range of interests and expertise,his continuing productivity,and above all,for the originality of his mind",and by Shadi Bartsch,a colleague at Chicago,as "the predominant contemporary scholar of the relationship between classical art and ancient subjectivity".
The Bronze Head from Ife,or Ife Head,is one of eighteen copper alloy sculptures that were unearthed in 1938 at Ife in Nigeria,the religious and former royal centre of the Yoruba people. It is believed to represent a king. It was probably made in the fourteenth-fifteenth century C.E. The realism and sophisticated craftsmanship of the objects challenged the offensive and patronising Western conceptions of African art. The naturalistic features of the Ife heads are unique and the stylistic similarities of these works "suggest that they were made by an individual artist or in a single workshop."
The Sounion Kouros is an early archaic Greek statue of a naked young man or kouros carved in marble from the island of Naxos around 600 BCE. It is one of the earliest examples that scholars have of the kouros-type which functioned as votive offerings to gods or demi-gods,and were dedicated to heroes. Found near the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion,this kouros was found badly damaged and heavily weathered. It was restored to its original height of 3.05 meters (10.0 ft) returning it to its larger than life size. It is now held by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Ancient Greek art stands out among that of other ancient cultures for its development of naturalistic but idealized depictions of the human body,in which largely nude male figures were generally the focus of innovation. The rate of stylistic development between about 750 and 300 BC was remarkable by ancient standards,and in surviving works is best seen in sculpture. There were important innovations in painting,which have to be essentially reconstructed due to the lack of original survivals of quality,other than the distinct field of painted pottery.
Olga Palagia is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and is a leading expert on ancient Greek sculpture. She is known in particular for her work on sculpture in ancient Athens and has edited a number of key handbooks on Greek sculpture.
