Greek Art
From LoveToKnow 1911
GREEK ART.
It is proposed in the present article to give a brief account of the history of Greek art and of the principles embodied in that history. In any broad view of history, the products of the various arts practised by a people constitute an objective and most important record of the spirit of that people. But all nations have not excelled in the same way: some have found their best expression in architecture, some in music, some in poetry. The Greeks most fully embodied their ideas in two ways, first in their splendid literature, both prose and verse, and secondly, in their plastic and pictorial art, in which matter they have remained to our days among the greatest instructors of mankind. The three arts of architecture, sculpture and painting were brought by them into a focus; and by their aid they produced a visible splendour of public life such as has perhaps been nowhere else attained.
(It may here be pointed out that it was found impossible, with any regard for the appearance of the pages, to arrange the Plates for this article so as to preserve a chronological order in the individual figures; they are not arranged consecutively as regards the history or the period, and are only grouped for convenience in paging. - Ed.)
| Table of contents |
Article Scope
The volume of the remains of Greek civilization is so vast, and the learning with which these have been discussed is so ample, that it is hopeless to attempt to give in a work like the present any complete account of either. Rather we shall be frankly eclectic, choosing for consideration such results of Greek art as are most noteworthy and most characteristic. In some cases it will be possible to give a reference to a more detailed treatment of particular monuments in these volumes under the heading of the places to which they belong. Architectural detail is relegated to Architecture and allied architectural articles. Coins (see Numismatics) and gems (see Gem) are treated apart, as are vases (Ceramics), and in the bibliography which closes this article an effort is made to direct those who wish for further information in any particular branch of our subject.
Rediscovery of Greek Art
1. The Rediscovery of Greek Art. - The visible works of Greek architect, sculptor and painter, accumulated in the cities of Greece and Asia Minor until the Roman conquest. And in spite of the ravages of conquering Roman generals, and the more systematic despoilings of the emperors, we know that when Pausanias visited Greece, in the age of the Antonines, it was from coast to coast a museum of works of art of all ages. But the tide soon turned. Works of originality were no longer produced, and a succession of disasters gradually obliterated those of previous ages. In the course of the Teutonic and Slavonic invasions from the north, or in consequence of earthquakes, very frequent in Greece, the splendid cities and temples fell into ruins; and with the taking of Constantinople by the Franks in 1204 the last great collection of works of Greek sculpture disappeared. But while paintings decayed, and works in metal were melted down, many marble buildings and statues survived, at least in a mutilated condition, while terra-cotta is almost proof against decay.
Renaissance Rediscovery
With the Renaissance attention was directed to the extant remains of Greek and Roman art; as early as the 15th century collections of ancient sculpture,coins and gems began to be formed in Italy; and in the 16th the enthusiasm spread to Germany and France. The earl of Arundel, in the reign of James I., was the first Englishman to collect antiques from Italy and Asia Minor: his marbles are now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Systematic travel in Greece for the discovery of buildings and works of art was begun by Spon and Wheler (1675-1676); and the discovery of Pompeii in 1748 opened a new chapter in the history of ancient art.
But though kings delighted to form galleries of ancient statues, and the great Italian artists of the Renaissance drew from them inspiration for their paintings and bronzes, the first really critical appreciation of Greek art belongs to Winckelmann (Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums, 1764). The monuments accessible to Winckelmann were but a very small proportion of those we now possess, and in fact mostly works of inferior merit: but he was the first to introduce the historical method into the treatment of ancient art, and to show how it embodied the ideas of the great peoples of the ancient world. He was succeeded by Lessing, and the waves of thought and feeling set in motion by these two affected the cultivated class in all nations, - they inspired in particular Goethe in Germany and Lord Byron in England.
19th century
The second stage in the recovery of Greek art begins with the permission accorded by the Porte to Lord Elgin in 1800 to remove to England the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon and other buildings of Athens. These splendid works, after various vicissitudes, became the property of the English nation, and are now the chief treasures of the British Museum. The sight of them was a revelation to critics and artists, accustomed only to the base copies which fill the Italian galleries, and a new epoch in the appreciation of Greek art began. English and German savants, among whom Cockerell and Stackelberg were conspicuous, recovered the glories of the temples of Aegina and Bassae. Leake and Ross, and later Curtius, journeyed through the length and breadth of Greece, identifying ancient sites and studying the monuments which were above ground. Ross reconstructed the temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis of Athens from fragments rescued from a Turkish bastion.
Meantime more methodical exploration brought to light the remains of remarkable civilizations in Asia, not only in the valley of the Euphrates, but in Lycia, whence Sir Charles Fellows brought to London the remains of noteworthy tombs, among which the so-called Harpy Monument and Nereid Monument take the first place. Still more important were the accessions derived from the excavations of Sir Charles Newton, who in the years 1852-1859 resided as consul in Asia Minor, and explored the sites of the mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the shrine of Demeter at Cnidus. Pullan at Priene, and Wood at Ephesus also made fruitful excavations.
Olympia Excavations
The next landmark is set by the German excavations at Olympia (1876 and foil.), which not only were conducted with a scientific completeness before unknown, and at great cost, but also established the principle that in future all the results of excavations in Greece must remain in the country, the right of first publication only remaining with the explorers. The discovery of the Hermes of Praxiteles, almost the only certain original of a great Greek sculptor which we possess, has furnished a new and invaluable fulcrum for the study of ancient art. In emulation of the achievements of the Germans at Olympia, the Greek archaeological society methodically excavated the Athenian acropolis, and were rewarded by finding numerous statues and fragments of pediments belonging to the age of Peisistratus, an age when the promise of art was in full bud. More recently French explorers have made a very thorough examination of the site of Delphi, and have succeeded in recovering almost complete two small treasuries, those of the people of Athens and of Cnidus or Siphnos, the latter of 6th-century Ionian work, and adorned with extremely important sculpture.
Other excavations
No other site of the same importance as Athens, Olympia and Delphi remains for excavation in Greece proper. But in all parts of the country, at Tegea, Corinth, Sparta and on a number of other ancient sites, striking and important monuments have come to light. And at the same time monuments already known in Italy and Sicily, such as the temples of Paestum, Selinus and Agrigentum have been re-examined with fuller knowledge and better system. Only Asia Minor, under the influence of Turkish rule, has remained a country where systematic exploration is difficult. Something, however, has been accomplished at Ephesus, Priene, Assos and Miletus, and great works of sculpture such as the reliefs of the great altar at Pergamum, now at Berlin, and the splendid sarcophagi from Sidon, now at Constantinople, show what might be expected from methodic investigation of the wealthy Greek cities of Asia.
From further excavations at Herculaneum we may expect a rich harvest of works of art of the highest class, such as have already been found in the excavations on that site in the past; and the building operations at Rome are constantly bringing to light fine statues brought from Greece in the time of the Empire, which are now placed in the collections of the Capitol and the Baths of Diocletian.
The work of explorers on Greek sites requires as its complement and corrective much labour in the great museums of Europe. As museum work apart from exploration tends to dilettantism and pedantry, so exploration by itself does not produce reasoned knowledge. When a new building, a great original statue, a series of vases is discovered, these have to be fitted in to the existing frame of our knowledge; and it is by such fitting in that the edifice of knowledge is enlarged. In all the museums and universities of Europe the fresh examination of new monuments, the study of style and subject, and attempts to work out points in the history of ancient art, are incessantly going on. Such archaeological work is an important element in the gradual education of the world, and is fruitful, quite apart from the particular results attained, because it encourages a method of thought. Archaeology, dealing with things which can be seen and handled, yet being a species of historic study, lies on the borderland between the province of natural science and that of historic science, and furnishes a bridge whereby the methods of investigation proper to physical and biological study may pass into the human field.
These investigations and studies are recorded, partly in books, but more particularly in papers in learned journals (see bibliography), such as the Mitteilungen of the German Institute, and the English Journal of Hellenic Studies. An example or two may serve to give the reader a clearer notion of the recent progress in the knowledge of Greek art.
Architecture
To begin with architecture. Each of the palmary sites of which we have spoken has rendered up examples of early Greek temples. At Olympia there is the Heraeum, earliest of known temples of Greece proper, which clearly shows the process whereby stone gradually superseded wood as a constructive material. At Delphi the explorers have been so fortunate as to be able to put together the treasuries of the Cnidians (or Siphnians) and of the Athenians. The former (see fig. 17) is a gem of early Ionic art, with two Caryatid figures in front in the place of columns, and adorned with the most delicate tracery and fine reliefs. On the Athenian acropolis very considerable remains have been found of temples which were destroyed by the Persians when they temporarily occupied the site in 480 B.C. And recently the ever-renewed study of the Erechtheum has resulted in a restoration of its original form more valuable and trustworthy than any previously made.
In the field of sculpture recent discoveries have been too many and too important to be mentioned at any length. One instance may serve to mark the rapidity of our advance. When the remains of the Mausoleum were brought to London from the excavations begun by Sir Charles Newton in 1856 we knew from Pliny that four great sculptors, Scopas, Bryaxis, Leochares and Timotheus, had worked on the sculpture; but we knew of these artists little more than the names. At present we possess many fragments of two pediments at Tegea executed under the direction of Scopas, we have a basis with reliefs signed by Bryaxis, we have identified a group in the Vatican museum as a copy of the Ganymede of Leochares, and we have pedimental remains from Epidaurus which we know from inscriptional evidence to be either the works of Timotheus or made from his models. Any one can judge how enormously our power of criticizing the Mausoleum sculptures, and of comparing them with contemporary monuments, has increased.
