middle helladic to the late helladic i shaft graves 19 страница

10.24 Attic red-figure epinetron attributed to the Eretria Painter, c. 425-420 все. 65/16 in (16 cm). Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1629. Bridal reception of Alkestis (epaulia). Photo: National Archaeological Museum, Athens (Giannis Patrikianos) © Hellenic Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund.

scene of two muses on Mount Helikon, we see that the standing figure is in a contrapposto pose, with her weight on her left leg and the right leg turned outward toward the viewer. The second muse is seated on a ledge and plucks a lyre. She wears a yellow chiton under a red mantle, and the drapery of both figures has a sense of movement as well as the mass under it, created in part through the traces of the brown contour lines under the paint that define the body’s features. Details of the toes, fingers, and face show a mastery of different viewing angles, including a frontal foot with heavy foreshortening, and the eye is now drawn in a completely profile view. These figures have the same poise and grandeur as the participants in the Parthenon procession and figures found in the later grave stelai, as would be appropriate for a funerary object like a white- ground lekythos.

A contemporary red-figure work is the skyphos by the Penelope Painter that we have seen before, with Penelope and her son Telemachos on one side (see Figure 5.19, page 118) and Odysseus returning to Ithaca and being recognized by his nurse on the other (see Figure 9.9, page 221). Penelope crosses her legs while seated and rests her head against her hand; her face and shoulders are in a three-quarter view that suggests real volume and certainly pathos as she waits for Odysseus. Telemachos’s pose is assured and convincing like the Doryphoros. An interesting touch is the red slip that has been hatched on the surface of the textile in front of the line defining his profile. This would seem to be a shadow cast from a light source in front and to the left. This is rare, but helps to suggest the recession into space.

As in sculpture, the last quarter of the century sees the development of a wet drapery style, the florid style, and a more delicate sensibility in the figures. The epinetron attributed to the Eretria Painter depicts on the side the mythological bride Alkestis receiving her friends the day after her wedding (the epaulia) (Figure 10.24). The figures relax within the household in languorous poses, isolated from the cares of the world outside. The work is a little earlier than the Nike from the Nike Temple parapet (see Figure 10.18), but is similar in its effort to show a thin garment that clings to a body and reveals the anatomy underneath. Since red-figure details have to be drawn by contour lines, the florid style in vase painting results in a web of lines that makes the shape of the breasts awkward and can obscure the contours of the limbs more than in sculpture. The style is sometimes more effective with partly clad figures like the Gigantomachy in the late fifth-century pelike in Chapter 9 (Figure 9.3, page 214).

Vitruvius (De Arch. 7.11) credits the invention of skenographia, or spatial perspective, to the painter Agatharchos, who was active in the second half of the fifth century. He developed a system for painting stage scenery that was similar to one-point linear perspective and included the diminishment of scale with distance. As with the painting of Polygnotos, none of his work survives, nor does the treatise that he wrote on the subject. As a system being used in large public spectacles like theatrical dramas, how­ever, it would become part of the visual vocabulary of the classical period and was refined by other painters. It is difficult to find detailed traces of such a system in vase painting, but a late fifth-century lekythos shows the habit of a perspective view in its drawing of a tomb and its offerings (Figure 10.25). A woman, probably the deceased, sits in front of the tomb on its plinth. Behind her rises the front of a stone stele with a cornice molding on top. On the top ledge is set an obelisk-shaped slab and three vases, including two stone alabastra on the ends. The bottoms of the vessels are cut off by the cornice, since from a vantage point from below, it would cut off that view. The mouths of the alabastra are foreshort­ened as ovals and are seen from below, but tilted so that they remain parallel to the ground plane. The drawing is only an approximation of a perspective system that was sketched rather than plotted on the picture surface, but it gives a hint of how skenographia could define a picture space in late fifth-century painting that worked with foreshortening and skiagraphia to create a three-dimensional picture.

