Chapter 5
Ancient
Greece
www.utexas.edu/courses/classicalarch/images.html
What do you think the ideal male and female
bodies should look like?
This question can be traced back to ancient
Greece. Greek sculptors strove to create ideal
Images of beauty for both men and women. The
Statues they carved created “classic” models of
Beauty that link ancient Greece to Renaissance
Italy and even to contemporary celebrity
magazines.
The importance of the art of the ancient Greeks
is not limited to their quest to define ideal male
and female proportions. Greek architecture,
sculpture, and vase paintings have all had a
far-reaching influence on subsequent Western art
and culture.
Ancient Greek art is a complex topic. Unlike the
art of the ancient Egyptians, Greek art did not
remain static. As a result, art historians have
traditionally divided ancient Greek into four
stylistic periods:
Geometric and Orientalizing
Archaic
Classical
Hellenistic
GEOMETRIC
PERIOD
Mycenaean civilization collapsed around
1200 B.C.E. As population declined and the arts
of reading and writing were lost, Greece plunged
into a four-hundred year period known as the Dark
Ages of Greece. After four long centuries of
decline, Greece slowly began to recover. Farmers
settled in city-states, writers preserved Homer’s
epics, and artists created a new Geometric
style of art.
As its name implies, the Geometric style
featured triangles, concentric circles, and
“checkerboard” shapes that were used for both
ornamental and human figures.
ORIENTALIZING
PERIOD
By the seventh century B.C.E.,
painters in major pottery centers
in Greece had moved away from
the dense linear decoration of
the Geometric style, preferring
more open compositions built
around large motifs- real and
imaginary animals, abstract
plant forms, and human figures.
The source of these motifs can be traced to the
arts of the Near East and Egypt. Greek painters
did not simply copy the work of Eastern artists,
they drew on work in a variety of mediasculpture, metalwork, and textiles
to invent an entirely new approach to painting
vessels.
ARCHAIC
PERIOD
The Archaic period does not deserve its name.
“Archaic” means “old-fashioned” even “primitive”
and the term was chosen by art historians who
wanted to stress what they perceived as a contrast
between the undeveloped art of this time and the
subsequent Classical period, once thought to be
the most admirable and highly developed phase
of Greek art.
But the Archaic period was a time of great new
achievement in Greece. In literature, Sappho
wrote her inspired poetry on the island of Lesbos,
while on another island the legendary storyteller,
Aesop, crafted his animal fables. Artists and
architects shared in the growing prosperity as
city councils and wealthy individuals sponsored
the creation of extraordinary sculpture and fine
ceramics and commissioned elaborate civic and
religious buildings in cities and sanctuaries.
Sculpture
Comparison
Handout
Video on Kouros, New York
• https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/
ancient-art-civilizations/greek-art/daedalicarchaic/v/kouros-youth-archaic-greek-c590-580-b-c-e
• 6 min
• Class quiz
Anavysos, Kroisos
• https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/
ancient-art-civilizations/greek-art/daedalicarchaic/v/anavysos-kouros
• 5 min.
• Class quiz
Complete Sculpture Comparison Handout
Kouros
Kroisos
Kouros
Flashcards
Kroisos
Flashcards
Peplos Kore
Kore from Acropolis
Flashcard
• 5 min
https://www.khan
academy.org/hu
manities/ancientartcivilizations/gree
k-art/daedalicarchaic/v/peploskore
• Class quiz
Flashcard
Capitals
& Orders
Doric
Corinthian
Ionic
Gardner’s 11th ed
Art Resources
Temple of Aphaia & Plan
Gardner’s 11th ed
Video on Temple of Aphaia, Aegina
and Dying Warrior
https://www.khanacademy.org/hum
anities/ancient-artcivilizations/greek-art/earlyclassical/v/east-and-westpediments-from-the-temple-ofaphaia-aegina-c-490-480-b-c-e
15 min.
West Pediment of the Temple of Aphaia
Flashcards
Dying Warrior
from west
pediment
Dying Warrior from east
pediment
faculty.cva.edu
Gardner’s 11th ed
arts-sciences.cua.edu/gl/undergrad/monument_p...
mandarb.net/virtual_gallery/sculptures/gaul.shtml
Temple of Aphaia
Berlin Painter
Flourished 500–460 bce,
Athenian vase painter who, is
considered one of the
outstanding vase painters of
the Late Archaic period. He is
best known as the decorator
of an amphora now in Berlin
that depicts Hermes and a
satyr. He has made over 200
vases.
Stylistically, the Berlin amphora is decorated on
a new principle of design. It had been customary
to frame the groups of figures on each side with
pattern bands. The Berlin Painter eliminated this
frame, allowing the figures to dominate. The
unusually large figures stand out sharply against
the amphora’s black background and, as in
many of his other works, are characterized by
refined grandeur.
How to Make a Greek Vase
• https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/
ancient-art-civilizations/greek-art/greekpottery/v/ancient-greek-vase-black-figuretechnique
• 5 min
• Want to learn? I’ll teach you!
Greek Drinking Vessels
A Hydria
D Amphora
B Lekythos
E Kylix
C Krater
F. Oinochoe