Painting
In regard to ancient painting we can of course expect no such fresh illumination. Many important wall-paintings of the Roman age have been found at Rome and Pompeii: but we have no certain or even probable work of any great Greek painter. We have to content ourselves with studying the colouring of reliefs, such as those of the sarcophagi at Constantinople, and the drawings on vases, in order to get some notion of the composition and drawing of painted scenes in the great age of Greece. As to the portraits of the Roman age painted on wood which have come in considerable quantities from Egypt, they stand at a far lower level than even the paintings of Pompeii. The number of our vase-paintings, however, increases steadily, and whole classes, such as the early vases of Ionia, are being marked off from the crowd, and so becoming available for use in illustrating the history of Hellenic civilization.
The study of Greek art is thus one which is eminently progressive. It has over the study of Greek literature the immense advantage that its materials increase far more rapidly. And it is becoming more and more evident that a sound and methodic study of Greek art is quite as indispensable as a foundation for an artistic and archaeological education as the study of Greek poets and orators is as a basis of literary education. The extreme simplicity and thorough rationality of Greek art make it an unrivalled field for the training and exercise of the faculties which go to the making of the art-critic and art historian.
General Principles of Greek Art
The General Principles of Greek Art. - Before proceeding to sketch the history of the rise and decline of Greek art, it is desirable briefly to set forth the principles which underlie it (see also P. Gardner's Grammar of Greek Art). As the literature of Greece is composed in a particular language, the grammar and the syntax of which have to be studied before the works in poetry and prose can be read, so Greek works of art are composed in what may be called an artistic language. To the accidence of a grammar may be compared the mere technique of sculpture and painting: to the syntax of a grammar correspond the principles of composition and grouping of individual figures into a relief or picture. By means of the rules of this grammar the Greek artist threw into form the ideas which belonged to him as a personal or a racial possession.
We may mention first some of the more external conditions of Greek art; next, some of those which the Greek spirit posited for itself.
Influences
No nation is in its works wholly free from the domination of climate and geographical position; least of all a people so keenly alive to the influence of the outer world as the Greeks. They lived in a land where the soil was dry and rocky, far less hospitable to vegetation than that of western Europe, while on all sides the horizon of the land was bounded by hard and jagged lines of mountain. The sky was extremely clear and bright, sunshine for a great part of the year almost perpetual, and storms, which are more than passing gales, rare. It was in accordance with these natural features that temples and other buildings should be simple in form and bounded by clear lines. Such forms as the cube, the oblong, the cylinder, the triangle, the pyramid abound in their constructions. Just as in Switzerland the gables of the chalets match the pine-clad slopes and lofty summits of the mountains, so in Greece, amid barer hills of less elevation, the Greek temple looks thoroughly in place. But its construction is related not only to the surface of the land, but also to the character of the race. M. Emile Boutmy, in his interesting Philosophie de l'architecture en Grece, has shown how the temple is a triumph of the senses and the intellect, not primarily emotional, but showing in every part definite purpose and design. It also exhibits in a remarkable degree the love of balance, of symmetry, of a mathematical proportion of parts and correctness of curvature which belong to the Greek artist.
Temples
The purposes of a Greek temple may be readily judged from its plan. Primarily it was the abode of the deity, whose statue dwelt in it as men dwell in their own houses. Hence the cella or naos is the central feature of the building. Here was placed the image to which worship was brought, while the treasures belonging to the god were disposed partly in the cella itself, partly in a kind of treasury which often existed, as in the Parthenon, behind the cella. There was in large temples a porch of approach, the pronaos, and another behind, the opisthodomos. Temples were not meant for, nor accommodated to, regular services or a throng of worshippers. Processions and festivals took place in the open air, in the streets and fields, and men entered the abodes of the gods at most in groups and families, commonly alone. Thus when a place had been found for the statue, which stood for the presence of the god, for the small altar of incense, for the implements of cult and the gifts of votaries, little space remained free, and great spaces or subsidiary chapels such as are usual in Christian cathedrals did not exist (see Temple).
Here our concern is not with the purposes or arrangements of a temple, but with its appearance and construction, regarded as a work of art, and as an embodiment of Greek ideas. A few simple and striking principles may be formulated, which are characteristic of all Greek buildings:
Function
Each member of the building has one function, and only one, and this function controls even the decoration of that member. The pillar of a temple is made to support the architrave and is for that purpose only. The flutings of the pillar, being perpendicular, emphasize this fact. The line of support which runs up through the pillar is continued in the triglyph, which also shows perpendicular grooves. On the other hand, the wall of a temple is primarily meant to divide or space off; thus it may well at the top be decorated by a horizontal band of relief, which belongs to it as a border belongs to a curtain. The base of a column, if moulded, is moulded in such a way as to suggest support of a great weight; the capital of a column is so carved as to form a transition between the column and the cornice which it supports.
Proportion
Greek architects took the utmost pains with the proportions, the symmetry as they called it, of the parts of their buildings. This was a thing in which the keen and methodical eyes of the Greeks delighted, to a degree which a modern finds it hard to understand. Simple and natural relations, 1: 2, 1:3, 2:3 and the like, prevailed between various members of a construction. All curves were planned with great care, to please the eye with their flow; and the alternations and correspondences of features is visible at a glance. For example, the temple must have two pediments and two porches, and on its sides and fronts triglyph and metope must alternate with unvarying regularity.
Fluidity
Rigidity in the simple lines of a temple is avoided by the device that scarcely any outline is actually straight. All are carefully planned and adapted to the eye of the spectator. In the Parthenon the line of the floor is curved, the profiles of the columns are curved, the corner columns slope inward from their bases, the columns are not even equidistant. This elaborate adaptation, called entasis, was expounded by F. C. Penrose in his work on Athenian architecture, and has since been observed in several of the great temples of Greece.
Decoration
Elaborate decoration is reserved for those parts of the temple which have, or at least appear to have, no strain laid upon them. It is true that in the archaic age experiments were made in carving reliefs on the lower drums of columns (as at Ephesus) and on the line of the architrave (as at Assus). But such examples were not followed. Nearly always the spaces reserved for mythological reliefs or groups are the tops of walls, the spaces between the triglyphs, and particularly the pediments surmounting the two fronts, which might be left hollow without danger to the stability of the edifice. Detached figures in the round are in fact found only in the pediments, or standing upon the tops of the pediments. And metopes are sculptured in higher relief than friezes.
"When we examine in detail even the simplest architectural decoration, we discover a combination of care, sense of proportion, and reason. The flutings of an Ionic column are not in section mere arcs of a circle, but made up of a combination of curves which produce a beautiful optical effect; the lines of decoration, as may be best seen in the case of the Erechtheum, are cut with a marvellous delicacy. Instead of trying to invent new schemes, the mason contents himself with improving the regular patterns until they approach perfection, and he takes everything into consideration. Mouldings on the outside of a temple, in the full light of the sun, are differently planned from those in the diffused light of the interior. Mouldings executed in soft stone are less fine than those in marble. The mason thinks before he works, and while he works, and thinks in entire correspondence with his surroundings." 1
Sculpture
Greek architecture, however, is treated elsewhere (see Architecture); we will therefore proceed to speak briefly of the principles exemplified in sculpture. Existing works of Greek sculpture fall easily into two classes. The first class comprises what may be called works of substantive art, statues or groups made for their own sake and to be judged by themselves. Such are cult-statues of gods and goddesses from temple and shrine, honorary portraits of rulers or of athletes, dedicated groups and the like. The second class comprises decorative sculptures, such as were made, usually in relief, for the decoration of temples and tombs and other buildings, and were intended to be subordinate to architectural effect.
Dating and Attribution
Speaking broadly, it may be said that the works of substantive sculpture in our museums are in the great majority of cases copies of doubtful exactness and very various merit. The Hermes of Praxiteles is almost the only marble statue which can be assigned positively to one of the great sculptors; we have to work back towards the productions of the peers of Praxiteles through works of poor execution, often so much restored in modern times as to be scarcely recognizable.
Decorative works, on the other hand, are very commonly originals, and their date can often be accurately fixed, as they belong to known buildings. They are thus infinitely more trustworthy and more easy to deal with than the copies of statues of which the museums of Europe, and more especially those of Italy, are full. They are also more commonly unrestored. But yet there are certain disadvantages attaching to them. Decorative works, even when carried out under the supervision of a great sculptor, were but seldom executed by him. Usually they were the productions of his pupils or masons.. Thus they are not on the same level of art as substantive sculpture. And they vary in merit to an extraordinary extent, according to the capacity of the man who happened to have them in hand, and who was probably but little controlled. Every one knows how noble are the pedimental sculptures of the Parthenon. But we know no reason why they should be so vastly superior to the frieze from Phigalia; nor why the heads from the temple at Tegea should be so fine, while those from the contemporary temple at Epidaurus should be comparatively insignificant. From the records of payments made to the sculptors who worked on the Erechtheum at Athens it appears that they were ordinary masons, some of them not even citizens, and paid at the rate of 60 drachms (about 60 francs) for each figure, whether of man or horse, which they produced. Such piece-work would not, in our days, produce a very satisfactory result.