To conclude, we might consider that Greek art has changed from its emphasis upon schemata and formulas in the sixth century to the exploration of mimesis in fifth-century art. Pictures develop means for representing a three-dimensional world on a flat surface, while buildings and sculpture adjust their proportions to create a visual effect upon the viewer. Artists articulate the human body as one in dynamic motion and balance even when at rest, and represent nuances of facial expression, gaze, and gesture to reveal the pathos of the person being represented. Together, these express the ethos of a figure, particularly when the narrative moment focuses on an instant of choice and decision. In these ways, fifth-century visual art shared similar concerns and themes with Greek drama and the other mimetic arts.

been illegally procured from an Etruscan tomb north of Rome, but counterclaims of another provenance were offered by the dealer. With the discovery of documentation for the krater in the warehouse of a middleman who acquired objects from tombaroli or tomb raiders and provided them to dealers, it was clear that the work was acquired contrary to the guidelines of the UNESCO Convention. Finally, in 2008, the museum sent the krater and other works back to Italy. A constructive development, however, was the offer by the Italian government to lend signifi­cant works to the museum as part of a long-term agreement.

This act of diplomacy, in light of the decades of difficulties, claims, and counterclaims, is encouraging for a I ong-term solution. It is per­haps worthwhile, then, to recall the law court scene on the Shield of Achilles (Il. 18.497-501) mentioned in Chapter 4 (see p. 70). As Homer describes the debate over a murder and its consequences, it is the polis that is to decide the outcome. In other words, one might say that the solution to problems concerning key monu­ments of cultural patrimony needs to be decided politically. Although politics has become a dirty word today in many countries, in the context of the polis, debate and compromise are vital for developing a global solution to the issue of cultural property and patrimony. The UNESCO Convention of 1970 is one example of a positive step toward protecting and preserving cultural property, and national laws and museum practices are gradually catching up to fulfill its principles. Dealing with what happened before 1970 will require even greater efforts by the next generation.

references

Felch, J. and R. Frammolino. 2011. Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World’s Richest Museum. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Fitz Gibbon, K. 2005. “The Elgin Marbles: A Summary.” In K. Fitz Gibbon, ed. Who Owns the Past? Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and the Law, 109-121. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Holloway, R. R. 2006. “The Tomb of the Diver” American Journal of Archaeology 110, 365-388.

Hurwit, J. M. 1989. “The Kritios Boy: Discovery, Reconstruction, and Date.” American Journal of Archaeology 93, 41-80.

Mattusch, C. C. 1996. Classical Bronzes: The Art and Craft of Greek and Roman Statuary. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Morris, S. B. 1992. Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Neer, R. 2010. The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pollitt, J. J. 1972. Art and Experience in Classical Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pollitt, J. J. 1990. The Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pollitt, J. J. 1997. “The Meaning of the Parthenon Frieze.” In D. Buitron-Oliver, ed. The Interpretation of Architectural Sculpture in Greece and Rome. Studies in the History of Art, 49, 51-65. Hanover/London: National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Stansbury-O’Donnell, M. D. 1999. Pictorial Narrative in Ancient Greek Art. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

Stewart, A. F. 2008a. “The Persian and Carthaginian Invasions of 480 B.C.E. and the Beginning of the Classical Style: Part 1, The Stratigraphy, Chronology, and Significance of the Acropolis Debris” American Journal of Archaeology 112, 377-412.

Stewart, A. F. 2008b. “The Persian and Carthaginian Invasions of 480 B.C.E. and the Beginning of the Classical Style: Part 2, The Finds from Other Sites in Athens, Attica, Elsewhere in Greece, and on Sicily; Part 3, The Severe Style: Motivations and Meaning.” American Journal of Archaeology 112, 581-616.

Stewart, A. F. 2008c. Classical Greece and the Birth of Western Art. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War, tr. Richard Crawley. 2009. Project Gutenberg eBook 7142: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/7142/7142-h/7142-h.htm (last accessed May 11, 2014).

UNESCO. 1970. Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property 1970. Paris: UNESCO, November 14, 1970: http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev. php-URL_ID=13039&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (last accessed May 11, 2014).

Watson, P and C. Todeschini. 2007. The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities, from Italy’s Tomb Raiders to the World’s Greatest Museums. New York: Public Affairs.

Williams, D. 2013. The East Pediment of the Parthenon: From Perikles to Nero. Bulletin ofthe Institute of Classical Studies Supplement 118. London: Institute of Classical Studies.

