Greek sculpture

The sculpture of ancient Greece from 800 to 300 BCE took early inspiration from Egyptian and Near Eastern
monumental art, and over centuries evolved into a uniquelyGreek vision of the art form. Greek artists would reach a
peak of artistic excellence which captured the human form in a way never before seen and which was much copied.
Greek sculptors were particularly concerned with proportion, poise, and the idealised perfection of the human body,
and their figures in stone and bronze have become some of the most recognisable pieces of art ever produced by
any civilization.

Influences & Evolution

From the 8th century BCE, Archaic Greece saw a rise in the production of small solid figures in clay, ivory, and bronze.
No doubt, wood too was a commonly used medium but its susceptibility to erosion has meant few examples have
survived. Bronze figures, human heads and, in particular, griffins were used as attachments to bronze vessels such as
cauldrons. In style, the human figures resemble those in contemporary Geometricpottery designs, having elongated
limbs and a triangular torso. Animal figures were also produced in large numbers, especially the horse, and many have
been found across Greece at sanctuary sites such as Olympiaand Delphi, indicating their common function as votive
offerings.

The oldest Greek stone sculptures (of limestone) date from the mid-7th century BCE and were found at Thera. In this
period, bronze free-standing figures with their own base became more common, and more ambitious subjects were
attempted such as warriors, charioteers, and musicians. Marble sculpture appears from the early 6th century BCE and
the first monumental, life-size statues began to be produced. These had a commemorative function, either offered at
sanctuaries in symbolic service to the gods or used as grave markers.

The earliest large stone figures (kouroi - nude male youths and kore - clothed female figures) were rigid as in Egyptian
monumental statues with the arms held straight at the sides, the feet are almost together and the eyes stare blankly
ahead without any particular facial expression. These rather static figures slowly evolved though and with ever greater
details added to hair and muscles, the figures began to come to life.

Slowly, arms become slightly bent giving them muscular tension and one leg (usually the right) is placed slightly more
forward, giving a sense of dynamic movement to the statue. Excellent examples of this style of figure are
the kouroi of Argos, dedicated at Delphi (c. 580 BCE). Around 480 BCE, the last kouroi become ever more life-like, the
weight is carried on the left leg, the right hip is lower, the buttocks and shoulders more relaxed, the head is not quite so
rigid, and there is a hint of a smile. Female kore followed a similar evolution, particularly in the sculpting of their clothes
which were rendered in an ever-more realistic and complex way. A more natural proportion of the figure was also
established where the head became 1:7 with the body, irrespective of the actual size of the statue. By 500 BCE Greek
sculptors were finally breaking away from the rigid rules of Archaic conceptual art and beginning to re-produce what
they actually observed in real life.

In the Classical period, Greek sculptors would break off the shackles of convention and achieve what no-one else had
ever before attempted. They created life-size and life-like sculpture which glorified the human and especially nude male
form. Even more was achieved than this though. Marble turned out to be a wonderful medium for rendering what all
sculptors strive for: that is to make the piece seem carved from the inside rather than chiselled from the outside. Figures
become sensuous and appear frozen in action; it seems that only a second ago they were actually alive. Faces are given
more expression and whole figures strike a particular mood. Clothes too become more subtle in their rendering and
cling to the contours of the body in what has been described as ‘wind-blown’ or the ‘wet-look’. Quite simply, the
sculptures no longer seemed to be sculptures but were figures instilled with life and verve.

Materials & Methods

To see how such realism was achieved we must return again to the beginning and examine more closely the materials
and tools at the disposal of the artist and the techniques employed to transform raw materials into art.

Early Greek sculpture was most often in bronze and porous limestone, but whilst bronze seems never to have gone out
of fashion, the stone of choice would become marble. The best was from Naxos - close-grained and sparkling, Parian
(from Paros) - with a rougher grain and more translucent, and Pentelic (near Athens) - more opaque and which turned a
soft honey colour with age (due to its iron content). However, stone was chosen for its workability rather than its
decoration as the majority of Greek sculpture was not polished but painted, often rather garishly for modern tastes.
Marble was quarried using bow drills and wooden wedges soaked in water to break away workable blocks. Generally,
larger figures were not produced from a single piece of marble, but important additions such as arms were sculpted
separately and fixed to the main body with dowels. Using iron tools, the sculptor would work the block from all
directions (perhaps with an eye on a small-scale model to guide proportions), first using a pointed tool to remove more
substantial pieces of marble. Next, a combination of a five-claw chisel, flat chisels of various sizes, and small hand drills
were used to sculpt the fine details. The surface of the stone was then finished off with an abrasive powder (usually
emery from Naxos) but rarely polished. The statue was then attached to a plinth using a lead fixture or sometimes
placed on a single column (e.g. the Naxian Sphinx at Delphi, c. 560 BCE). The finishing touches to statues were added
using paint. Skin, hair, eyebrows, lips, and patterns on clothing were added in bright colours. Eyes were often inlaid
using bone, crystal, or glass. Finally, additions in bronze might be added such as spears, swords, helmets, jewellery, and
diadems, and some statues even had a small bronze disc (meniskoi) suspended over the head to prevent birds from
defacing the figure.

The other favoured material in Greek sculpture was bronze. Unfortunately, this material was always in demand for re-
use in later periods, whereas broken marble is not much use to anyone, and so marble sculpture has better survived for
posterity. Consequently, the quantity of surviving examples of bronze sculpture (no more than twelve) is not perhaps
indicative of the fact that more bronze sculpture may well have been produced than in marble and the quality of the few
surviving bronzes demonstrates the excellence we have lost. Very often at archaeological sites we may see rows of bare
stone plinths, silent witnesses to art’s loss.