Classification
Works of substantive sculpture may be divided into two classes, the statues of human beings and those of the gods. The line between the two is not, however, very easy to draw, or very definite. For in representing men the Greek sculptor had an irresistible inclination to idealize, to represent what was generic and typical rather than what was individual, and the essential rather than the accidental. And in representing deities he so fully anthropomorphized them that they became men and women, only raised above the level of everyday life and endowed with a superhuman stateliness. Moreover, there was a class of heroes represented largely in art who covered the transition from men to gods. For example, if one regards Heracles as a deity and Achilles as a man of the heroic age and of heroic mould, the line between the two will be found to be very narrow.
Human Figures
Nevertheless one may for convenience speak first of human and afterwards of divine figures. It was the custom from the 6th century onwards to honour those who had done any great achievement by setting up their statues in conspicuous positions. One of the earliest examples is that of the tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogiton, a group, a copy of which has come down to us . Again, people who had not won any distinction were in the habit of dedicating to the deities portraits of themselves or of a priest or priestess, thus bringing themselves, as it were, constantly under the notice of a divine patron. The rows of statues before the temples at Miletus, Athens elsewhere came thus into being. But from the point of view of art, by far the most important class of portraits consisted of athletes who had won victories at some of the great games of Greece, at Olympia, Delphi or elsewhere. Early in the 6th century the custom arose of setting up portraits of athletic victors in the great sacred places. We have records of numberless such statues executed by all the greatest sculptors. When Pausanias visited Greece he found them everywhere far too numerous for complete mention.
It is the custom of studying and copying the forms of the finest of the young athletes, combined with the Greek habit of complete nudity during the sports, which lies at the basis of Greek excellence in sculpture. Every sculptor had unlimited opportunities for observing young vigorous bodies in every pose and in every variety of strain. The natural sense of beauty which was an endowment of the Greek race impelled him to copy and preserve what was excellent, and to omit what was ungainly or poor. Thus there existed, and in fact there was constantly accumulating, a vast series of types of male beauty, and the public taste was cultivated to an extreme delicacy. And of course this taste, though it took its start from athletic customs, and was mainly nurtured by them, spread to all branches of portraiture, so that elderly men, women, and at last even children, were represented in art with a mixture of ideality and fidelity to nature such as has not been reached by the sculpture of any other people.
Sculptures of Gods
The statues of the gods began either with stiff and ungainly figures roughly cut out of the trunk of a tree, or with the monstrous and symbolical representations of Oriental art. In the Greece of late times there were still standing rude pillars, with the tops sometimes cut into a rough likeness to the human form. And in early decoration of vases and vessels one may find Greek deities represented with wings, carrying in their hands lions or griffins, bearing on their heads lofty crowns. But as Greek art progressed it grew out of this crude symbolism. In the language of Brunn, the Greek artists borrowed from Oriental or Mycenaean sources the letters used in their works, but with these letters they spelled out the ideas of their own nation. What the artists of Babylon and Egypt express in the character of the gods by added attribute or symbol, swiftness by wings, control of storms by the thunderbolt, traits of character by animal heads, the artists of Greece work more and more fully into the sculptural type; modifying the human subject by the constant addition of something which is above the ordinary level of humanity, until we reach the Zeus of Pheidias or the Demeter of Cnidus. When the decay of the high ethical art of Greece sets in, the gods become more and more warped to the merely human level. They lose their dignity, but they never lose their charm.
Decorative Sculpture
The decorative sculpture of Greece consists not of single figures, but of groups; and in the arrangement of these groups the strict Greek laws of symmetry, of rhythm, and of balance, come in. We will take the three most usual forms, the pediment, the metope and the frieze, all of which belong properly to the temple, but are characteristic of all decoration, whether of tomb, trophy or other monument.
The form of the pediment is triangular; the height of the triangle in proportion to its length being about 1: 8. The conditions of space are here strict and dominant; to comply with them requires some ingenuity. To a modern sculptor the problem thus presented is almost insoluble; but it was allowable in ancient art to represent figures in a single composition as of various sizes, in correspondence not to actual physical measurement but to importance. As the more important figures naturally occupy the midmost place in a pediment, their greater size comes in conveniently. And by placing some of the persons of the group in a standing, some in a seated, some in a reclining position, it can be so contrived that their heads are equidistant from the upper line of the pediment.
The statues in a Greek pediment, which are after quite an early period usually executed in the round, fall into three, five or seven groups, according to the size of the whole. As examples to illustrate this exposition we take the two pediments of the temple at Olympia, the most complete which have come down to us, which are represented in figs. 33 and 34. The east pediment represents the preparation for the chariot race between Pelops and Oenoriaus. The central group consists of five figures, Zeus standing between the two pairs of competitors and their wives. In the corners recline the two river-gods Alpheus and Cladeus, who mark the locality; and the two sides are filled up with the closely corresponding groups of the chariots of Oenomaus and Pelops with their grooms and attendants. Every figure to the left of Zeus balances a corresponding figure on his right, and all the lines of the composition slope towards a point above the apex of the pediment.
In the opposite or western pediment is represented the battle between Lapiths and Centaurs which broke out at the marriage of Peirithous in Thessaly. Here we have no less than nine groups. In the midst is Apollo. On each side of him is a group of three, a centaur trying to carry off a woman and a Lapith striking at him. Beyond these on each side is a struggling pair, next once more a trio of two combatants and a woman, and finally in each corner two reclining female figures, the outermost apparently nymphs to mark locality. A careful examination of these compositions will show the reader more clearly than detailed description how clearly in this kind of group Greek artists adhered to the rules of rhythm and of balance.
The metopes were the long series of square spaces which ran along the outer walls of temples between the upright triglyphs and the cornice. Originally they may have been left open and served as windows; but the custom came in as early as the 7th century, first of filling them in with painted boards or slabs of stone, and next of adorning them with sculpture. The metopes of the Treasury of Sicyon at Delphi (Plate IV. fig. 66) are as early as the first half of the 6th century. This recurrence of a long series of square fields for occupation well suited the genius and the habits of the sculptor. As subjects he took the successive exploits of some hero such as Heracles or Theseus, or the contemporary groups of a battle. His number of figures was limited to two or three, and these figures had to be worked into a group or scheme, the main features of which were determined by artistic tradition, but which could be varied in a hundred ways so as to produce a pleasing and in some degree novel result.
With metopes, as regards shape, we may compare the reliefs of Greek tombs, which also usually occupy a space roughly square, and which also comprise but a few figures arranged in a scheme generally traditional. A figure standing giving his hand to one seated, two men standing hand in hand, or a single figure in some vigorous pose is sufficient to satisfy the simple but severe taste of the Greeks.
In regard to friezes, which are long reliefs containing figures ranged between parallel lines, there is more variety of custom. In temples the height of the relief from the background varies according to the light in which it was to stand, whether direct or diffused. Almost all Greek friezes, however, are of great simplicity in arrangement and perspective. Locality is at most hinted at by a few stones or trees, never actually portrayed. There is seldom more than one line of figures, in combat or procession, their heads all equidistant from the top line of the frieze. They are often broken up into groups; and when this is the case, figure will often balance figure on either side of a central point almost as rigidly as in a pediment. An example of this will be found in the section of the Mausoleum frieze shown in fig. 70, Plate IV. Some of the friezes executed by Greek artists for semi-Greek peoples, such as those adorning the tomb at Trysa in Lycia, have two planes, the figures in the background being at a higher level.
Vase Painting
The rules of balance and symmetry in composition which are followed in Greek decorative art are still more to be discerned in the paintings of vases, which must serve, in the absence of more dignified compositions, to enlighten us as to the methods of Greek painters. Great painters would not, of course, be bound by architectonic rule in the same degree as the mere workmen who painted vases. Nevertheless we must never forget that Greek painting of the earlier ages was of extreme simplicity. It did not represent localities, save by some slight hint; it had next to no perspective; the colours used were but very few even down to the days of Apelles. Most of the great pictures of which we hear consisted of but one or two figures; and when several figures were introduced they were kept apart and separately treated, though, of course, not without relation to one another. Idealism and ethical purpose must have predominated in painting as in sculpture and in the drama and in the writing of history.
We will take from vases a few simple groups to illustrate the laws of Greek drawing; colouring we cannot illustrate.
The fields offered to the draughtsman on Greek vases naturally follow the form of the vase; but they may be set down as approximately round, square or oblong. To each of these spaces the artist carefully adapts his designs. In fig. I we have a characteristic adaptation to circular form by the vase painter Epictetus.
In the early period of painting all the space not occupied by the figures is filled with patterns or accessories, or even animals which have no connexion with the subject (fig. 9). In later and more developed art, as in this example, the outlines are so figured as to fill the space.
When the space is square we have much the same problem as is presented by the metope spaces of a temple. In the case of both square and oblong fields the laws of balance are carefully observed. Thus if there is an even number of figures in the scheme, two of them will form a sort of centre-piece, those on either side balancing one another. If the number of figures is uneven, either there will be a group of three in the midst, or the midmost figure will be so contrived that he belongs wholly to neither side, but is the balance between them. These remarks will be made clear by figs. 2 and 3, which repeat the two sides of of an amphora, one of which bears a design of three figures, the other of four.