Younger, J. G. and P Rehak. 2009. “Technical Observations on the Sculptures from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.” Hesperia 78, 41-105.

further reading

Hurwit, J. 2004. The Acropolis in the Age of Pericles. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Mattusch, C. C. 1996. Classical Bronzes: The Art and Craft of Greek and Roman Statuary. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Oakley, J. H. 2004. Picturing Death: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pollitt, J. J. 1972. Art and Experience in Classical Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robertson, M. 1992. The Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stansbury-O’Donnell, M. D. 2014. “Reflections of Monumental Painting in Greek Vase Painting of the 5th and 4th Centuries BC” In J. J. Pollitt, ed. The Cambridge History of Painting in the Classical World, 1143-1169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stewart, A. F. 2008. Classical Greece and the Birth of Western Art. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

the production of greek art and its markets

Timeline

Production: Architecture Production: Architectural Sculpture Production: Sculpture Production: Pottery Wares, Markets, and Distribution Artists and Workshops Textbox: The Value of Greek Art References Further Reading

A History of Greek Art, First Edition. Mark D. Stansbury-O’Donnell.

© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

timeline

s we saw in the last chapter, the Parthenon was part of an ambitious rebuilding program undertaken by the leader of Athens, Perikles, and supervised by Pheidias (see Figure 10.10, page 247). In addition to the buildings on and around the Acropolis, the Athenian building program between 455 and 430 bce included other temples, such as the Hephaisteion in the Agora (see Figure 5.6, page 105), the Telesterion in Eleusis, the Temple of Poseidon on Cape Sounion, the Temple of Athena at Pallene, and the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous. This was a highly unusual amount of construction for a single polis in a period of just a few decades. Financing the program was made possible by the revenue from the silver mines at Laurion, which had in wartime paid for the large naval fleet that was the foundation of Athenian military power. According to his Roman-era biographer Plutarch, Perikles also appropriated funds from the Delian Treasury, which was the com­mon defense fund for the alliance of states against the Persians, to the consternation of and in the face of futile protests from the tributary states (Plutarch, Vita Perikles 12).

Large building projects, ancient as well as modern, generate costs, benefits, and debates, and it is important to consider the economics of art and architecture in addition to their design, function, and meaning. A larger than average temple made out of marble like the Parthenon would cost much more than the nearly contemporary and smaller Temple of Concord at Akragas/Agrigento (see Figure 7.5, page 161), which was more typical in size and used softer sandstone, making it a much less expensive public undertaking. Considering the cost and organization of production can help us appreciate the investment made in a building and its decoration, and understand the source of pride or meaning that it could represent for the ancient citizen. Indeed, according to Thucydides, this is what Perikles had prompted the citizens of Athens to do, to look upon their city as its lovers, as we saw in the last chapter. We can extend this examination from civic projects to the production and distribution of objects bought and used by individuals, such as pots, to gauge their value within Greek culture. Whereas an attributed pot today could sell for $1,000,000 and more, its original value was quite different, as we shall see. Attempting to calculate past values helps us put these works into context.

In this chapter we will consider aspects of production first, focusing on buildings and then sculpture and pottery. Greek art, as we have seen, circulated widely, so that its users were often far from its producers. We will look at the distribution of both sculpture and pottery, not just as a way of spreading a style or narrative, but also as part of the commercial network that tied artist and viewer together. Finally, artists themselves were mobile, and we will explore some examples of artists who moved into and away from Greece, as well as the status of the artist in antiquity.

PRODUCTION: ARCHITECTURE

The documentation of building costs during the first millennium bce is meager, but there are two important sets of inscriptions that provide information on the organization and cost of construction. We have already noted the fragmentary records for the Acropolis that provide us with precise dating for the Parthenon, but the tablets also record some of the costs of specific items. A more complete set of inscriptions was found at Epidauros, which recorded contracts and expenditures for the fourth-century building program there, including the Temple of Asklepios, which was built in a five-year period about 370 bce. As can be seen in the recon­struction of the site in the next chapter (see Figure 12.1, page 289), the temple was of a modest size, 11.76 meters wide and 23.06 meters long with a 6 x 11 peristyle, and was built of limestone. Based on the inscriptions, the temple was constructed in a sequence of phases over this five-year period (Younger and Rehak 2009):

