AP Art History - Ancient Greece (Part 2 of 2)

everybody welcome to our second half of the ancient greece lecture i wanted to go over a couple of architecture terms before we got started for today just so that everybody was on the same page there are scores of terms related to ancient greek architecture and i'm not going to burden you with all of them there are names for each of these individual steps and each of the sections of the capital of the column but i've simplified it down as much as i can to make things easy so this triangular shaped uh stone at the top

is called a pediment the horizontal lentil like structure typically some sort of like decorative element is on it this is called a freeze f-r-i-e-z-e and then the lintel below it which is typically on a door is called an architrave this is a column you should all know this by now the top of the column is called the capital capitals typically were to mean like the the one at the top or the first one the uh this part of the column is called the shaft and then the part of the column that interacts with the ground

is called the base uh the this part of the temple like the first kind of step what we would call like a plinth is called a stylobate so just keep these terms in mind as we're going through so our next work is the acropolis so the acropolis is very close to one of the works that we've covered previously which is the athenian agora you'll remember this is an outdoor marketplace turned civic center um one of its main features is the fact that it has this road going through it called the panathenaik way so the panathenaic

way continues up to intersect with a lot of the major structures of the acropolis so the acropolis is describing this entire structure up here and there are lots of buildings associated with the acropolis here is a detailed rendering of those different buildings the college board only wants you to know the parthenon and the temple of athena nike in terms of structures they're going to be several freezes and sculptures within these two structures that we'll be talking about so this complex of structures is located on a hilltop you'll recall from our other units in ancient history

that height is of pretty high importance in the ancient world typically that means you are close to the gods you are close to the sky also this is the highest point in the city so you can preside over everything from this region it is a strategic location so the acropolis and most of its buildings were built after the sacking of athens by the persians so the greeks won it back under the direction of pericles after the original acropolis was destroyed so there were a couple of original structures in the acropolis um one of which was

an older temple of athena so there are ruins present today of this old temple and then there have been new things built um since the um the retaking of athens by the greeks so there's a lot of stuff that's been written by historians from this period about the acropolis and there was a lot of scandal associated with it as well so pericles basically had lots of tributes from the athenians and their greek allies and this these were funds that were used to fund the war against the persians so there were some money left after the

persians were defeated and instead of distributing that money back to the people who had given pericles money for the war treasury he basically spent it all on one giant monument in athens which of course only benefits the athenians so there were tons of people particularly people not from athens that were writing about this and super pissed about it so the parthenon which is the main structure of the acropolis was never really a temple in the strictest sense because it did not have an altar so an altar again is a place where you give offerings to

the gods or in monotheistic religions a single god but it has served as a place of worship for many civilizations that have occupied greece in the millennia since it was built including the roman catholics the byzantines and the ottomans it has sustained damage on many occasions as well particularly in the last couple hundred years so again this is just an overview of the acropolis and its various buildings will be covering the parthenon as well as the elgin marbles and the plaque of the ergosteens and then within the temple of athenian nike uh nike adjusting her

sandal so this is the a temple of athena nike or nikkei as it's pronounced in ancient greek so this is at the entrance of the acropolis right here so this was intended to be a very commemorative temple um nikkei is featured quite prominently within this particular temple she is the goddess of victory she's typically shown with wings flying in a battle scene to crown the victor so this particular temple as indicated by the narrative freezes along the the the top of the structure is basically illustrating these events that happened in the battle of marathon when

the greeks obtained victory over the persians so you've probably heard the word marathon before referring to a race that's 26.2 miles so the reason that marathons are called marathons is because there was a dude that ran 26.2 miles to let the greeks know that they had won and then he dropped dead because people aren't supposed to run 26.2 miles that's just my take so this particular building is amphera style it's not very common in ancient greek architecture you'll never see this word again probably unless you go on to study ancient greek architecture in college but

it basically means four columns in the front and four columns in the back the columns that were used in this particular temple were ionic which is pretty typical of the classical era this is a reconstruction here of the altar it probably also was painted and the paint has since worn away is the parthenon not the pantheon the pantheon which we'll cover in a couple of weeks is roman so this is the parthenon with an r so the parthenon had idealized proportions that were basically reflected in its construction eight columns on one side 17 on the