The Greek artist not only adhered to the architectonic laws of balance and symmetry, but he thought in schemes. Certain group arrangements had a recognized signification. There are schemes for warriors fighting on equal terms, and schemes which represent the defeat of one of these by the other; the vanquished has commonly fallen on his knees, but still defends. himself. There is a scheme for the leading away of a captive woman; the captor leads her by the hand looking back at her, while a friend walks behind to ward off pursuit. Such schemes, are constantly varied in detail, and often very skilfully varied; but the Greek artist uses schemes as a sort of shorthand, to show as clearly as possible what he meant. They serve the same purpose as the mask in the acting of a play, the first glance at which will tell the spectators what they have to look for.
No doubt the great painters of Greece were not so much under the dominion of these schemes as the very inferior painters of vases. They used the schemes for their own purposes instead of being used by them. But as great poets do not revolt against the restrictions of the sonnet or of rhyme, so great artists in Greece probably found recognized conventions more helpful than hurtful.
Dramatic and Mythical Figures
Students of Greek sculpture and vases must be warned not to suppose that Greek reliefs and drawings can be taken as direct illustrations of Homer or the dramatists. Book illustration in the modern sense did not exist in Greece. The poet and the painter pursued courses which were parallel, but never in actual contact. Each moved by the traditions of his own craft. The poet took the accepted tale and enshrined it in a setting of feeling and imagination. The painter took the traditional schemes which were current, and altered or enlarged them, adding new figures and new motives, but not attempting to set aside the general scheme. But varieties suitable to poetry were not likely to be suitable in painting. Thus it is but seldom that a vase-painter seems to have had in his mind, as he drew, passages of the Homeric poems, though these might well be familiar to him. And almost never does a vase-painting of the 5th century show any sign of the influence of the dramatists, who were bringing before the Athenian public on the stage many of the tales and incidents popular with the vase-painter. Only on vases of lower Italy of the 4th century and later we can occasionally discern something of Aeschylean and Euripidean influence in the treatment of a myth; and even in a few cases we may discern that the vase-painter has taken suggestions direct from the actors in the theatre.
 Fig. 2. Vase paintings |
 Fig. 3. Vase paintings |
History of Greek Art
We propose next to trace in brief outline the history of Greek art from its rise to its decay. We begin with the rise of a national art, after the destruction of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations of early Greece by the irruption of tribes from the north, that is to say, about 800 B.C., and we stop with the Roman age of Greece, after which Greek art works in the service of the conquerors (see Roman Art).
800 to 50 B.C.
The period 800-50 B.C. we divide into four sections: (I) the period down to the Persian Wars, 800-480 B.C.; (2) the period of the early schools of art, 480-400 B.C.; (3) the period of the later great schools, 400-300 B.C.; (4) the period of Hellenistic art, 300-50 B.C. In dealing with these successive periods we confine our sketch to the three greater branches of representative art, architecture, sculpture and painting, which in Greece are closely connected. The lesser arts, of pottery, gem-engraving, coin-stamping and the like, are treated of under the heads of Ceramics, Gem, Numismatics, &c., while the more technical treatment of architectural construction are dealt with under Architecture and allied architectural articles. Further, for brief accounts of the chief artists the reader is referred to biographical articles, under such heads as Pheidias, Praxiteles, Apelles. We treat here only of the main course of art in its historic evolution.
Period I. 800-480 B.C. - The fact is now generally allowed that the Mycenaean, or as it is now termed Aegean, civilization was for the most part destroyed by an invasion from the north. This invasion appears to have been gradual; its racial character is much in dispute. Archaeological evidence abundantly proves that it was the conquest of a more by a less rich and civilized race. In the graves of the period (800-600 B.C.) we find none of the wealthy spoil which has made celebrated the tombs of Mycenae and Vaphio(q.v.). The character of the pottery and the bronze-work which is found in these later graves reminds us of the art of the necropolis of Hallstatt in Austria, and other sites belonging to what is called the bronze age of North Europe. Its predominant characteristic is the use of geometrical forms, the lozenge, the triangle, the maeander, the circle with tangents, in place of the elaborate spirals and plant-forms which mark Mycenaean ware. For this reason the period from the 9th to the 7th century in Greece passes by the name of "the Geometric Age." It is commonly held that in the remains of the Geometric Age we may trace the influence of the Dorians, who, coming in as a hardy but uncultivated race, probably of purer Aryan blood than the previous inhabitants of Greece, not only brought to an end the wealth and the luxury which marked the Mycenaean age, but also replaced an art which was in character essentially southern by one which belonged rather to the north and the west. The great difficulty inherent in this view, a difficulty which has yet to be met, lies in the fact that some of the most abundant and characteristic remains of the geometric age which we possess come, not from Peloponnesus, but from Athens and Boeotia, which were never conquered by the Dorians.
The geometric ware is for the most part adorned with painted patterns only. Fig. 4 is a characteristic example, a small two handled vase from Rhodes in the Ashmolean Museum, the adornment of which consists in zigzags, circles ware. with tangents, and lines of water birds, perhaps swans. Sometimes, however, especially in the case of large vases from the cemetery at Athens, which adjoins the Dipylon gate, scenes FIG. 4. - Geometric Vase from Rhodes. (Ashmolean Museum.) from Greek life are depicted, from daily life, not from legend or divine myth. Especially scenes from the lying-in-state and the burial of the dead are prevalent. An excerpt from a Dipylon vase (fig. 5) shows a dead man on his couch surrounded by mourners, male and female. Both sexes are apparently represented naked, and are distinguished very simply; some of them hold branches to sprinkle the corpse or to keep away flies. It will be seen how primitive and conventional is the drawing of this age, presenting a wonderful contrast to the free drawing and modelling of the Mycenaean age. In the same graves with the pottery are sometimes found plaques of gold or bronze, and towards the end of the geometric age these somtimes bear scenes from mythology, treated with the greatest simplicity.
For example, in the museum of Berlin are the contents of a tomb found at Corinth, consisting mainly of gold work of geometric decoration. But in the same tomb were also found gold plates or plaques of repousse work bearing subjects from Greek legend. Two of these are shown in fig. 6. On one Theseus is slaying the Minotaur, while Ariadne stands by and encourages the hero. The tale could not have been told in a simpler or more straightforward way. On the other we have an armed warrior with his charioteer in a chariot drawn by two horses. The treatment of the human body is here more advanced than on the vases of the Dipylon. On the site of Olympia, where Mycenaean remains are not found, but the earliest monuments show the geometric style, a quantity of dedications in bronze have been found, the decoration of which belongs to this style. Fig. 7 shows the handle of a tripod from Olympia, which is adorned with geometric patterns and surmounted by the figure of a horse.
It was about the 6th century that the genius of the Greeks, almost suddenly, as it seems to us, emancipated itself from the thralldom of tradition, and passed beyond the limits with which the nations of the east and west had hitherto been content, in a free and bold effort towards the ideal. Thus the 6th century marks the stage in art in which it may be said to have become definitely Hellenic. The Greeks still borrowed many of their decorative forms, either from the prehistoric remains in their own country or, through Phoenician agency, from the old-world empires of Egypt and Babylon, but they used those forms freely to express their own meaning. And gradually, in the course of the century, we see both in the painting of vases and in sculpture a national spirit and a national style forming under the influence of Greek religion and mythology, Greek athletic training, Greek worship of beauty. We must here lay emphasis on the fact, which is sometimes overlooked in an age which is greatly given to the Darwinian search after origins, that it is one thing to trace back to its original sources the nascent art of Greece, and quite another thing to follow and to understand its gradual embodiment of Hellenic ideas and civilization. The immense success with which the veil has in late years been lifted from the prehistoric age of Greece, and the clearness with which we can discern the various strands woven into the web of Greek art, have tended to fix our attention rather on what Greece possessed in common with all other peoples at the same early stage of civilization than on what Greece added for herself to this common stock. In many respects the art of Greece is incomparable - one of the great inspirations which have redeemed the world from mediocrity and vulgarity. And it is the searching out and appreciation of this unique and ideal beauty in all its phases, in idea and composition and execution, which is the true task of Greek archaeological science.
Ionian Influences
In very recent years it has been possible, for the first time, to trace the influence of Ionian painting, as represented by vases, on the rise of art. The discoveries at Naucratis and Daphnae in Egypt, due to the keenness and pertinacity of W.M.Flinders Petrie,threw new light on this matter. It became evident that when those cities were first inhabited by Ionian Greeks, in the 7th century, they used pottery of several distinct but allied styles, the most notable feature of which was the use of the lotus in decoration, the presence of continuous friezes of animals and of monsters, and the filling up of the background with rosettes, lozenges and other forms. Fig. 8 shows a vase found in Rhodes which illustrates this Ionian decoration.
The sphinx, the deer and the swan are prominent on it, the lastnamed serving as a link between the geometric ware and the more brilliant and varied ware of the Ionian cities. The assignment of the many species of early Ionic ware to various Greek localities, Miletus, Samos, Phocaea and other cities, is a work of great difficulty, which now closely occupies the attention of archaeologists. For the results of their studies the reader is referred to two recent German works, Bohlau's Aus ionischen and italischen Nekropolen, and Endt's Beitrtige zur ionischen Vasenmalerei. The feature which is most interesting in this pottery from our present point of view is the way in which representations of Greek myth and legend gradually make their way, and relegate the mere decoration of the vases to borders and neck. One of the earliest examples of representation of a really Greek subject is the contest of Menelaus and Euphorbus on a plate found in Rhodes. On the vases of Melos, of the 7th century, which are, however, not Ionian, but rather Dorian in character, we have a certain number of mythological scenes, battles of Homeric heroes and the like. One of these is shown in fig. 9. It represents Apollo in a chariot drawn by winged horses, playing on the lyre, and accompanied by a pair of Muses, meeting his sister Artemis. It is notable that Apollo is bearded, and that Artemis holds her stag by the horns, much in the manner of the deities on Babylonian cylinders; in the other hand she carries an arrow; above is a line of water birds.
