An alternative mini-history of greek art

Objects do not come with a certificate of authenticity bearing a date or place of origin. Before we can consider their art historical interest, we have to place each in time by examining and comparing its style to other objects. The shape of a work and its components, the patterns used to ornament or enhance it, and the techniques used in its creation can be distinctive criteria for defining a particular style, as can be its representation of human, animal, and vegetal subjects. As we saw in Cicero’s passage, the development of representational style can be a key distinguishing feature of the history of Greek art. Very broadly speaking, Greek art of the tenth to eighth centuries все, the Geometric period, was very simple compared to contemporary Egyptian art, but by the seventh and sixth centuries все, the archaic period, Greek artists were producing statues that were comparable in technique and style. By the fifth and fourth centuries все, the classical period, Greek art developed a consistently lifelike style that was distinctive in the ancient world. In the last three centuries of the millennium, the Hellenistic period, it developed new and even more expressive styles. It is the variation of style from one work to the next that provides a key for identifying its origin and time.

One needs to be cautious, however, about seeing an “evolution” of representational style from abstract to naturalistic as being smoothly progressive or inevitable. Greek art could change dramati­cally from one region to another, and we can find examples of Greek art in which different artistic styles are combined on the same building or even in the same work. By at least the fifth century все Greek artists were producing works that were deliberately older in style, imitating the works of ear­lier centuries in what would be called today a “retro” style. The lifelike representation of the human figure was not an artistic end in itself and we need to consider the function and context of a work to think about how its appearance might have served a purpose for the artist or the patron.

One might construct an alternative to Cicero’s grand if short narrative of Greek art by looking at smaller and more modest works, terracotta figures that are mostly found in the excavation of sanctuaries where they were votive offerings, or in tombs where they served as grave goods for the deceased. Such objects fall outside of the traditional “fine arts” of sculpture, painting, and architecture and are more typically labeled “decorative arts.” A small bronze figure like that dedicated by Mantiklos that we shall see in Chapter 7 (see Figure 7.19, page 176) would generally be placed in the category of decorative art, unlike the large bronze god that we shall see later in this chapter (see Figure 1.7). For its time, however, it is a product that would have been an expensive investment in resources and skill that was worthy of recording the name of the donor/patron on it. Whereas a Greek viewer or patron would recognize the differences in value and visual appeal between a small terracotta and large marble figure, functionally they could serve the same purpose and be invested with similar value in terms of their meaning. Greek art was not made simply for its aesthetic value, but had a social, religious, and cultural purpose that guided its form and content. Accordingly, we need to use a wider definition of what is a work of art. The Greek word for art, techne, is defined as art, skill, craft, or cunning of hand and encompasses the traditional fine arts as well as pottery, metalwork, and shipbuilding. The emphasis is upon the skill required to transform material into something else, whether stone into sculpture, wood into a ship, or words into a speech. For our purposes, we should consider art as an object or work that has been created through the application of skill to materials to create a work that has visual appeal and that serves a cultural or social function. In addition to architecture, painting, and sculpture, this means we shall be looking at jewelry, metalwork, painted and plain pottery, and terracottas throughout this book.

We begin with a terracotta woman that was excavated at the sanctuary at Olympia (Figure 1.3). This figure has been formed from clay that was then fired; the body is flat and schematic, looking
as if it were made by a cookie-cutter with blocky arms and legs. The head has been shaped more three-dimen­sionally with added clay that was worked by hand to make a chin, nose, and hairpiece. Afterward, the details of mouth, nostrils, hair, and genitals were made by incis­ing the clay with a sharp tool, and the eyes, nipples, and navel by pushing a hollow reed or similar device into the clay. The figure is recognizably human but not very life­like; it has an abstract style that reduces the components and details of the human body to simple forms. Indeed, there are many and more numerous male figures found at Olympia that differ from this “Hera-type” in only a few details like the genitals.