Roman sculpture

Roman Sculpture, with artists from across a huge empireand changing public tastes over centuries, is above all else,
remarkable for its sheer variety and eclectic mix. The art form blended the idealised perfection of earlier Classical Greek
sculpture with a greater aspiration for realism and absorbed artistic preferences and styles from the East to create
images in stone and bronze which rank among the finest works from antiquity. Aside from their own unique
contribution, Roman sculptors have also, with their popular copies of earlier Greek masterpieces, preserved for
posterity invaluable works which would have otherwise been completely lost to world art.

Evolution

As with Greek sculpture, the Romans worked stone, precious metals, glass and terracotta but favoured bronze and
marble above all else for their finest work. However, as metal has always been in high demand for re-use, most of the
surviving examples of Roman sculpture are in marble.

The Roman taste for Greek and Hellenistic sculpture meant that once the supply of original pieces had been exhausted
sculptors had to make copies and these could be of varying quality depending on the sculptor’s skills. Indeed, there was
a school specifically for copying celebrated Greek originals in Athens and Rome itself, the latter headed by Pasiteles
along with Archesilaos, Evander, Glykon and Apollonios. An example of the school’s work is the 1st century BCE marble
statue of Orestes and Electra, now in the archaeological museum of Naples. Roman sculptors also produced miniaturised
copies of Greek originals, often in bronze, which were collected by art-lovers and displayed in cabinets in the home.

Roman sculpture did, however, begin to search for new avenues of artistic expression, moving away from
their Etruscan and Greek roots, and, by the mid-1st century CE, Roman artists were seeking to capture and create
optical effects of light and shade for greater realism. By later antiquity, there was even a move towards impressionism
using tricks of light and abstract forms.

Sculpture also became more monumental with massive, larger-than-life statues of emperors, gods and heroes such as
the huge bronze statues of Marcus Aurelius on horseback or the even bigger statue of Constantine I (only the head,
hand and some limbs survive), both of which now reside in the Capitoline Museums of Rome. Towards the end of the
Empire, sculpture of figures tended to lack proportion, heads especially were enlarged, and figures were most often
presented flatter and from the front, displaying the influence of Eastern art.
It is also important to distinguish two quite distinct ‘markets’ for Roman sculpture, the first was the aristocratic ruling
class taste for more classical and idealistic sculpture whilst the second, more provincial, ‘middle-class’ market seems to
have preferred a more naturalistic and emotional type of sculpture, especially in portraiture and funerary works
(although the limitations of artists away from the larger urban centres may also have had something to do with the
differences in styles). An interesting comparison of the two approaches may be found in Trajan’s Column in Rome and a
trophy at Adamklissi commemorating the same Dacian campaigns.

Statuary & Portrait Sculpture

As with the Greeks, the Romans loved to represent their gods in statues. When Roman emperors began to claim divinity
then they too became the subject of often colossal and idealised statues, often with the subject portrayed with an arm
raised to the masses and striking a suitably authoritative stance as in the Augustus of the Prima Porta.

Statues could also be used for decorative purposes in the home or garden and they could be miniaturized, especially in
precious metals such as silver. One type of such statues which were peculiar to the Romans was the Lares Familiares.
These were usually in bronze and represented the spirits which protected the home. They were typically displayed in
pairs in a niche within the house and are youthful figures with arms raised and long hair who typically wear a tunic and
sandals.

However, it is in the specific area of portraiture that Roman sculpture really comes to the fore and differentiates itself
from other artistic traditions. The realism in Roman portrait sculpture may well have developed from the tradition of
keeping wax funeral masks of deceased family members in the ancestral home which were worn by mourners at family
funerals. These were very often accurate depictions where even the defects and less flattering physical aspects of a
particular face were recorded. Transferred to stone, we then have many examples of private portrait busts which move
away from the idealised portraits of earlier sculpture and present the subject as old, wrinkled, scarred or flabby; in short,
these portraits tell the truth.

Once again, for official portraits of the ruling elite, in contrast to lower class subjects, the subject continued to be
idealised, for example, the statue of Augustus as Pontifex Maximus has the emperor looking much more youthful and
fresh-faced than he actually was at the time of sculpting (end of the 1st century BCE). However, by the time
of Claudius in the mid 1st century CE, and even more so under Nero and the Flavian emperors, official portraiture on
occasion strove for more realism. In the same period female portraits are also notable for their elaborate hairstyles and
they no doubt were prime instigators in fashion trends.

Under Hadrian there was a return to idealised images such as in Classical Greek sculpture (e.g. the colossal statue of
Antinous, c. 130 CE) but there was an important innovation in terms of a more natural rendering of the eyes in marble
works. Previously, pupil and iris had only been painted on to the sculpture but now these also came to be sculpted as
had been the case in bronze and terracotta works.

Realism once more returned with the Antonines, and such features as crow’s-feet and flabbiness return. There was also
at this time a trend for polishing the skin parts of the marble which then contrasted, in particular, with the hair, which
was deeply carved and left unpolished. In addition, in this period it became fashionable to have a complete torso rather
than just the shoulders below the head. (See, for example, the bust of Commodus asHercules, c. 190-2 CE in the
Capitoline Museum, Rome). The bust of Caracalla (c. 215 CE) in the same museum is another good example of the
abandonment of idealism in elite portraiture for the emperor has a closely cropped beard, determined turn of the head,
taught mouth and mean-looking eyes which clearly betray his character.

By the late Empire elite portraiture becomes formulaic and abandons all attempts at realistically capturing the physical
attributes of the subject. Representation of emperors such as Diocletian, Galerius and Constantine I (see the colossal
bronze head in the Capitoline Museums), for example, have hardly any distinguishable physiognomic features, perhaps
in an attempt to assert the emperor’s distance from ordinary mortals and proximity to the divine.