Some sites in Asia Minor and the islands adjoining, such cities as Samos, Camirus in Rhodes, and the Ionian colonies on the Conze, Black Sea, have furnished us with a mass of ware of the Ionian class, but it seldom bears interesting subjects; it is essentially decorative. For Ionian ware which has closer relation to Greek mythology and history we must turn elsewhere. The cemeteries of the great Etruscan cities, Caere in particular, have preserved for us a large number of vases, which are now generally recognized as Ionian in design and drawing, though they may in some cases be only Italian imitations of Ionian imported ware. Thus has been filled up what was a blank page in the history of early Greek art. The Ionian painting is unrestrained in character, characterized by a licence not foreign to the nature of the race, and wants the self-control and moderation which belong to Doric art, and to Attic art after the first.
Some of the most interesting examples of early Ionic painting are found on the sarcophagi of Clazomenae. In that city in archaic times an exceptional custom prevailed of burying the dead in great coffins of terra-cotta adorned with painted scenes from chariot-racing, war and the chase. The British Museum possesses some remarkable specimens, which are published in A. S. Murray's Terra-Cotta Sarcophagi of the British Museum. On one of them he sees depicted a battle between Cimmerian invaders and Greeks, the former accompanied to the field by their great war-dogs. In some of the representations of hunting on these sarcophagi the hunters ride in chariots, a way of hunting quite foreign to the Greeks, but familiar to us from Assyrian wall-sculptures. We know that the life of the Ionians before the Persian conquest was refined and not untinged with luxury, and they borrowed many of the stately ways of the satraps of the kings of Assyria and Persia.
We may compare some of the gold ornaments from Camirus in Rhodes, which show an Ionian tendency, perhaps combined with Phoenician elements. On one of them (fig. 11) we see a centaur with human forelegs holding up a fawn, on the other the oriental goddess whom the Greeks identified with their Artemis, winged, and flanked by lions. This form was given to Artemis on the Corinthian chest of Cypselus, a work of art preserved at Olympia, and carefully described for us by Pausanias.
From Ionia the style of vase-painting which has been called by various names, but may best be termed the "orientalizing," spread to Greece proper. Its main home here was in Corinth; and small Corinthian unguent-vases bearing figures of swans, lions, monsters and human beings, the intervals between which are filled by rosettes, are found wherever Corinthian trade penetrated, notably in the cemeteries of Sicily. For the larger Corinthian vases, which bore more elaborate scenes from mythology, we must again turn to the graves of the cities of Etruria. Here, besides the Ionian ware, of which mention has already been made, we find pottery of three Greek cities clearly defined, that of Corinth, that of Chalcis in Euboea, and that of Athens. Corinthian and Chalcidian ware is most readily distinguished by means of the alphabets used in the inscriptions which have distinctive forms easily to be identified. Whether in the style of the paintings coming from the various cities any distinct differences may be traced is a far more difficult question, into which we cannot now enter. The subjects are mostly from heroic legend, and are treated with great simplicity and directness. There is a manly vigour about them which distinguishes them at a glance from the laxer works of Ionian style. Fig. 12 shows a group from a Chalcidian vase, which represents the conflict over the dead body of Achilles. The corpse of the hero lies in the midst, the arrow in his heel. The Trojan Glaucus tries to draw away the body by means of a rope tied round the ankle, but in doing so is transfixed by the spear of Ajax, who charges under the protection of the goddess Athena. Paris on the Trojan side shoots an arrow at Ajax.
In fig. 13, from a Corinthian vase, Ajax falls on his sword in the presence of his colleagues, Odysseus and Diomedes. The short stature of Odysseus is a well-known Homeric feature. These vases are black-figured; the heroes are painted in silhouette on the red ground of the vases. Their names are appended in archaic Greek letters.
Black-Figured Style
The early history of vase-painting at Athens is complicated. It was only by degrees that the geometric style gave way to, or developed into, what is known as the black-figured style. It would seem that until the age of Peisistratus Athens was not notable in the world of art, and nothing could be ruder than some of the vases of Athens in the 7th century, for example that here figured, on one side of which are represented the winged Harpies(fig. 14) and on the other Perseus accompanied by Athena flying from the pursuit of the Gorgons. This vase retains in its decoration some features of geometric style; but the lotus and rosette, the lion and sphinx which appear on it, belong to the wave of Ionian influence. Although it involves a departure from strict chronological order, it will be well here to follow the course of development in pottery at Athens until the end of our period. Neighbouring cities, and especially Corinth, seem to have exercised a strong influence at Athens about the 7th century. We have even a class of vases called by archaeologists Corintho-Attic. But in the course of the 6th century there is formed at Athens a distinct and marked black-figured style. The most remarkable example of this ware is the so-called Francois vase at Munich, by Clitias and Ergotimus, which contains, in most careful and precise rendering, a number of scenes from Greek myth. One of these vases is dated, since it bears the name and the figure of Callias in his chariot (Mon. dell' Inst. iii. 45), and this Callias won a victory at Olympia in 564 B.C.
Fig. 15 shows the reverse of a somewhat later blackfigured vase of the Panathenaic class, given at Athens as a prize to the winner of a foot-race at the Panathenaea, with the foot-race (stadion) represented on it. A large number of Athenian vases of the 6th century have reached us, which bear the signatures of the potters who made, or the artists who painted them; lists of these will be found in the useful work of Klein, Griechische I V asen mit Meistersignaturen. The recent excavations on the Acropolis have proved the erroneousness of the view, strongly maintained by Brunn, that the mass of the black-figured vases were of a late and imitative fabric. We now know that, with a few exceptions, vases of this class are not later than the early part of the 5th century. The same excavations have also proved that red-figured vase-painting, that is, vase-painting in which the background was blocked out with black, and the figures left in the natural colour of the vase originated at Athens in the last quarter of the 6th century. We cannot here give a detailed account of the beautiful series of Athenian vases of this fabric. Many of the finest of them are in the British Museum. As an example, fig. 16 presents a group by the painter Pamphaeus, representing Heracles wrestling with the river-monster Achelous, which belongs to the age of the Persian Wars. The clear precision of the figures, the vigour of the grouping, the correctness of the anatomy and the delicacy of the lines are all marks of distinction.
The student of art will perhaps find the nearest parallel to these vase-pictures in Japanese drawings. The Japanese artists are very inferior to the Greek in their love and understanding of the human body, but equal them in freshness and vigour of design. At the same time began the beautiful series of white vases made at Athens for the purpose of burial with the dead, and found in great quantities in the cemeteries of Athens, of Eretria, of Gela in Sicily, and of some other cities. They are well represented in the British Museum and that of Oxford.
Early 6th Century
We now return to the early years of the 6th century, and proceed to trace, by the aid of recent discoveries, the rise of architecture and sculpture. The Greek temple in its character and form gives the clue to the whole character of Greek art. It is the abode of the deity, who is represented by his sacred image; and the flat surfaces of the temple offer a great field to the sculptor for the depicting of sacred legend. The process of discovery has emphasized the line which divides Ionian from Dorian architecture and art. We will speak first of the temples and the sculpture of Ionia. The Ionians were a people far more susceptible than were the Dorians to oriental influences. The dress, the art, the luxury of western Asia attracted them with irresistible force. We may suspect, as Brunn has suggested, that Ionian artists worked in the great Assyrian and Persian palaces, and that the reliefs which adorn the walls of those palaces were in part their handiwork. Some of the great temples of Ionia have been excavated in recent years, notably those of Apollo at Miletus, of Hera at Samos, and of Artemis at Ephesus. Very little, however, of the architecture of the 6th-century temples of those sites has been recovered. Quite recently, however, the French excavators at Delphi have successfully restored the treasury of the people of Cnidus, which is quite a gem of Ionic style, the entablature being supported in front not by pillars but by two maidens or Corae, and a frieze running all round the building above. But though this building is of Ionic type, it is scarcely in the technical sense of Ionic style, since the columns have not Ionic capitals, but are carved with curious reliefs. The Ionic capital proper is developed in Asia by degrees (see Architecture and Capital; also Perrot and Chipiez, Hist. de l'art, vii. ch. 4).
The Doric temple is not wholly of European origin. One of the earliest examples is the old temple of Assus in Troas. Yet it was developed mainly in Hellas and the west. The most ancient example is the Heraeum at Olympia, next to which come the fragmentary temples of Corinth and of Selinus in Sicily. With the early Doric temple we are familiar from examples which have survived in fair preservation to our own days at Agrigentum in Sicily, Paestum in Italy, and other sites.
Of the decorative sculpture which adorned these early temples we have more extensive remains than we have of actual construction. It will be best to speak of them under their districts. On the coast of Asia Minor, the most extensive series of archaic decorative sculptures which has come down to us is that which adorned the temple of Assus (fig. 18). These were placed in a unique position on the temple, a long frieze running along the entablature, with representations of wild animals, of centaurs, of Hercules seizing Achelous, and of men feasting, scene succeeding scene without much order or method. The only figures from Miletus which can be considered as belonging to the original temple destroyed by Darius, are the dedicated seated statues, some of which, brought away by Sir Charles Newton, are now preserved at the British Museum.
