The relatively small limestone Cretan sculpture called the Lady of Auxerre, at the Louvre Museum in Paris depicts an archaic Greek goddess of c. 650 - 625 BCE. It is a Kore ("maiden"), perhaps a votary rather than the maiden Goddess Persephone herself, for her right hand touches her solar plexus and her left remains stiffly at her side. It is also possible that the Kore is a depiction of a deceased individual, possibly in a position of prayer.
A peplos is a body-length garment established as typical attire for women in ancient Greece by c. 500 BC, during the late Archaic and Classical period. It was a long, rectangular cloth with the top edge folded down about halfway, so that what was the top of the rectangle was now draped below the waist, and the bottom of the rectangle was at the ankle. One side of the peplos could be left open, or pinned or sewn together, with a type of brooch later called "fibula". In Latin and in a Roman context, it could be called a palla.
Paeonius of Mende, Chalkidiki was a Greek sculptor of the late 5th century BC. He most likely received his early training in Northern Greece and is thought to have later adapted Athenian stylistic elements into his own work, based upon his probable interaction with the Olympia workshop of Phidias. In any case, he was "attic-trained."
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 and Hellenistic. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
The archaic smile was used by sculptors in Archaic Greece, especially in the second quarter of the 6th century BCE, possibly to suggest that their subject was alive and infused with a sense of well-being. One of the most famous examples of the archaic smile is the Kroisos Kouros, and the Peplos Kore is another.
The Perserschutt, as it is called in the German language, is the collection of ancient votive and architectural sculptures that belonged to the Acropolis of Athens before being destroyed during the second Persian invasion of Greece, which took place between 480 and 479 BCE. After defeating the Achaemenid Empire, the Greeks cleared and buried what was left of the Acropolis following the Persian destruction of Athens and subsequently rebuilt the city. A team of French, German, and Greek archaeologists discovered and excavated what would become known as the Perserschutt in the 19th century, and a number of the collection's artifacts are on display at the Acropolis Museum.
The so-called Blond Kouros's Head of the Acropolis is the head of a lost marble statue of a young man of ca 480 BC, in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece. The head and part of the pelvis were found in 1923 northeast of the museum site on the Acropolis of Athens. It belongs to the late archaic or early classical period. The curly hair points more to the Archaic than the Classical period.
Kore is the modern term given to a type of free-standing ancient Greek sculpture of the Archaic period depicting female figures, always of a young age. Kouroi are the youthful male equivalent of kore statues.
The Old Temple of Athena or the Archaios Neos was an archaic Greek limestone Doric temple on the Acropolis of Athens probably built in the second half of the sixth-century BCE, and which housed the xoanon of Athena Polias. The existence of an archaic temple to Athena had long been conjectured from literary references until the discovery of substantial building foundations under the raised terrace between the Erechtheion and Parthenon in 1886 confirmed it. While it is uncontroversial that a temple stood on the central acropolis terrace in the late archaic period and was burnt down in the Persian invasion of 480, nevertheless questions of its nature, name, reconstruction and duration remain unresolved.
The Severe style, or Early Classical style, was the dominant idiom of Greek sculpture in the period ca. 490 to 450 BCE. It marks the breakdown of the canonical forms of archaic art and the transition to the greatly expanded vocabulary and expression of the classical moment of the late 5th century. It was an international style found at many cities in the Hellenic world and in a variety of media including: bronze sculpture in the round, stelae, and architectural relief. The style perhaps realized its greatest fulfillment in the metopes of the Temple of Zeus, Olympia.
Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway was an Italian-American archaeologist and specialist in ancient Greek sculpture.
Gods in Color or Gods in Colour (original title in German: Bunte Götter – Die Farbigkeit antiker Skulptur is a travelling exhibition of varying format and extent that has been shown in multiple cities worldwide. Its subject is ancient polychromy, i.e. the original, brightly painted, appearance of ancient sculpture and architecture.
The Phrasikleia Kore is an Archaic Greek funerary statue by the artist Aristion of Paros, created between 550 and 540 BCE. It was found carefully buried in the ancient city of Myrrhinous in Attica and excavated in 1972. The exceptional preservation of the statue and the intact nature of the polychromy elements makes the Phrasikleia Kore one of the most important works of Archaic art.
The Dedication of Nikandre is a Greek marble sculpture, made approximately around 650 BCE, held in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece. Nikandre, a woman from the island of Naxos, dedicated the statue in the temple of Artemis at Delos, the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. The statue, which was found during archaeological excavation in the 19th century, is one of the earliest surviving korai, or statues of women, and displays one of the oldest inscriptions of Ancient Greek in stone. Its representation and its placement within the existing stylistic periods of Greek sculpture have become the subject of extensive scholarship.
The Antenor Kore is a Late Archaic statue of a girl (Kore) made of Parian marble, which was created around 530/20 BC.
The Korai of the Acropolis of Athens are a group of female statues (Korai), discovered in the Perserschutt of the Acropolis of Athens in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, all of the same typology and clear votive function. Through them it is possible to trace the stylistic evolution of Archaic Attic sculpture for almost a century, from 570 to 480 BC. This demonstrates in particular the beginning and development of Ionian influence on Athenian art of the second half of the 6th century BC. This was the period when Ionian elements first appear in the architectural works of the Peisistratids and close connections between Ionia and Athens developed. Towards the end of the 6th century BC this influence is seen to be overcome, or rather absorbed, and a new style is born, the so-called Severe style, with increasing Peloponnesian influence.
The Kore of Lyons is a Greek statue of Pentelic marble depicting a bust of a young girl of the kore type, conserved at the musée des beaux-arts de Lyon, France. Deriving from the Athenian Acropolis, it is generally dated to the 540s BC. Considered the centrepiece of the museum's antiquities department, the statue was acquired between 1808 and 1810.
The Euthydikos Kore is a late archaic, Parian marble statue of the kore type, c 490–480 BCE, that once stood amongst the Akropolis votive sculptures. It was destroyed during the Persian invasion of 480 BCE and found in the Perserschutt. It is named after the dedication on the base of the sculpture, “Euthydikos son of Thaliarchos dedicated [me]”. It now stands in the Acropolis Museum.
The Persian Rider is an archaic Greek equestrian sculpture, c. 520–500 BCE, that once stood on the Acropolis of Athens. Only fragmentary remains survive; the lower torso and legs of the rider and the head, forelegs and chest of the horse. It was found west of the Erechtheion in 1886 and reconstructed by Franz Studniczka. Significant amounts of the original surface painting remains on the statue including the multicoloured pattern on the leggings of the rider which is thought to indicate that he was Persian or Scythian, hence the name. The sculpture now stands in the Acropolis Museum.
Kore 670 is a Late Archaic Greek kore made of Parian marble, created in 520–510 BC, measuring 1.15 cm.
