1. Ancient Greece Chapter 5

2. What do you think the ideal male and female
bodies should look like?
This question can be traced back to ancient
Greece. Greek sculptors tried to create ideal
images of beauty for both men and women. The
statues they carved created “classic” models of
beauty that link ancient Greece to Renaissance
Italy and even to contemporary celebrity
magazines.

3. The importance of the art of the ancient Greeks
is not limited to their quest to define ideal male
and female proportions. Greek architecture,
sculpture, and vase paintings have all had an
influence on subsequent Western art
and culture.

4. Geometric and Orientalizing Archaic Classical Hellenistic
Ancient Greek art is a complex topic. Unlike the
art of the ancient Egyptians, Greek art did not
remain static. As a result, art historians have
traditionally divided ancient Greek into four
stylistic periods:
Geometric and Orientalizing
Archaic
Classical
Hellenistic

5. GEOMETRIC PERIOD

6. Mycenaean civilization collapsed around
1200 B.C.E. As population declined and the arts
of reading and writing were lost, Greece plunged
into a four-hundred year period known as the Dark
Ages of Greece. After four long centuries of
decline, Greece slowly began to recover. Farmers
settled in city-states, writers preserved Homer’s
epics, and artists created a new Geometric
style of art.

7. As its name implies, the Geometric style
featured triangles, concentric circles, and
“checkerboard” shapes that were used for both
ornamental and human figures.

8. ORIENTALIZING PERIOD

9. By the seventh century B. C. E
By the seventh century B.C.E., painters in major pottery centers in Greece had moved away from
the dense linear decoration of the Geometric style, preferring more open compositions built
around large motifs- real and imaginary animals, abstract
plant forms, and human figures.

10. The source of these motifs can be traced to the
arts of the Near East and Egypt. Greek painters
did not simply copy the work of Eastern artists,
they drew on work in a variety of media-
sculpture, metalwork, and textiles
to invent an entirely new approach to painting
vessels.

11. ARCHAIC PERIOD

12. The Archaic period does not deserve its name.
“Archaic” means “old-fashioned” even “primitive”
and the term was chosen by art historians who
wanted to stress what they perceived as a contrast
between the undeveloped art of this time and the
subsequent Classical period, once thought to be
the most admirable and highly developed phase
of Greek art.

13. But the Archaic period was a time of great new
achievement in Greece. In literature, Sappho
wrote her inspired poetry on the island of Lesbos,
while on another island the legendary storyteller,
Aesop, crafted his animal fables. Artists and
architects shared in the growing prosperity as
city councils and wealthy individuals sponsored
the creation of extraordinary sculpture and fine
ceramics and commissioned elaborate civic and
religious buildings in cities and sanctuaries.

14. Sculpture
Comparison
Handout

15. Video on Kouros, New York
6 min
Class quiz

16. Anavysos, Kroisos
5 min.
Class quiz

17. Complete Sculpture Comparison Handout
Kouros (not cue card)
Kroisos (AP)

18. Kouros

19. Kroisos

20. Peplos Kore (AP)
Kore from Acropolis
5 min
Class quiz

21. Moscophoros (Calf- bearer) IB
How does this statue differ from earlier Greek statues and those of Egypt and Mesopotamia?
And that seems to signify what?

22. Sophilos, The Wedding Procession of Peleas and Thetis (IB)
Annotate Handout

23. Berlin Painter (IB)
Flourished 500–460 bce, Athenian vase painter who, is considered one of the outstanding vase painters of the Late Archaic period. He is best known as the decorator of an amphora now in Berlin that depicts Hermes and a satyr. He has made over 200
vases.

24. Stylistically, the Berlin amphora is decorated on a new principle of design. It had been customary to frame the groups of figures on each side with pattern bands. The Berlin Painter eliminated this frame, allowing the figures to dominate. The unusually large figures stand out sharply against the amphora’s black background and, as in many of his other works, are characterized by refined grandeur.

25. Capitals & Orders
Doric
Corinthian Ionic

26. What type of column do I have in my backyard?

27. Temple of Aphaia & Plan (IB) Archaic period transition to classical

28. Video on Temple of Aphaia, Aegina and Dying Warrior
15 min.

29. West Pediment of the Temple of Aphaia (IB)
Dying Warrior
from west
pediment
Dying Warrior from east pediment

30. Temple of Aphaia