other reflecting this mathematical formula that was supposed to create an ideal proportion so the floor actually curves up it's convex so it slightly bubbles upwards that when it rains it the water doesn't collect on the surface of the the temple floor on the stylobate so we saw something similar with the white temple and ziggurat in ancient mesopotamia so the columns at the corners are also slightly thicker than the ones that are not because the greeks thought that basically when the light hit the building that there would be some distortion happening in terms of the light

would diminish the appearance of these so the building is also slightly curved on the outside i know it doesn't show it in this diagram i haven't been able to find one where it shows the the sides bowing outward a little bit it's very very slight but this is something that the greeks did to basically make it look good from as many angles as possible we see dork and ionic columns in this building and at one point it the uh pan parthenon was said to house this massive statue of athena that was about 40 feet tall

and plated in gold and ivory you can imagine that as ancient greece was taken over by different civilizations over the centuries that they would have probably plundered the statue and melted down the gold and used the ivory for other things so there's various freezes again these narrative strips of impediment sculptures that contain narratives related to athena as well as important battles that the greeks and the gods were involved in so there's some freezes that depict the trojan war there are some that depict giganto maki and amazon omaki which is basically fighting with giants and fighting

with the amazons respectively there's also a pediment on the very front that depicts athena's birth which i'll talk about in a moment and then there's also on the other side athena's contest with poseidon so um this little diagram right here basically tells you what is happening in these freezes around the parthenon so there apparently there is a scale reproduction of the parthenon in nashville tennessee of all places and it contains this fabulous reconstruction of the athena statue and there is an actual human person there for scale to give you a sense of how large this

thing was so these are the elgin marbles also known as helios horses and dionysus you'll notice that this collection of sculptures right here has a triangular composition so there were various sections of the parthenon and of the acropolis in general that were excavated and they were not excavated well um during the removal of the elgin marbles a lot of parts were broken off and destroyed because the people that were excavating it were impatient and incompetent so this is what we have left of it today so we have helios in the left corner so helios is

the god of the sun he basically has a chariot drawn by horses that carries the sun across the sky in greek mythology we have dionysus right here who is presumably drinking because he is the god of wine and then we also have demeter and persephone here who are mother and daughter and then we're not entirely sure who this is but there's a another section of the freeze that is not shown here that shows athena's birth and basically how athena was born is that zeus had a headache and then he called up hephaestus one of his

brothers to cut his head open because apparently the headache was super bad and then athena appeared fully formed and clothed and grown from his head when he was stricken with an axe so we're seeing here a lot of classical conventions of greek figure work we have these um contrapposto figures there are these naturalized slumped positions we also have wet drapery on the female figures and nudity in the male figures so this is an example that's not from the parthenon of a typical pediment sculpture as you can see this the figures are arranged in such a

way to fit inside of this triangle so on this left-hand side here we have a relief sculpture from the temple of athena nikkei this is of nikkei adjusting her sandal so this is a high release sculpture um parts of her wings have been broken off but she did have wings in this image and this is depicting a figure using wet drapery which is again very typical of the classical era this is also a fairly awkward pose you can imagine like whenever you've tried to adjust your shoe that you're falling you're practically off balance but in

this instance it's shown with grace and poise because she's a goddess this particular image right here is from the panathenaic freeze and it's called the plaque of the ergostein so this was meant to be seen from below so you would look up and see it on right above the the lintel of the building so the areas at the top are more deeply incised into the the surface so that when you're looking up at it then you can see all the detail instead of only seeing things at the bottom and the stuff at the top disappearing

so this depicts events from the panathinaik festival so remember the panathenaic festival is this annual celebration that's happening in athens that honors the patron goddess athena the ergosteins were these six women typically of highborn status that were basically their job was weaving the peplo shawl for the statue of athena remember that 40 foot tall statue right here so their job was to weave the shawl that would clothe the statue every year in this particular image we are seeing isocephalism which you'll remember is this word that means the figures are on the same ground level and

their heads are around the same height we're also seeing evidence of contrapposto as well as drapery moving on to our next artwork i know there's a lot of stuff associated with the acropolis this is the gray steel of hijiso attributed to kalimakos so we saw in the archaic period that the ancient greeks used these coros and cory statues to mark their grace remember these uh full-sized like six to six and a half foot tall sculptures of men and women um in the classical era the greeks tended to use stele that very much resemble the headstones