At Ephesus Mr Wood has been more successful, and has recovered considerable fragments of the temple of Artemis, to which, as Herodotus tells us, Croesus presented many columns. The lower part of one of these columns, bearing figures in relief of early Ionian style, has been put together at the British Museum; and remains of inscriptions recording the presentation by Croesus are still to be traced. Reliefs from a cornice of somewhat later date are also to be found at the British Museum.
Among the Aegean islands, Delos has furnished us with the most important remains of early art. French excavators have there found a very early statue of a woman dedicated by one Nicandra to Artemis, a figure which may be instructively compared with another from Samus, dedicated to Hera by Cheramues. The Delian statue is in shape like a flat beam; the Samian, which is headless, is like a round tree. The arms of the Delian figure are rigid to the sides; the Samian lady has one arm clasped to her breast. A great improvement on these helpless and inexpressive figures is marked by another figure found at Delos, and connected, though perhaps incorrectly, with a basis recording the execution of a statue by Archermus and Micciades, two sculptors who stood, in the middle of the 6th century, at the head of a sculptural school at Chios. The representation (fig. 19) is of a running or flying figure, having six wings, like the seraphim in the vision of Isaiah, and clad in long drapery. It may be a statue of Nike or Victory, who is said to have been represented in winged form by Archermus. The figure, with its neatness and precision of work, its expressive face and strong outlines, certainly marks great progress in the art of sculpture. When we examine the early sculpture of Athens, we find reason to think that the Chian school had great influence in that city in the days of Peisistratus. At Athens, in the age 650-480, we may trace two quite distinct periods of architecture and sculpture. In the earlier of the two periods, a rough limestone was used alike for the walls and the sculptural decoration of temples; in the later period it was superseded by marble, whether native or imported. Every visitor to the museum of the Athenian acropolis stands astonished at the recently recovered groups which decorated the pediments of Athenian temples before the age of Peisistratus - groups of large size, rudely cut in soft stone, of primitive workmanship, and painted with bright red, blue and green, in a fashion which makes no attempt to follow nature, but only to produce a vivid result. The two largest in scale of these groups seem to have belonged to the pediments of the early 6th-century temple of Athena. On other smaller pediments, perhaps belonging to shrines of Heracles and Dionysus, we have conflicts of Heracles with Triton or with other monstrous foes. It is notable how fond the Athenian artists of this early time are of exaggerated muscles and of monstrous forms, which combine the limbs of men and of animals; the measure and moderation which mark developed Greek art are as completely absent as are skill in execution or power of grouping. Fig. 20 shows a small pediment in which appears in relief the slaying of the Lernaean hydra by Heracles. The hero strikes, at the many-headed water-snake, somewhat inappropriately, with his club. Iolaus, his usual companion, holds the reins of the chariot which awaits Heracles after his victory. On the extreme left a huge crab comes to the aid of the hydra. There can be little doubt that Athens owed its great start in art to the influence of the court of Peisistratus, at which artists of all kinds were welcome. We can trace a gradual transformation in sculpture, in which the influence of the Chian and other progressive schools of sculpture is visible, not only in the substitution of island marble for native stone, but in increased grace and truth to nature, in the toning down of glaring colour, and the appearance of taste in composition. A transition between the older and the newer is furnished by the well-known statue of the calf-bearer, an Athenian preparing to sacrifice a calf to the deities, which is made of marble of Hymettus, and in robust clumsiness of forms is not far removed from the limestone pediments. The sacrificer has been commonly spoken of as Hermes or Theseus, but he seems rather to be an ordinary human votary.
In the time of Peisistratus or his sons a peristyle of columns was added to the old temple of Athena; and this necessitated the preparation of fresh pediments. These were of marble. In one of them was represented the battle between gods and giants; in the midst Athena herself striking at a prostrate foe (fig. 21). In these figures no eye can fail to trace remarkable progress. On about the same level of art are the charming statues dedicated to Athena, which were set up in the latter half of the 6th century in the Acropolis, whose graceful though conventional forms and delicate colouring make them one of the great attractions of the Acropolis Museum. We show a figure (fig. 22) which, if it be rightly connected with the basis on which it stands, is the work of the sculptor Antenor, who was also author of a celebrated group representing the tyrant-slayers, Harmodius and Aristogiton. To the same age belong many other votive reliefs of the Acropolis, representing horsemen, scribes and other votaries of Athena.
From Athens we pass to the seats of Dorian art. And in doing so we find a complete change of character. In place of draped goddesses and female figures, we find nude male forms. In place of Ionian softness and elegance,we find hard, rigid outlines, strong muscular development, a greater love of and faithfulness to the actual human form - the influence of the palaestra rather than of the harem. To the known series of archaic male figures, recent years have added many examples. We may especially mention a series of figures from the temple of Apollo Ptoos in Boeotia, probably representing the god himself. Still more noteworthy are two colossal nude figures of Apollo, remarkable both for force and for rudeness, found at Delphi, the inscriptions of which prove them to be the work of an Argive sculptor. (Plate V. fig. 76.)
From Crete we have acquired the upper part of a draped figure (fig. 23), whether male or female is not certain, which should be an example of the early Daedalid school, whence the art of Peloponnesus was derived; but we can scarcely venture to treat it as a characteristic product of that school; rather the likeness to the dedication of Nicandra is striking.
Another remarkable piece of Athenian sculpture, of the time of the Persian Wars, is the group of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogiton, set up by the people of Athens, and made by the sculptors Critius and Nesiotes. These figures were hard and rigid in outline, but showing some progress in the treatment of the nude. Copies are preserved in the museum of Naples. It should be observed that one of the heads does not belong.
Next in importance to Athens, as a find-spot for works of early Greek art, ranks Olympia. Olympia, however, did not suffer like Athens from sudden violence, and the explorations there have brought to light a continuous series of remains, beginning with the bronze tripods of the geometric age already mentioned and ending at the barbarian invasions of the 4th century A.D. Notable among the 6th-century stone-sculpture of Olympia are the pediment of the treasury of the people of Megara, in which is represented a battle of gods and giants, and a huge rude head of Hera (fig. 24), which seems to be part of the image worshipped in the Heraeum. Its flatness and want of style are noteworthy.
Among the temples of Greece proper the Heraeum of Olympia stands almost alone for antiquity and interest, its chief rival, besides the temples of Athens, being the other temple of Hera at Argos. It appears to have been originally constructed of wood, for which stone was by slow degrees, part by part, substituted. In the time of Pausanias one of the pillars was still of oak, and at the present day the varying diameter of the columns and structural irregularities bear witness to the process of constant renewal which must have taken place. The early small bronzes of Olympia form an important series, figures of deities standing or striding, warriors in their armour, athletes with exaggerated muscles, and women draped in the Ionian fashion, which did not become unpopular in Greece until after the Persian Wars. Excavations at Sparta have revealed interesting monuments belonging to the worship of ancestors, which seems in the conservative Dorian states of Greece to have been more strongly developed than elsewhere. On some of these stones, which doubtless belonged to the family cults of Sparta, we see the ancestor seated holding a wine-cup, accompanied by his faithful horse or dog; on some we see the ancestor and ancestress seated side by side (fig. 25), ready to receive the gifts of their descendants, who appear in the corner of the relief on a much smaller scale. The male figure holds a wine-cup, in allusion to the libations of wine made at the tomb. The female figure holds her veil and the pomegranate, the recognized food of the dead. A huge serpent stands erect behind the pair. The style of these sculptures is as striking as the subjects; we see lean, rigid forms with severe outline carved in a very low relief, the surface of which is not rounded but fiat.
The name of Selinus in Sicily, an early Megarian colony, has long been associated with some of the most curious of early sculptures, the metopes of ancient temples, representing the exploits of Heracles and of Perseus. Even more archaic metopes have in recent years been brought to light, one representing a seated sphinx, one the journey of Europa over the sea on the back of the amorous bull (fig. 26), a pair of dolphins swimming beside her. In simplicity and in rudeness of work these reliefs remind us of the limestone pediments of Athens (fig. 20), but yet they are of another and a severer style; the Ionian laxity is wanting.
The recent French excavations at Delphi add a new and important chapter to the history of 6th-century art. Of three. treasure-houses, those of Sicyon, Cnidus and Athens, the sculptural adornments have been in great part recovered. These sculptures form a series almost covering the century 570-470 B.C., and include representations of some myths of which we have hither to had no example. We may say here a few words as to the sculpture which has been discovered, leaving to the article Delphi an account of the topography and the buildings of the sacred site. Of the archaic temple of Apollo, built as Herodotus tells us by the Alcmaeonidae of Athens, the only sculptural remains which have come down to us are some fragments of the pedimental figures. Of the treasuries which contained the offerings of the pious at Delphi, the most archaic of which there are remains is that belonging to the people of Sicyon. To it appertain a set of exceedingly primitive metopes. One represents Idas and Dioscuri driving off cattle (Plate IV. fig. 66); another, the ship Argo; another, Europa on the bull, others merely animals, a ram or a boar. The treasury of the people of Cnidus (or perhaps Siphnos) is in style some half a century later (see fig. 17). To it belongs a long frieze representing a variety of curious subjects: a battle, perhaps between Greeks Castor and Pollux; Aeolus holding the winds in sacks. The Treasury of the Athenians, erected at the time of the Persian Wars, was adorned with metopes of singularly clear-cut and beautiful style, but very fragmentary, representing the deeds of Heracles and Theseus.