In order to begin to understand this artifact’s place in a history of Greek art, we need to observe it closely, ana­lyzing as we did its style - the way in which its details, features, and overall composition and form are made by the artist. The advantage of looking at works like terra­cotta figures and pottery is that they are mass-produced and artists use familiar techniques and features to make them, somewhat like handwriting. We presume that arti­facts that are similar in style are similar in time and ori­gin, and by comparing their archaeological contexts and layers across many sites, archaeologists can establish a relative sequence of their manufacture and designate each grouping as a period in a relative chronology, like Late Geometric I for the Hera-type figure. The relative sequence of chronological periods can sometimes be anchored to more specific calendar dates, or absolute chronology, by comparison with works for which there is external evidence, such as a date of destruction or foun­dation of a site or building, or the rule of a specific person like a king or tyrant. Such a chronological point is a terminus, or fixed point. For example, fragments of inscribed building accounts for the Acropolis allow us to place the Parthenon frieze above into a four-year period of 442-438 все, making this a terminus ad quem, a date at which it was made. An object buried in the foundations of the Parthenon as construction fill would date some­time before the beginning of construction of the temple structure; this terminus ante quem would then be “before 448” when construction began, but how much before that date would not be certain. Finally, a work dedicated inside the Parthenon after it was dedicated in 438 would have a terminus post quem, or date after which: “after 438”

The number of fixed chronological points for Greek art history, however, is very small and many works, like the Olympia terracotta, can only be dated very generally since there is no external evidence for specific dates at Olympia until much later. These figures, belonging to the Late Geometric I period, are generally dated from the second half of the eighth century by a process of comparison with dates established at other sites and a consideration of the

approximate passing of time or generations in the sequence of materials, working backward or forward from whatever termini exist.

The terracotta is roughly contemporary with the Iliad of Homer, but this modest figure presents a different vantage point about Greek cultural and art history from Cicero’s principles of lifelike, perfect beauty in the representation of the human form. What the “Hera-type” figure represents is not certain and it comes from a time when writing was only beginning to be readopted in Greek culture, leaving us with little in the way of contemporary records outside of literature. Since the terracottas and others like it are found at the sanctuary of Zeus, where there was also a cult to his wife Hera, they may represent the goddess as votive offerings. What is unusual about them if they are Hera, however, is that they are nude. Nudity, as we shall see in Chapter 4, becomes standard for representing the male figure in the eighth century, but female nudity develops much later as an artistic subject, and then is associated with Aphrodite, not Hera. Hera, as wife and queen, is shown clothed and regal in later art, where her identification is certain based on inscriptions or attributes. A nude Hera would not seem to be a logical precedent for these later representations based on religious and social continuity, leaving the identification of the figure open to question. If we look outside of Greece in the eighth century, however, we can find examples of female nudity in figures produced in the Levant, where fertility figures like Astarte were popular. The Olympia figures are far more abstract in style and less three-dimen­sional in their form, but perhaps there is an influence at work. These are not just idle issues about identifying subject matter, but address questions about gender, religious, social, and cultural identity that are of interest for a history of art.

A second terracotta shows a more lifelike representation of the human figure (Figure 1.4). This work, found in a tomb in the Kamiros cemetery on the island of Rhodes and acquired by the British Museum in 1861, has much more accurate details of anatomy and its proportions are closer to the human body. The folds and edges of the clothing are shown in a way that suggests the body underneath, and paint helps to distinguish the cloth from the exposed sections of the body. The woman is shown with one foot forward, and she pulls at her skirt to facilitate movement. She holds a small rabbit in her right arm, possibly making an offering or holding it as an attribute. The figure is stiff and closed in silhouette, and this kind of style is generally labeled archaic to distinguish it from the earlier geometric and the later classical periods. Figures like this are generally dated based on the style to the first half of the sixth century bce, almost two centuries later than the Hera-type figure from Olympia. This style would loosely fit the description that Cicero gives for the statues of Kanachos, “more rigid than they ought to have been if they were to imitate reality.” Indeed, the terracotta is probably even more rigid and rudimentary than were the statues of Kanachos.

