Late Archaic Greek Art
Hellenistic Art
Introduction to Greek Art

Greek Art Classic Period 600 to 350 BC

Persian War Period (510 to 449 BC)

Cleisthenes establishes a democracy in Athens. The Persian king Darius I threatens the poleis of Ionia, which react by revolting. Miletus and the other colonies fall and are harshly punished. In 490 BC the first Persian war ends, with the victory of the Athenian commander Miltiades at Marathon. The second war (480 BC) is declared by Xerxes I; after several victories and the sack of Athens, the Persians are defeated in the naval battle of Salamis. With Ionian support, the wars continue under the leadership of Athens, which founds the Delian League. The Western Greeks defeat the Carthagians and Etruscans. Under Themistocles and Cimon, Athens begins a period of military and economic imperialism, in a state of permanent conflict with the other Greek cities. Callias signs the peace treaty with Persia (449 BC).

Art

Myron
worked in:

Polyclitus
worked in: Athens

Classical Period (449 to 338 BC)

Under Pericles Athens reaches the apex of economic success and cultural and artistic splendor. Its expansionist foreign policy triggers revolts throughout the Hellenic world. Rivalry with Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, and Syracuse leads to the thirty-year Peloponnesian War. Athens eventually capitulates and spends the last decade of the 5th century BC under short-lived oligarchic governments.

The new century opens with the restoration of democracy in Athens; Spartan attacks on Persia; Carthaginian expansionism in Sicily; and other wars. Sparta dominates the Greek scene for several decades before being deprived of its hegemony by Athens and Thebes, the emerging new power. In 356 BC Philip II of Macedonia begins his systematic conquest of Greece, completed in 338 BC at Chaeronea. With the Corinthian League, peace is imposed on the Greek states under the leadership of Macedonia.

Art

Parthenon 447 to 432 BC Acropolis Athens, Greece	Horse Head from East Pediment of the Parthenon about 435 BC British Museum London, England	Acropolis Athens, Greece
Athena Parthenos about 440 BC Reconstruction of the statue from Royal Ontario Museum Toronto, Canada The original statue was made of 1,144 kg of gold (around 2,500 lbs). The statue was placed inside of the Parthenon. After it's construction, Pheidias was put on trial for embezzlement, but proving that gold was missing from a complex statue, made of many materials is pretty difficult.

Praxiteles
born: Athens; about 385 bc
died: about 335 bc

Praxiteles' father, Cephisodotos, was a sculptor, as were his sons, Kephisodotos the Younger and Timarchos. Praxiteles worked in both marble and bronze, but he was most famous for his marble carving. Praxiteles bronze of Eirine, Goddess of Peace, was displayed in Athens in 370 BC. We know his work mostly from Roman copies and literary references.

Praxiteles introduced his own scheme of proportions for representing the human body, and it is said that he also invented new ways of depicting the gods. He liked to humanize divinities by portraying them as adolescents. He depicted Aphrodite[see below] in the nude, which influenced subsequent portrayals of the goddess.

The Aphrodite of Knidos is the first statue to depict one of the female goddesses nude; females, goddess or human, were always shown in full dress before this. In fact, he made two statues of Aphrodite and one nude and one dressed. He offered them for sale at the same price. The people of Kos, who had the first choice, chose the draped one. The people of Knidos took the nude one, and it is this nude statue that became famous.

Skopas
worked in: Paros

Continue with Hellenistic Greek Art

Late Archaic Greek Art
Hellenistic Art
Introduction to Greek Art

2003-04-11