and statues that we might see in cemeteries in the western world today so typically these statues would have the the outer structure of a greek temple or building we have the pediment here right here and two columns the inscription above the figure describes this figure as hiji so she's the commemorated individual in this image and her father basically for women who were unmarried they were also identified by their father's name so hijiso was the daughter of a wealthy man he was wealthy enough to have this gray steel commissioned so she is sitting on this really

lavish well-made stool and she's admiring this jewelry in a jewelry box so the jewelry was painted on and not actually carved in relief on the statue so it looks like she's looking at invisible jewelry at this point in time but on the original statue the jewelry was painted so the jewelry might have represented the dowry um that was never paid because she was never married so the scene is very closed and private we can see that the figures are very much fitting inside of this space that is constructed by the architecture here so this is

reflecting a setting that hey jiso and women like her might have occupied and seldom left during their lifetime so remember from our previous section of the lecture that greek women were expected to stay inside and attend to domestic duties basically not seen or really heard in the public sphere uh unless there were specific events like the panathenaic festival so men's grace dla at the time showed them out in public or acting as warriors oftentimes they're surrounded by other figures or they're engaged in an active battle they're very public whereas settings with that are commemorating women

and girls tend to be a lot more private and isolated so this figure right here is probably a slave or a servant a lot of people tend to interpret this statue as like these two are friends or like associates but they're not really looking at each other like he jesus is only looking at her jewelry the servant is not really a person that like is portrayed as being important to her so here's a couple of other examples of gray stiley from the classical period um we're seeing lots of different ages and demographics being represented one

of my favorite grave stele is this one of a girl with her pet doves right here there's also examples of warriors like this image right here and then there's also images of athletes as well so a very common sculptural motif in ancient greece is the athlete and he's basically covering his body in olive oil and then scraping it off so this is his little boyfriend right here who's helping him cover his body and oil and then scrape it off moving on to the hellenistic period so we're going to be starting with sculpture so one of

the biggest things that you're noticing in hellenistic period sculpture is this expansion in terms of the kinds of emotions and expressions that you're seeing on figures that doesn't mean that every figure is going to have facial like a a very emotive facial expression but you're definitely going to be seeing figures that are anguished you'll see figures that are drunk or sleeping or happy or sad or whatever so we're seeing an element of humanity and humanness that is being injected into depictions of figures and we're not really seeing that in earlier greek artwork so when we're

looking at these figures right here like no matter what they're doing whether they're with their pet doves or on the battlefield or chilling out like being an athlete their facial expressions are expressions are all very placid this is consistent with a lot of the work that we're seeing in ancient greek artwork up until the classical period this very placid look but at this point in time we're starting to see more expressions and then we're also seeing figures that are not just goddesses and gods and male athletes we're seeing people that are old we're seeing people

that are young we're seeing people that are drunk despairing dying etc another thing that we're also seeing is that women are nude this is not something that we would have seen in the classical era basically it becomes like socially acceptable to have women to be depicted nude in artwork so oftentimes they're in these kind of like very like sexy poses or they're like oh i'm trying to be modest but i'm not um oftentimes the arms would kind of indicate more of these gestures but of course in sculptures like the venus de milo we no longer

have the arms to know exactly how they looked we also see negative space used more freely so remember that at the very beginning of ancient greek sculpture the sculptures tend to be very monolithic and rigid they're very obviously carved from a single piece of stone whereas when we're going into the hellenistic period we're seeing these sculptures that almost defy gravity in terms of how they're being rendered like you never would have seen this this use of negative space in a in an archaic or a classical period sculpture from ancient greece there's also a sense of

motion and movement to a lot of these sculptures oftentimes they're placed in a central area rather than against a wall they're meant to be viewed from multiple angles and oftentimes there's a sense of motion you can sense that there is a wind billowing through the winged victory right here or that this figure is turning in time and space so this is the winged victory or nikkei a salmon three so this particular sculpture was found in this area called the sanctuary of the great gods on the island of samothrace hence her name at the top of

