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Three Goddesses, Parthenon (5-47)
Artist: Phidias
Title: 3 goddesses (Hestia, Dione, and Aphrodite?) from the east pediment of the
Parthenon
Period: High Classical Greek
Picture:
Figure 5-47 Three goddesses (Hestia, Dione, and Aphrodite?), from the east pediment of the
Parthenon, Acropolis, Greece ca. 438-432 BCE. Marble, greatest height 4’ 5”. British Museum,
London.
8 points (All directly from text)
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
- Located on the far right, east side of a pediment of the Parthenon temple:
dedicated to Athena and commemorated Athenians
VISUAL DETAILS:
- Depicts 3 goddesses (likely) Hestia, Dione, and Aphrodite
- Made of marble- subtractive method (carving)
- Phidias, the composition’s designer (even if his assistants executed it), discovered
new way to deal with awkward triangular frame of the pediment: its bottom line is
the horizon line. This perspective makes the figures appear more realistic.
- The individual figures, even the animals (located further along the pediment), are
brilliantly characterized. The detail in the figures is flawless.
- The reclining figures fill the space beneath the raking cornice beautifully. Figures
appear to occupy space.
- Aphrodite sits in the lap of her mother Dione in a relaxed organic form, even
though they are goddesses. Contrast- usually more regal poses for Greek royalty.
- The sculptors fully understood not only the surface appearance of human
anatomy, both male and female, but also the mechanics of how muscles and bones
make the body move. Extremely realistic- “perfection of human figure in
sculpture” typical of high classical period
- The Phidian School also mastered the rendition of clothed forms:
o In the Dione-Aphrodite group, the thin and heavy folds of the garments
alternately real and conceal the main and lesser body masses while
swirling in a compositional tide that subtly unifies the two figures.
o The articulation and integration of the bodies produce a wonderful
variation of surface and play of light and shade.
Grave Stele of Hegeso (5-55)
Artist: Unknown
Title: Grave Stele of Hegeso, from the Dipylon cemetery
Period: High Classical Greek
Picture:
Figure 55 Grave stele of Hegeso, from Dipylon cemetery, Athens, Greece, ca. 400 BCE. Marble, 5’ 2”
high. National Archaeological Museum, Athens.
8 points
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
- Around 400 BCE, a grave stele in the style of the Temple of Athena Nike parapet
reliefs set up in memory of a woman named Hegeso.
VISUAL DETAILS:
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Depicts a young woman in her home, attended by her maid; its composition has
close parallels in contemporary vase painting
Contrasts earlier periods that commemorated the wealthy differently:
o Geometric period used amphoras and kraters
o Archaic period used kouroi, and kora (less frequently)
Other contrasts:
o The setting of other stele of the period: this is a woman’s quarters of a
Greek house, from which Hegeso rarely would have emerged. Mistress
and maid are shown in a characteristic shared moment of daily life.
(Typically public domain of male warriors was depicted instead)
o style of clothing:
 well-dressed- Hegeso, daughter of wealthy Greek family
 simpler-dress- Hegeso’s maid, servant to Greek family; Servant
girl is Hegeso’s possession, like jewelry.
Erected at the end of the fifth or beginning of the fourth century BCE to
commemorate the death of Hegeso, Proxenos’ daughter. (One can see both names
inscribed on the cornice of the pediment that crowns the stele, yet her mother’s
name is absent- patriarchal bias)
Antae at left and right complete the architectural framework, providing a balance
to the composition.
Hegeso is the well-dressed woman seated on an elegant chair (with a footstool).
She examines a piece of jewelry (once rendered in paint, not now visible) selected
from a box that a plainly dressed servant girl brings to her. Presence of jewelry
and slave attest to wealth of Hegeso’s father.
The garments of both women reveal the body forms beneath them. Extremely
realistic- “perfection of human figure in sculpture” typical of high classical
period
Jewelry box represents the dowry Proxenos would have provided to his
daughter’s husband when she left her father’s home to enter her husband’s home.