We have yet to speak of the most interesting and important of all Greek archaic sculptures, the pediments of the temple at Aegina (q.v.). These groups of nude athletes fighting Aegina, over the corpses of their comrades are preserved at Munich, and are familiar to artists and students. But the very fruitful excavations of Professor Furtwangler have put them in quite a new light. Furtwangler (Aegina: Heiligtum der Aphaia) has entirely rearranged these pediments, in a way which removes the extreme simplicity and rigour of the composition, and introduces far greater variety of attitudes and motive. We repeat here these new arrangements (figs. 27 and 28), the reasons for which must be sought in Furtwangler's great publication. The individual figures are not much altered, as the restorations of Thorwaldsen, even when incorrect, have now a prescriptive right of which it is not easy to deprive them. Besides the pediments of Aegina must be set the remains of the pediments of the temple of Apollo at Eretria in Euboea, the chief group of which (Plate II. fig. 58), Theseus carrying off an Amazon, is one of the most finely executed works of early Greek art.
480 to 400 BC
The most marvellous phenomenon in the whole history of art is the rapid progress made by Greece in painting and sculpture during the 5th century B.C. As in literature the 5th century takes us from the rude peasant plays of Thespis to the drama of Sophocles and Euripides; as in philosophy it takes us from Pythagoras to Socrates; so in sculpture it covers the space from the primitive works made for the Peisistratidae to some of the most perfect productions of the chisel.
In architecture the 5th century is ennobled by the Theseum, the Parthenon and the Erechtheum, the temples of Zeus at Olympia, of Apollo at Phigalia, and many other central shrines, as well as by the Hall of the Mystae at Eleusis and the Propylaea of the Acropolis. Some of the most important of the Greek temples of Italy and Sicily, such as those of Segesta and Selinus, date from the same age. It is, however, only of their sculptural decorations, carried out by the greatest masters in Greece, that we need here treat in any detail.
It is the rule in the history of art that innovations and technical progress are shown earlier in the case of painting than in that of sculpture, a fact easily explained by the greater ease and rapidity of the brush compared with the chisel.
That this was the order of development in Greek art cannot be doubted. But our means for judging of the painting of the 5th century are very slight. The noble paintings of such masters
as Polygnotus, Micon and Panaenus, which once adorned the walls of the great porticoes of Athens and Delphi, have disappeared. There remain only the designs drawn rather than painted on the beautiful vases of the age, which in some degree help us to realize, not the colouring or the charm of contemporary paintings, but the principle of their composition and the accuracy of their drawing.
Polygnotus of Thasos was regarded by his compatriots as a great ethical painter. His colouring and composition were alike very simple, his figures quiet and statuesque, his drawing careful and precise. He won his fame largely by incorporating in his works the best current ideas as to mythology, religion and morals. In particular his painting of Hades with its rewards and punishments, which was on the walls of the building of the people of Cnidus at Delphi, might be considered as a great religious work, parallel to the paintings of the Campo Santo at Pisa or to the painted windows of such churches as that at Fairford. But he also introduced improvements in perspective and greater freedom in grouping.
It is fortunate for us that the Greek traveller Pausanias has left us very careful and detailed descriptions of some of the most important of the frescoes of Polygnotus, notably of the Taking of Troy and the Visit to Hades, which were at Delphi. A com parison of these descriptions with vase paintings of the middle of the 5th century has enabled us to discern with great pro bability the principles of Polygnotan drawing and perspective.
Professor Robert has even ventured to restore the paintings on the evidence of vases. We here represent one of the scenes depicted on a vase found at Orvieto (fig. 29), which is certainly Polygnotan in character. It represents the slaying of the children of Niobe by Apollo and Artemis. Here we may observe a remarkable perspective. The different heights of the rocky background are represented by lines traversing the picture on which the figures stand; but the more distant figures are no smaller than the nearer. The forests of Mount Sipylus are represented by a single conventional tree. The figures are beautifully drawn, and full of charm; but there is a want of energy in the action.
There can be little doubt that the school of Polygnotus exercised great influence on contemporary sculpture. Panaenus, brother of Pheidias, worked with Polygnotus, and many of the groupings found in the sculptures of the Parthenon remind us of those usual with the Thasian master. At this simple and early stage of art there was no essential difference between fresco painting and coloured relief, light and shade and aerial perspective being unknown. We reproduce two vase-paintings, one (fig. 30) a group of man and horse which closely resembles figures in the Panathenaic frieze of the Parthenon (fig. 31); the other (fig. 32) representing Victory pouring water for a sacrificial ox to drink, which reminds us of the balustrade of the shrine of Wingless Victory at Athens.
Most writers on Greek painting have supposed that after the middle of the 5th century the technique of painting rapidly improved. This may well have been the case; but we have little means of testing the question. Such improve ments would soon raise such a barrier between frescopainting and which by its very nature must be simple and architect onic, - that vases can no longer be used with confidence as evidence for contemporary painting. The stories told us by Pliny of the lives of Greek painters are mostly of a trivial and untrustworthy character. Some of them are mentioned in this Encyclopaedia under the names of individual artists. We can only discern a few general facts. Of Agatharchus of Athens we learn that he painted, under compulsion, the interior of the house of Alcibiades. And we are told that he painted a scene for the tragedies of Aeschylus or Sophocles. This has led some writers to suppose that he attempted illusive landscape; but this is contrary to the possibilities of the time; and it is fairly certain that what he really did was to paint the wooden front of the stage building in imitation of architecture; in fact he painted a permanent architectural background, and not one suited to any particular play. Of other painters who flourished at the end of the century, such as Zeuxis and Aristides, it will be best to speak under the next period.
It is now generally held, in consequence of evidence furnished by tombs, that the 5th century saw the end of the making of vases on a great scale at Athens for export to Italy and Sicily. And in fact few things in the history of art are more remarkable than the rapidity with which vase-painting at Athens reached its highest point and passed it on the downward road. At the beginning of the century black-figured ware was scarcely out of fashion, and the masters of the severe red-figured style, Pamphaeus, Epictetus and their contemporaries, were in vogue.
The schools of Euphronius, Hiero and Duris belong to the age of the Persian wars. With the middle of the century the works of these makers are succeeded by unsigned vases of most beautiful design, some of them showing the influence of Polygnotus. In the later years of the century, when the empire of Athens was approaching its fall, drawing becomes laxer and more careless, and in the treatment of drapery we frequently note the overelaboration of folds, the want of simplicity, which begin to mark contemporary sculpture. These changes of style can only be stood Zeus the supreme arbiter. On one side of him stood Oenomaiis with his wife Sterope, on the other Pelops and Hippodameia, the daughter of Oenomaiis, whose position at once indicates that she is on the side of the newcomer, whatever her parents may feel. Next on either side are the four-horse chariots of the two competitors, that of Oenomaiis in the charge of his perfidious groom Myrtilus, who contrived that it should break down in the running, that of Pelops tended by his grooms. At either end, where the pediment narrows to a point, reclines a river god, at one end Alpheus, the chief stream of Olympia, at the other end his tributary Cladeus. Only one figure remains, not noticed in the careful description of Pausanias, the figure of a handmaid kneeling, perhaps one of the attendants of Sterope. Our engraving gives two conjectural restorations of the pediment, that of Treu and that of Kekule, which differ principally in the arrangement of the corners of the composition; the position of the central figures and of the chariots can scarcely be called in question. The moment chosen is one, not of action, but of expectancy, perhaps of preparation for sacrifice. The arrangement is undeniably stiff and formal, and in the figures we note none of the trained perfection of style which belongs to the sculptures of the Parthenon, an almost contemporary temple. Faults abound, alike in the rendering of drapery and in the representation of the human forms, and the sculptor has evidently trusted to the painter who was afterwards to colour his work, to remedy some of his clumsiness, or to make clear the ambiguous. Nevertheless there is in the whole a dignity, a sobriety, and a simplicity, which reconcile us to the knowledge that this pediment was certainly regarded in antiquity as a noble work, fit to adorn even the palace of Zeus. In the other, the western pediment (fig. 34), the subject is the riot of the Centaurs when they attended the wedding of Peirithous in Thessaly, and, attempting to carry off the bride and her comrades, were slain by Peirithous and Theseus. In the midst of the pediment, invisible like Zeus in the eastern pediment, stands Apollo, while on either side of him Theseus and Peirithous attack the Centaurs with weapons hastily snatched. Our illustration gives two possible arrangements. The monsters are in various attitudes of attempted violence, of combat and defeat; with each grapples one of the Lapith heroes in the endeavour to rob them of their prey. In the corners of the pediment recline female figures, perhaps attendant slaves, though the farthest pair may best be identified as local Thessalian nymphs, looking on with the calmness of divine superiority, yet not wholly unconcerned in what is going forward. Though the composition of the two pediments differs notably, the one bearing the impress of a parade-like repose, the other of an overstrained activity, yet the style and execution are the same in both, and the shortcomings must be attributed to the inferior skill of a local school of sculptors compared with those of Athens or of Aegina. It even appears likely that the designs also belong to a local school. Pausanias, it is true, tells us that the pediments were the work of Alcamenes, the pupil of Pheidias, and of Paeonius, a sculptor of Thrace, respectively; but it is almost certain that he was ., misled by the local guides, who would naturally be anxious to connect the sculptures of their great temple with well - known names.
