ANCIENT CLASSIC ART

Classical art work mostly found in Roman or Greek architecture and art. classical art means something
special. It is the art of ancient Greece and Rome. Some people like classical art so much that they
compare every other style of art to It. The ancient Greek sexcelled in painting, sculpture, and
architecture. Their work was elegant. The Ancient Greeks became known for their perfection in art.
During the classical era they developed their own style that historians would later call the Severe Style.
Periods of Greek Art. Archaic Period: The Greeks from the Archaic Period made sculptures of men called
Kouroi and women called Korai.

Art during the Archaic Period was stylized but became more realistic during the Classical Period. The late
Classical Period sculpture was three dimensional, made to be viewed from all sides. These and other
artists helped move Greek art from Classic Idealism to Hellenistic Realism, blending in softer elements
and emotive expressions.

ARTS STYLE
Egyptian frescoes, pottery, metal work, and also work found in tombs are recently popping up all around
the wolrd. there are scares amount of examples of early art, ,most often favoring drawing over color.

Greek Sculpture
Greek sculpture was meant to show perfection. They wanted to create lifelike images of near perfect
humans. Unlike the Romans, the Greeks never showed human imperfections in their art.

Greek Columns
Greek Architecture was intertwined with their art. A big part of their architecture was their columns. The
Greek columns have been used in western architecture for the past 2500 years.

In Greek Architecture there were three main types of columns that were used: The Doric, Ionic, and
Corinthian. See below for examples.

Doric Column Ionic-Column Corinthian Column

HISTORY/ TIMELINE
Periods of Greek Art

Archaic Period: The Greeks from the Archaic Period made sculptures of men called Kouroi and women
called Korai. These statues had similar features and stood stiffly with their arms at their sides.

Classical Period: During the Classical Period, Greek artists began to sculpt people in more relaxed
postures and even in action scenes. The most famous works from this era include the statue of Zeus at
Olympia and the statue of Athena at Parthenos.

Hellenistic Period: After Alexander the Great conquered much of Asia, the sculpture and artwork of the
Greeks became influenced by the cultures and people they had conquered. This period is called the
Hellenistic Period. This period saw new subjects including women, children, and common people appear
in Greek art. Famous works from this era include the Venus de Milo, the Dying Gaul, and the Winged
Victory of Samothrace.

Marble metope from the Parthenon (c 447-438BC)

Violence is a favourite theme of ancient Greek artists. Reared on the myth of the Trojan war and
experiencing the reality of wars with Persia and between Greek cities, classical artists found new ways to
show conflict. This human fighting a centaur, carved for the Parthenon in Athens, is astonishingly real in
its detail and dynamic energy.

FAMOUS ARTIST
These six sculptors (Myron, Phidias, Polyclitus, Praxiteles, Scopas, and Lysippus) are among the most
famous artists in ancient Greece. Most of their work has been lost except as it survives in Roman and later
copies.

Myron of Eleutherae
5th C. BCE.—Early Classical Period
An older contemporary of Phidias and Polyclitus, and, like them, also a pupil of Ageladas, Myron of
Eleutherae (480–440 BCE) worked chiefly in bronze. Myron is known for his Discobolus (discus-
thrower) which had careful proportions and rhythm.
Pliny the Elder argued that Myron's most famous sculpture was that of a bronze heifer, supposedly so
lifelike it could be mistaken for a real cow. The cow was placed at the Athenian Acropolis between 420–
417 BCE, then moved to the Temple of Peace at Rome and then the Forum Taurii in Constantinople. This
cow was on view for nearly a thousand years—the Greek scholar Procopius reported that he saw it in the
6th century CE. It was the subject of no less than 36 Greek and Roman epigrams, some of which claimed
that the sculpture could be mistaken for a cow by calves and bulls, or that it actually was a real cow,
attached to a stone base.

Phidias of Athens
c. 493–430 BCE—High Classical Period
Phidias (spelled Pheidias or Phydias), the son of Charmides, was a 5th century BCE sculptor known for
his ability to sculpt in nearly anything, including stone, bronze, silver, gold, wood, marble, ivory, and
chryselephantine. Among his most famous works is the nearly 40-foot tall statue of Athena, made of
chryselephantine with plates of ivory upon a core of wood or stone for the flesh and solid gold drapery
and ornaments. A statue of Zeus at Olympia was made of ivory and gold and was ranked among one of
the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The Athenian statesman Pericles commissioned several works from Phidias, including sculptures to
celebrate the Greek victory at the Battle of Marathon. Phidias is among the sculptors associated with the
early use of the "Golden Ratio," the Greek representation of which is the letter Phi after Phidias.

Phidias the accused of trying to embezzle gold but proved his innocence. He was charged with impiety,
however, and sent to prison where, according to Plutarch, he died.

Polyclitus of Argos

5th C. BCE—High Classical Period

Polyclitus (Polycleitus or Polykleitos) created a gold and ivory statue of Hera for the goddess's temple at
Argos. Strabo called it the most beautiful rendering of Hera he'd ever seen, and it was considered by most
ancient writers as one of the most beautiful works of all Greek art. All his other sculptures were in bronze.

Polyclitus is also known for his Doryphorus statue (Spear-bearer), which illustrated his book named
canon (kanon), a theoretical work on ideal mathematical proportions for human body parts and on the
balance between tension and movement, known as symmetry. He sculpted Astragalizontes (Boys Playing
at Knuckle Bones) which had a place of honor in the atrium of the Emperor Titus

Praxiteles of Athens

c. 400–330 BCE—Late Classical Period

Praxiteles was the son of the sculptor Cephisodotus the Elder, and a younger contemporary of Scopas. He
sculpted a great variety of men and gods, both male and female; and he is said to have been the first to
sculpt the human female form in a life-sized statue. Praxiteles primarily used marble from the famous
quarries of Paros, but he also used bronze. Two examples of Praxiteles' work are Aphrodite of Knidos
(Cnidos) and Hermes with the Infant Dionysus.

One of his works that reflects the change in Late Classical Period Greek art is his sculpture of the god
Eros with a sad expression, taking his lead, or so some scholars have said, from a then-fashionable
depiction of love as suffering in Athens, and the growing popularity of the expression of feelings in
general by painters and sculptors throughout the period.

Scopas of Paros

4th C. BCE—Late Classical Period

Scopas was an architect of the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, which used all three of the orders
(Doric and Corinthian, on the outside and Ionic inside), in Arcadia. Later Scopas made sculptures for
Arcadia, which were described by Pausanias.

Scopas also worked on the bas-reliefs that decorated the frieze of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus in
Caria. Scopas may have made one of the sculptured columns on the temple of Artemis at Ephesus after its
fire in 356. Scopas made a sculpture of a maenad in a Bacchic frenzy of which a copy survives.

Lysippus of Sicyon

4th C. BCE—Late Classical Period

A metalworker, Lysippus taught himself sculpture by studying nature and Polyclitus' canon. Lysippus'
work is characterized by lifelike naturalism and slender proportions. It has been described as
impressionistic. Lysippus was the official sculptor to Alexander the Great.

It is said about Lysippus that "while others had made men as they were, he had made them as they
appeared to the eye." Lysippus is thought not to have had formal artistic training but was a prolific
sculptor creating sculptures from tabletop size to colossus.