this two-tiered fountain that was created to emulate the pro of a ship breaking through the waves so you might recognize the sculpture from the beyonce and jay-z video that we watched at the very beginning of the year as i mentioned in that lecture um the nikkei figure this this winged woman that is oftentimes carrying a tiara is a symbol of victory oftentimes she is depicted in these narrative freezes where the greeks are winning a battle and they're doing well in this case the statue might have commemorated a naval victory so victory that's happening in the

ocean so what's remarkable about the statue aside from the fact that it isn't as intact as it is for being an outdoor sculpture is the sense of movement like remember that this is marble a single slab of marble that has been artfully carved by an artist to create this very dynamic sculpture with tons of negative space we're also having this contrapposto right here so the alternating weight on the legs and in the arms um and the figure is twisting her torso to create this sense of movement and drama again as i mentioned previously there's also

a wind that is carrying along the wet drooper of the figure and blowing it back in certain areas so again this sculpture is pretty heavily damaged but the hands mat have once held a victory crown and or a welcoming or an open gesture this is the seated boxer this is what i mean by you're seeing more emotion in the um the faces of these statues you can see here that his eyebrows are pinched he he's obviously not having a great time he's also a bit of an older figure than we're typically seeing in the classical

era especially when it comes to athletes typically when we see athletes they are at the moment of victory they are flawless and almost godlike in how they carry themselves they're usually standing or holding a spear and their faces are very placid and calm but when you look at the seated boxer right here he's sitting down his shoulders are slumped his back is arched and he's looking up as if he's looking at an opponent that has bested him there's also this beautiful modeling on the face that's showing these cuts and bruises there was actually copper that

was used to create these red sections on the face to show that he's bruised and bloody his nose is broken when you look at the sides he has cauliflower ears which is basically what happens to ear cartilage when you've been in too many boxing masses matches and and sustained blunt force trauma to your ears he's he's not having a great time he also has um blood and cuts on his knuckles and his hands are wrapped in these leather thongs which are basically the ancient equivalent of boxing gloves so this is a hellenistic twist on a

classical subject that was a favorite of the greeks so this is really reflecting the hellenistic trend of evoking heavy emotion while also capitalizing upon the use of negative space we have this stone right here that is being used to as the base of the sculpture and then the sculpture is cast in bronze right here and we're seeing lots of negative space between the legs and in the arms there's a lot of signs of wear at the toes so it is thought that athletes might have kissed or touched the statue for good luck on the toes

i know kind of weird so bronze sculptures are pretty rare nowadays especially from ancient periods because most of them were melted down for scrap metal or when people became especially desperate in wartime they needed spearheads and arrowheads rather than art so this particular sculpture was found in a public bath but a lot of surviving bronzes were found in shipwrecks typically the greeks would trade for wares across the ocean inevitably some of those ships sank and a lot of statues that were metal have been found in shipwrecks or a lot of them have actually washed up

on the shore randomly in terms of architecture um after alexander the great's death we kind of see democracy shifting in a lot of areas of ancient greece uh we have lavish court cities emerging all around the mediterranean as the greek kings are basically saying like calling dibs on various pieces of land um so per gammon becomes a pretty large significant settlement in modern-day turkey we also have antioch in modern-day syria and then alexandria in modern-day egypt so all this land that have been unified under alexander the great is suddenly sectioned off after his death so

cities and buildings at this point in time are becoming more cosmopolitan in nature that means that there's like more different kinds of people different kinds of cultures and different kinds of influences that are being injected into the culture of the city so there's lots of local cultures and traditions that are integrated into elements of like existing greek architecture and because of that you're starting to see a lot of a like classical architecture rules from greece being broken and retrofitted to match these more regional styles we're often times also seeing grandiose scale and heightened opulence the

kings really like to show off how much wealth and power they have so they're going to build these massive monuments to show everybody how cool they are so this is perhaps the most famous of the hellenistic greek works of architecture it's called the great altar of zeus and athena amazingly even given how big this is this is only a small section of the altar and the altar itself is only one small section of this gigantic acropolis in pergamon and or modern day turkey so this is the section that was excavated by the germans about 150