The metopes of the temple are in the same style of art as the pediments, but the defects of awkwardness and want of mastery are less conspicuous, because the narrow limits of the metope exclude any elaborate grouping. The subjects are provided by the twelve labours of Heracles; the figures introduced in each metope are but two or at most three; and the action is simplified as much as possible. The example shown (fig. 35) represents Heracles holding up the sky on a cushion, with the friendly aid of a Hesperid nymph, while Atlas, whom he has relieved of his usual burden, approaches bringing the apples which it was the task of Heracles to procure.
Another of the fruits of the excavations of Olympia is the floating Victory by Paeonius, unfortunately faceless (fig. 36), which was set up in all probability in memory of the victory of the Athenians and their Messenian allies at Sphacteria in 425 B.C. The inscription states that it was dedicated by the Messenians and people of Naupactus from the spoils of their enemies, but the name of the enemy is not mentioned in the inscription. The statue of Paeonius, which comes floating down through the air with drapery borne backward, is of a bold and innovating type, and we may trace its influence in many works of the next age.
Among the discoveries at Delphi none is so striking and valuable to us as the life-size statue in bronze of a charioteer holding in his hand the reins. This is maintained by M. Homolle to be part of a chariot-group set up by Polyzalus, brother of Gelo and Hiero of Syracuse, in honour of a victory won in the chariot-race at the Pythian games at Delphi (fig. 37). The charioteer is evidently a high-born youth, and is clad in the long chiton which was necessary to protect a driver of a chariot from the rush of air. The date would be about 480 -470 B.C. Bronze groups representing victorious chariots with their drivers were among the noblest and most costly dedications of antiquity; the present figure is our only satisfactory representative of them. In style the figure is very notable, tall and slight beyond all contemporary examples. The contrast between the conventional decorousness of face and drapery and the lifelike accuracy of hands and feet is very striking, and indicates the clashing of various tendencies in art at the time when the great style was formed in Greece.
The three great masters of the 5th century, Myron, Pheidias and Polyclitus are all in some degree known to us from their works. Of Myron we have copies of two works, the Marsyas (Plate III. fig. 64) and the Discobolus. The Marsyas (a copy in the Lateran Museum) represents the Satyr so named in the grasp of conflicting emotions, eager to pick up the flutes which Athena has thrown down, but at the same time dreading her displeasure if he does so. The Discobolus has usually been judged from the examples in the Vatican and the British Museum, in which the anatomy is modernized and the head wrongly put on. We have now photographs of the very superior replica in the Lancelotti gallery at Rome, the pose of which is much nearer to the original. Our illustration represents a restoration made at Munich, by combining the Lancelotti head with the Vatican body (Plate IV. fig. 68).
Of the works of Pheidias we have unfortunately no certain copy, if we except the small replicas at Athens of his Athena Parthenos. The larger of these (fig. 38) was found in 1880: it is very clumsy, and the wretched device by which a pillar is introduced to support the Victory in the hand of Athena can scarcely be supposed to have belonged to the great original. Tempting theories have been published by Furtwangler (Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture) and other archaeologists, which identify copies of the Athena Lemnia of Pheidias, his Pantarces, his Aphrodite Urania and other statues; but doubt hangs over all these attributions.
A more pertinent and more promising question is, how far we may take the decorative sculpture of the Parthenon, since Lord Elgin's time the pride of the British Museum, as the actual work of Pheidias, or as done from his designs. Here again we have no conclusive evidence; but it appears from the testimony of inscriptions that the pediments at all events were not executed until after Pheidias's death.
Of course the pediments and frieze of the Parthenon (q.v), whose work soever they may be, stand at the head of all Greek decorative sculpture. Whether we regard the grace of the composition, the exquisite finish of the statues in the round, or the delightful atmosphere of poetry and religion which surrounds these sculptures, they rank among the masterpieces of the world. The Greeks esteemed them far below the statue which the temple was made to shelter; but to us, who have lost the great figure in ivory and gold, the carvings of the casket which once contained it are a perpetual source of instruction and delight. The whole is reproduced by photography in A. S. Murray's Sculptures of the Parthenon. An abundant literature has sprung up in regard to these sculptures in recent years. It will suffice here to mention the discussions in Furtwangler's Masterpieces, and the very ingenious attempts of Sauer to determine by a careful examination of the bases and backgrounds of the pediments as they now stand how the figures must have been arranged in them. The two ends of the eastern pediment (Plate III. fig. 65) are the only fairly well-preserved part of the pediments.
Among the pupils of Pheidias who may naturally be supposed to have worked on the sculptures of the Parthenon, the most notable were Alcamenes and Agoracritus. Some fragments remain of the great statue of Nemesis at Rhamnus by Agoracritus. And an interesting light has been thrown on Alcamenes by the discovery at Pergamum of a professed copy of his Hermes set up at the entrance to the Acropolis at Athens (Plate II. fig. 57). The style of this work, however, is conventional and archaistic, and we can scarcely regard it as typical of the master.
Another noted contemporary who was celebrated mainly for his portraits was Cresilas, a Cretan. Several copies of his portrait of Pericles exist, and testify to the lofty and idealizing style of portraiture in this great age.
We possess also admirable sculpture belonging to the other important temples of the Acropolis, the Erechtheum and the temple of Nike. The temple of Nike is the earlier, being possibly a memorial of the Spartan defeat at Sphacteria. The Erechtheum belongs to the end of our period, and embodies the delicacy and finish of the conservative school of sculpture at Athens just as the Parthenon illustrates the ideas of the more progressive school. The reconstruction of the Erechtheum has been a task which has long occupied the attention of archaeologists (see the paper by Mr Stevens in the American Journal of Archaeology, 1906). Our illustration (Plate V. fig. 75) shows one of the Corae or maidens who support the entablature of the south porch of the Erechtheum in her proper setting. This use of the female figure in place of a pillar is based on old Ionian precedent (see fig. 17) and is not altogether happy; but the idea is carried out with remarkable skill, the perfect repose and solid strength of the maiden being emphasized.
Beside Pheidias of Athens must be placed the greatest of early Argive sculptors, Polyclitus. His two typical athletes, the Doryphorus or spear-bearer (Plate VI. fig. 80) and the Diadumenus, have long been identified, and though the copies are not first-rate, they enable us to recover the principles of the master's art.
Among the bases discovered at Olympia, whence the statues had been removed, are three or four which bear the name of Polyclitus, and the definite evidence furnished by Polyclitus. these bases as to the position of the feet of the statues which they once bore has enabled archaeologists, especially Professor Furtwangler, to identify copies of those statues among known works. Also newly discovered copies of Polyclitan works have made their appearance. At Delos there has been found a copy of the Diadumenus, which is of much finer work than the statue in the British Museum from Vaison. The Museum of Fine Arts at Boston, U.S.A., has secured a very beautiful statue of a young Hermes, who but for the wings on the temples might pass as a boy athlete of Polyclitan style (Plate II. fig. 60). In fact, instead of relying as regards the manner of Polyclitus on Roman copies of the Doryphorus and Diadumenus, we have quite a gallery of athletes, boys and men, who all claim relationship, nearer or more remote, to the school of the great Argive master. It might have been hoped that the excavations, made under the leadership of Professor Waldstein at the Argive Heraeum, would have enlightened us as to the style of Polyclitus. Just as the sculptures of the Parthenon are the best monument of Pheidias, so it might seem likely that the sculptural decoration of the great temple which contained the Hera of Polyclitus would show us at large how his school worked in marble. Unfortunately the fragments of sculpture from the Heraeum are few The most remarkable is a female head, which may perhaps come from a pediment (fig. 3 9). But archaeologists are not in agreement whether it is in style Polyclitan or whether it rather resembles in style Attic works. Other heads and some highly-finished fragments of bodies come apparently from the metopes of the same temple. (See also article Argos.) Another work of Polyclitus was his Amazon, made it is said in competition with his great contemporaries, Pheidias, Cresilas and Phradmon, all of whose Amazons were preserved in the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus. In our museums are many statues of Amazons representing 5th century originals. These have usually been largely restored, and it is no easy matter to discover their original type. Professor Michaelis has recovered successfully three types (fig. 40). The attribution of these is a matter of controversy. The first has been given to the chisel of Polyclitus; the second seems to represent the Wounded Amazon of Cresilas; the third has by some archaeologists been given to Pheidias. It does not represent a wounded amazon, but one alert, about to leap upon her horse with the help of a spear as a leaping pole.
 Fig. 40. Figure of Amazon |
 Fig. 40. Figure of Amazon |
We can devote little more than a passing mention to the sculpture of other temples and shrines of the later 5th century, which nevertheless deserve careful study. The frieze from the temple of Apollo at Phigalia, representing Centaur and Amazon battles, is familiar to visitors of the British Museum, where, however, its proximity to the remains of the FIG. 40. - Types of Amazons (Michaelis.) Parthenon lays stress upon the faults of grouping and execution which this frieze presents. It seems to have been executed by local Arcadian artists. More pleasing is the sculpture of the Ionic tomb called the Nereid monument, brought by Sir Charles Fellows from Lycia. Here we have not only a series of bands of relief which ran round the tomb, but also detached female figures, whence the name which it bears is derived. A recent view sees in these women with their fluttering drapery not nymphs of the sea, but personifications of