The Classical period (5th - 4th century BC)

Youth (the 'Kritian boy), from

Athens Acropolis. About 480
BC
Cast No. B068a

In the early 5th century Greek

artists began consciously to
attempt to render human and
animal forms realistically. This
entailed careful observation of the
model as well as understanding the
mechanics of anatomy - how a body adjusts to a
pose which is not stiffly frontal but with the
weight shifted to one side of the body, and how a
body behaves in violent motion. The successors
to the archaic kouroi, mainly athlete figures, are
thus regularly shown 'at ease', one leg relaxed,
with a complementary shift in the shoulders, and
the whole emphasized by contrasts of rigid and
relaxed in limbs.

Metope from
the temple of
Zeus,
Olympia.
Athena and
Heracles
recover the
apples from
Atlas. About
460 BC Cast
No.A069

Head of a seer
from the east
pediment of the
temple of Zeus,
Olympia. About
460 BC
Cast No.A050

The new style is best

expressed in the
Parthenon marbles of
about 450-435 BC but
there was a preceding
style of some importance - the Early Classical,
sometimes called the Severe Style, which is
exemplified in the sculptures for the Temple of
Zeus at Olympia. Here the figures are mainly

lifelike but drapery forms are plainer (a change

from the archaic Ionian chiton to the more
austere peplos for women), and there are
deliberate
attempts at
depiction of
emotion in faces
and of different
ages in rendering
of bodies.

Reclining figure of Dionysos from the east

pediment of the Parthenon. About 430 BC
Cast No. A091

Recli
ning

figures of Dione and Aphrodite from the

east pediment of the Parthenon. About
430 BC
Cast No. A094

The 'Dresden Zeus'. Copy

of a statue of about 440
BC
Cast No. C049

These innovations were

foresworn by Pheidias, in his
design for the Parthenon, and
replaced by a more idealized
realism in which body forms were
often more regular than in life,
and heads, except for monsters like centaurs,
seem passionless, calm. Dress, after the austerity
of the Early Classical becomes dramatically
realistic. But the Parthenon is the fullest
expression of what is sometimes called the High
Classical. It is in this period and style too that, in
the following hundred years, many of the basic
types for the Greek gods were devised, and these
remained influential throughout antiquity.