years ago and then transported to berlin where it currently resides so there's an actual like back portion of the alt of the altar right here that contains the actual like offering spot as well as um this part of the porch right here so as you can see from the measurements on this diagram right here this this complex was quite large around 100 feet long and around 95 feet wide so again only a portion of it is in berlin right now so the altar was placed on top of a platform elevated by this massive flight of

stairs to give you a sense of scale this freeze right here which wraps around the bottom is around eight feet tall so the figures are larger than life the monument itself is supported by ionic columns this freeze which you would typically expect kind of like on the top margins above the architrave of the building is instead being transported down here and enlarged this is what i mean by the rules of architecture being broken in the hellenistic period and the freeze itself extends for almost 400 feet decorated by these high relief sculptures of these figures so

these freeze figures are pretty typical of ancient greece as in like people fighting lots of gods uh the images that are being depicted in this particular sculpture group right here is giganto maki which is basically this fancy word that means fighting or war with giants so athena is chilling out here she is grabbing the hair of this giant and basically wrestling him into the ground gaia who is the goddess of the earth is basically like why are you hurting my children and then nikkei as always is flying in and putting a tiara on athena basically

saying you did good so again what you'll notice in these particular images is that you're seeing pain and anguish in the figures that are being conquered this is not something that you would have seen in the classical era so there's lots of different artworks from this period and from the pergamon complex including this famous statue of the dying gall that are reflecting this very human emotion so this giganto maki this fight between the greeks and or the fight between the greek gods and the giants was intended to basically be a foil to the greeks um

fighting with their own enemies particularly the persians and the gulls so gaul is basically excuse me the gauls were basically the the quote unquote barbarians that live in what is now france so again massive acropolis similar to the one that we're seeing in athens that has lots of various palaces and civic buildings and commemorative statues and groups that are forming this complex i believe that the romans were also involved here because that trajan's temple so tragen was a roman emperor so in terms of painting we don't know much about painting from the hellenistic period of

greece what we do know we can typically ascertain from mosaics that were made by the romans so you'll recall that the romans really loved ancient greek artwork particularly sculptures and paintings so oftentimes they would make copies of these sculptures and paintings and then put them in their houses or their civic centers so these paintings were oftentimes copied in the form of mosaics so mosaics are images that are composed of colored stone tiles or tessare they're very small they're typically square shaped and you can use lots of different colors to create these composite images so this

entire image right here is composed of tiny little tiles as is this one right here so based on what we have of these mosaics and we can ascertain that paintings were quite grand in scale and complexity oftentimes depicting multiple figures and and foreshortening these these complex scenes where you see a foreground a middle ground and a background there's also a suggestion of like incredibly fine detail and realism so our painting quote unquote painting from the hellenistic greek period is the alexander mosaic so the alexander mosaic was actually found in pompeii what you'll recall is the

city in rome that was covered in ash and basically preserved so this mosaic was probably made off of a greek mural made around 310 bce we don't have evidence of that mural the original painting though was commissioned by a king based on historical records so this is a chaotic depiction of the battle of yesus where alexander the great who is right here is defeating the persians and forcing their king darius iii to retreat so darius iii is this dude right here you can see he has kind of a gobsmacked expression on his face he's obviously

not having a great day he's reaching out kind of like oh crap as he's seeing one of his guards being impaled right here so this piece has this incredible demonstration of perspective we're seeing many many figures going back we have this tree over here in the background that is kind of hazy in terms of the way that it's being depicted to show that it's back in space and not in the foreground we have these um this these also these leading lines that are made by the spears towards the left side of the composition and leading

us to alexander the great over here there's also these beautiful detailed highlights on the armor as well as on darius's shirt right here that are creating these two focal points in these in this incredibly chaotic and busy scene interestingly while we see this kind of gobsmacked expression on darius where he's he's obviously fearful you can see that his mouth is slightly open we see alexander the great have a very determined expression he he's not really phased by this chaos he's continuing to move forward he has a spear at the ready he's on his horse he's

ready to go and he's making eye contact with darius as if to say you're next so darius is basically on his chariot right here and he's telling his charioteer to hightail it out of there and retreat so the fact that this image was replicated in roman house adds to evidence that romans highly revered and respected the greeks as well as their military might and their artwork so this image from what i've read is composed of over 1.5 million tiles so you can imagine that a person would have to be quite wealthy to afford to have

something like this in their home