Again, we can consider some questions about this modest figure. It was found in a tomb, but we have no further information about the context: what type of burial, the identity of the deceased, why it is was placed in the tomb, or whether there were other artifacts in the grave. A slender female fig­ure with braided hair is usually considered to be a young maiden reaching her adolescence, when she takes on important public religious roles and may prepare for marriage. She is an idealized figure, well dressed, modestly posed, and acting piously, but is she meant to signify a goddess or a devotee: is the rabbit an attribute or offering? If the terracotta were from the tomb of a girl, did the deceased die before she was old enough to take on these roles, making the figure a symbol of her and her fam­ily’s aspirations and feelings at her untimely loss? Is the figure meant to comfort the spirit or psyche of the deceased in the afterlife? Similar types of figures are also found in sanctuaries; was this artifact made for one purpose, or did it represent a concept that could be appropriate in different situations and could be sold to different purchasers for different purposes? Some of these questions could be answered if we knew more about its findspot, and we shall consider this further below, but this would require comparing the work to others to see if there is a consistent pattern in their function or distribution.

If we look at some figures dating another two cen­turies later, we can see that the representation of the human figure has shifted again (Figure 1.5). This col­lection of figures was found in the tomb of a girl in the Kerameikos cemetery in Athens and can be dated to about 380-370 все based on stylistic comparisons and archaeological context. While smaller and much more simplified compared to the Parthenon frieze, they do show a similar understanding of the body moving and twisting in space and performing more complex actions than the archaic terracotta. The figures were originally painted with white as well as red and blue and show a more naturalistic treatment of the human form. Both these and the archaic terracottas are ideal­ized - poised and composed in their movement and showing a perfect set of proportions and beauty, but their styles and even their ideals are quite different.

This assemblage is unusual for grave goods in its number of objects and the variety of deities. While they are not individualized portraits as we think of them, each figure is differentiated from the others in details of action, objects, and attributes, allowing us, for example, to identify Apollo with the kithara third from right, the goddess Cybele seated in the center, and a priestess or follower of Cybele on the far right, which has been adapted from an Aphrodite-type of figure lean­ing on a column by the addition of a tympanum. Other figures are more universal in subject: a dancer, a woman carrying a girl, and a woman with a bowl who might be making an offering like a priestess. As grave goods these figures function like the archaic woman from Rhodes, but the assemblage suggests that beliefs in the afterlife might be more prominent in the minds of the family and culture, and that there was some effort to distinguish this burial ritual by the number of grave goods.

One last example of our miniature survey is a ter­racotta with two seated women that was probably made in Myrina in present-day Turkey (Figure 1.6).

They are about 3 cm taller than the Apollo in the Kerameikos assemblage, and with their seated pos­ture have a slightly larger scale. These figures are even more detailed in their rendering of the human body and the way that the cloth reacts to the movement of the body. Of particular note is that the figures are wearing double layers of garments and through the manipulation of the depth and direction of folds, the artist has been able to suggest the folds of the lower layer showing through the upper layer, especially on the left knee of the right-hand figure. The women are also shown interacting in an intimate and conversational way that mimics actual human behavior more closely. These are still idealized figures, but they are shown with more realism of behavior. Whether they are Demeter and her daughter Persephone, or a more universalizing pair of women, one might say that they are both real and beautiful, as Cicero praised the art of Polykleitos and Apelles. Curiously, however, these figures are much later than these artists, dating to the second

	1.5 Terracotta figures from girl’s tomb in Kerameikos cemetery, Athens, 380-370 все. Height of Apollo with Kithara: б^Ав in (17.6 cm). Athens, Kerameikos Museum HS.264. Photo: D-DAI-ATH-Kerameikos-Neg. 07051. All rights reserved.

century все. Their type, generally called Tanagra figures after a site in Boeotia where many were made and found, represents a high point of terra­cotta figures in Greek art during the Hellenistic period, a period that Cicero does not include in his list of artists. However, at least in terms of detail, precision, and complexity of figural representation, the seated pair are far more engaging and interesting as a work of art and it could be argued that Hellenistic terracottas surpass those of the classical period. In some ways, these terracottas trace a somewhat dif­ferent history of Greek art than Cicero and give us an opportunity to consider other issues as well.