ARCH 1700
Architectural Sculpture of Ancient Greece and Rome
Tuesday and Thursday, 2:30-3:50 PM
Sayles 204
Prof. Diana Ng
Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World
70 Waterman Street
Diana_Ng@brown.edu
Office hours: Wednesday 10 AM-12 PM
This course focuses on the architectural sculpture—the freestanding or relief sculptures
associated with buildings and monuments—of classical antiquity. Although we may
tend to think of ancient buildings as bare, sun-bleached and weathered ruins, they were
in fact adorned with elaborate decorative programs. Over the course of this semester,
we will examine these decorative programs within not only their architectural settings,
but also within their cultural, historical, and art historical contexts. In the first part of
the course, we will explore the decoration of Greek temples and sanctuaries, and
investigate the intersection between religion, myth, and history in the Greek view of the
world. How did religious buildings also stand in for certain civic or cultural ideals? In
the second part of the course, we will shift our attention to the architectural sculpture of
the Roman empire, and explore how the authority of the emperor and the empire was
proclaimed and reinforced through the decoration of public buildings and monuments.
Moving in and out of Rome, we will also examine the architectural sculpture of the
eastern provinces and how these decorative programs helped cities and citizens of the
empire construct their identities. This course will necessarily deal with aspects of Greek
and Roman architecture; brief introductions to typologies and terminologies will open
each half of the course.
Course readings: Regular readings will be drawn from your three required textbooks:
I. Jenkins, Greek Architecture and its Sculpture, J. G. Pedley, Greek Art and Archaeology, and
N. Ramage and A. Ramage, Roman Art. Additional required readings on specific topics,
from different sources, will be made available to you in class or through the course
wiki, at http://proteus.brown.edu/architecturalsculpture/Home. To access the
readings, log in with the password, “sculpture”.
Course requirements: The two parts of this course will be covered by two in-class
examinations of equal weight, one held as a midterm, and the other on the last day of
class. The precise format for these two examinations will be discussed during the term.
In addition, there will be two formal written assignments for this course. The first will
be 4 to 5 pages in length. The second paper will be 8 to 10 pages in length, and will be a
research project based upon a topic of your own choosing—you must come speak with
me about your paper topics before the first draft is due. There will be a university
assigned Writing Fellow for this class to help you with the structure and organization of
your papers, and you are required to submit a first draft of your papers to the Writing
Fellow on the specified dates and to incorporate the comments of the Writing Fellow in
the final drafts of your papers. I will not accept any late papers for full credit. For
every day that a paper is late, it will be marked down 10%.
Course assessment: Participation and attendance: 10%; First exam: 20%; Second exam:
20%; 5 page paper: 15%; 8 to 10 page paper: 35%
Course schedule: (this is subject to change)
Jan. 24
Introduction and introduction to Greek architecture
Jan. 29
Orientalizing and Archaic temple decoration
Jan. 31
Mid-Archaic treasuries and Acropolis pediments
Feb. 5
Aphaia: myth, history, and color
Feb. 7
Sicily: the temples at Selinus
Feb. 12
Early Classical temples: Olympia
Feb. 14
The Athenian Acropolis
Feb. 19
Presidents’ Day holiday, no class
Feb. 21
The Parthenon
First draft of 5 page paper due to Writing Fellow
Feb. 26
The Fourth Century: the Mausoleum and the Nereid Monument
Feb. 28
Hellenistic Pergamon
Writing Fellow returns drafts
March 4
Loose dedications and exam review
March 6
First Exam
March 11
Introduction to Roman architecture
5 page paper due
March 13
Republican Rome and the new Age of Augustus
March 18
Augustus and the Julio-Claudians
March 20
Imperial imagery outside of Rome
March 25 and 27
Have a nice Spring Break
April 1
The Flavians and imperial exploits
April 3
Trajan: the emperor’s many guises
April 8
The Hadrianic period: the flowering of the East
April 10
The Antonines: traditions and disruptions
April 15
The Severans: at Rome and away
First drafts of 8 to 10 page paper due to Writing Fellow
April 17
The Provinces in the Third Century
April 22
Constantine and later Rome, a new imagery
Writing Fellow returns drafts
April 24
Second Exam
Final drafts of 8 to 10 page paper due on May 9 in my mailbox at the Joukowsky
Institute.