Praxiteles, Aphrodite of Knidos (5-60)
Artist: Praxiteles
Title: Aphrodite of Knidos
Period: Late Classical Greek
Picture:
Figure 5-60 Praxiteles, Aphrodite of Knidos. Roman marble copy after an original of ca. 350-340
BCE. Approx. 6’ 8” high. Vatican Museums, Rome.
8 points
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
- New Approach in Late Classical Greek Period- Humanizing the gods; they lost
some of the grandeur and took on a sensuous quality while retaining superhuman
beauty.
- Praxiteles sold to the Knidians after another city had rejected it.
- The lost original, carved from Parian marble, is known only through copies of
Roman date, but Pliny considered it “superior to all the works, not only of
Praxiteles, but indeed in the whole world.”
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It made Knidos famous, and many people sailed there just to see the statue in its
round temple, where “it was possible to view the image of the goddess from every
side.”
According to Pliny, some visitors were “overcome with love for the statue.”
VISUAL DETAILS:
- Sensation it its time because Praxiteles took the unprecedented step of
representing the goddess of love completely nude. Female nudity was rare in
earlier Greek art and had been confined almost exclusively to paintings on vases
designed for household use, such as the kylix of Onesimos. The women so
depicted also tended to be courtesans or slave girls, not noblewomen or
goddesses, and no one had dared fashion for a temple a statue of a goddess
without her clothes.
- More over, Praxiteles’ Aphrodite is not a cold and remote image. In fact the
goddess engages in a trivial act out of everyday life. She has removed her
garment, draped it over a large hydria (water pitcher), and is about to step into the
bath.
- The motif is strikingly similar to the one Onesimos painted.
- Although shocking not openly erotic (the goddess modestly shields her pelvis
with her right hand), but sensuous.
- Lucian, writing in the second century CE, noted that she has a “welcoming look”
and a “slight smile” and that Praxiteles was renowned for his ability to transform
marble into soft and radiant flesh.
- Lucian mentions, for example, the “dewy quality of Aphrodite’s eyes.”
- Mechanical roman copies do not capture the quality of Praxiteles’ modeling of the
stone,
Dying Gaul (5-81)
Artist: Epigonos (?)
Title: Dying Gaul. Roman copy after a bronze original from Pergamon
Period: Hellenistic Greek Period
Picture:
Figure 5-81 Epigonos (?), Dying Gaul. Roman marble copy after a bronze original from Pergamon,
Turkey, ca. 230-220 BCE, approx. 3’ ½ “ high. Museo Capitolino, Rome.
8 points
CULTURAL SIGNIFICANCE:
- On the Altar of Zeus, the victory of Attalos I over the Gauls was presented in
mythological disguise.
VISUAL DETAILS:
- Third Gaul in group, trumpeter, who collapses upon his large oval shield as blood
pours out of the gash in his chest.
- He stares at the ground with a pained expression on his face.
- The Hellenistic figure is reminiscent of the dying warrior from the east pediment
of Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, but the pathos and drama of the suffering Gaul
are far more pronounced. Dynamic motion and emotion is characteristic of
Hellenistic Greek sculpture.
- As in the suicide group and the gigantomachy frieze, the sculptor rendered the
male musculature in an exaggerated manner. More muscular definition than Late
Classical Greek Period.
- Note the tautness of the chest and the bulging veins of the left leg- implying that
the unseen Attalid hero who has struck down this noble and savage foe must have
been an extraordinary man.
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If this figure is the tubicen (trumpeter) Pliny mentioned as the work of the
Pergamene master Epigonos, then Epigonos may be the sculptor the of the entire
group and the create or of the dynamic Hellenistic baroque style.
Contrast archaic Greek- realistic expression of pain instead of archaic smile
Sculptor carefully studied and reproduced distinctive features of the foreign Gauls
(most notably their long, bushy hair and mustaches and the torques (neck bands)
they frequently wore.
Viewer only sees foes and their noble and moving response to defeat (no victors)