From Cheek to Cheek
Noam Sienna and Rachel Berman-Vaporis
Stone
figurine
A nude female
(now headless)
holding her robe
in one hand and
covering herself
with the other.
From behind, the buttocks have
maintained their finely-defined
curves.
About CLARC
The Classical Studies Artifact
Research Collection is a
collection of approximately 900
objects from the Mediterranean
and Near East, from the Archaic,
Hellenistic, and Byzantine
periods. Each year, a select
number of undergraduate
students are given the
opportunity to work with the
collection, which includes
packing and unpacking the
objects, photographing and
researching them, and curating
an exhibit in Goldfarb Library.
This exhibit explores themes of beauty
that are both similar to and different from
our own, using the human form as
represented in classical artifacts.
Hellenistic
A woman’s head with
carefully-coiffed hair. Few
details remain on the face
except the soft shape of
her cheeks and jaw.
This selection of artifacts demonstrates a variety of forms and methods to the
depiction and use of the human body during the Classical and Hellenistic periods.
Egyptian styles and other art types from around the Mediterranean influenced the
portrayal of the body, and the style constantly transformed and increased in
complexity through the Archaic period into the Hellenistic and beyond. While the
body in art was often depicted in its ideal form, the idea of human perfection is an
ever-shifting phenomenon, and thus idealism had to shift with it.
In the Archaic period, the beginning of Greek sculptural art, people’s bodies
To Professor Ann Olga
were represented in stiff and artificial poses, with idealized shapes and little
Koloski-Ostrow, our
detail. Around the 6th century BCE, statuary became increasingly
supervisor and magistra
naturalistic. The subjects were no longer impersonal larger than-life
depictions, but instead were people, who were not “ordinary” if they could
suprema, and to Jess
afford to be immortalized in sculpture, but were at least flesh-and-blood
Schaengold, our senior
human beings. Greek sculpture reached a zenith of achievement in the
intern and foam-cutter
mid-5th century BCE, often known as the Golden Age of Athens. In this
extraordinaire.
period, the human form was depicted realistically but still with an eye for
the ideal form; famous sculptors such as Polykleitos and Praxiteles strove for
innovation in depicting movement, texture, and emotion in their art.
The ideals of Greek sculpture and other art forms were spread, along with Greek culture and language, as far east as
India following the conquests of Alexander the Great towards the end of 4th century BCE. The Romans later in the
2nd century BCE absorbed and emulated many aspects of Greek culture, including their classical artistic traditions,
and adapted them in their own innovative way. For example, in Roman art domestic scenes were more commonly
depicted in sculpture than in Greek art.
Thank you
Clay ‘angel’
References
1st century BCE - 1st
century CE
A winged male
figure, perhaps
Syrian. Its purpose
and function are
unclear.
Terracotta head
Glazed face
A glazed ceramic face
joining a handle to the body
of a pot (now lost).
Mirror handle (?)
Gisela M. A. Richter. The Sculpture and Sculptors of the
Greeks, 1950,Yale University Press.
A bronze
James Whitley, The Archaeology of Ancient Greece, 2001,
figure in the
Cambridge University Press.Sarah Pomeroy, et al. Ancient
shape of a
Greece: A Political, Social, and Cultural History. 1999, Oxford
University Press.
woman holding
John Boardman. Greek Sculpture:The Classical Period: A
Handbook. 1985, London: Thames & Hudson.
her hands to
her head, with
a stand.