Phase/Year 1: quarrying, colonnade foundations Phase/Year 2: construction of colonnade, foundations of cella Phase/Year 3: construction of cella

Phase/Year 4: construction of ceiling and roof, installation of doors and floors

Phase/Year 5: fluting of columns, roof tiles, finishing work

This sequence would be typical of other temples, but the length of time would vary by size, mate­rials, and financing. By comparison, the Epidauros temple is smaller than the Temple of Concord at Akragas/Agrigento (16.93 m x 39.42 m) (see Figure 7.5, page 161), but that structure was made with softer sandstone that was available almost within sight of the temple, whereas the limestone for Epidauros had to be carted from nearby Corinth. The Hephaisteion in the Athenian Agora (see Figure 5.6, page 105) was also larger (13.71 m x 31.77 m), but its use of marble, a harder stone to quarry and finish than limestone, would have required more labor and expense.

For a much larger building like the Parthenon (30.88 m x 69.51 m) that was also made of marble, a longer construction period was necessary, even with lavish resources. The building accounts for the Acropolis tell us that the work was mostly completed, except for the pedimental sculptures, in ten years, between 447 and 438 все. This ten-year period for construction was probably typical for other large projects like the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (27.68 m x 64.12 m) or the Temple of Hera II at Poseidonia/Paestum (24.26 m x 59.97 m), even though these buildings used limestone rather than marble for the structure. Based on written accounts, the Temple of Zeus was begun after 470 все and the acroteria dedicated about 457, so a ten-year period seems quite reasonable for the construction.

The Epidauros accounts are valuable not only for understanding the phases and timing of con­struction, but also for the costs associated with the different activities. Most of the costs are associ­ated with labor rather than ready-made materials: quarrying and shaping the stone, transportation from the quarry to the building site, construction of the building, and finishing work. It is estimated that, typically, about half of the labor costs for a temple are consumed by quarrying and one-fourth by transportation. The refinements that we see in the architectural details and sculptural programs of a temple, as well as its painting, thus consume a small part of the overall building costs, despite receiving the bulk of art historians’ attention.

According to the accounts at Epidauros, the Temple of Asklepios cost a total of 23-24 talents. Translating ancient monetary units into modern equivalents is very difficult. A talent was a specific weight; this varied by polis, but in Athens it was about 26 kilograms, and as a monetary unit it would be equivalent to that weight of silver. One talent would equal 6,000 drachmas, each drachma weigh­ing about 4.3 grams of silver, and a drachma could be subdivided into 6 obols. The price and, more important, the purchasing power of silver in antiquity are not the same as now, making direct com­parison by the value of silver misleading. An alternative approach would be to look at the drachma as a measure of household income since workers and contractors, like those at Epidauros, were paid in drachmas. According to sources, a drachma was about the wage paid for a single day of labor; one-half drachma was the amount set for jury pay in Athens under Perikles, which allowed its citi­zens to participate in the judicial process without undue financial sacrifice in lost wages. Allowing about sixty days for festivals and rest, a household income would be around 300 drachmas per year. If we consider that 300 drachmas represented the median income of an ancient Greek household, we could compare it to the median household income today. In the United States this is currently about $50,000/year, so that 300 dr = $50,000, making one drachma equal to about $167, or some­where between $150 and $180. A talent, 6,000 drachmas, would be about the same as $1,000,000 ($167 x 6,000 dr).

The temple at Epidauros cost 23-24 Aiginetan talents, so for comparison to the Attic monetary standards used in the Parthenon, this would be about 34 Attic talents. The total cost of the Temple of Asklepios, then, would be about $34,000,000. While this comparison is only a rough approximation, it does give us an idea of the relative cost of a building like the temple at Epidauros, and a guide for other temples without building accounts. While the Temple of Concord at Akragas/Agrigento was larger than Epidauros, it was also made of a softer material (sandstone) and the quarry was much closer to the site, so the total costs may have been on a similar scale to the temple at Epidauros.

Temples like these were certainly significant civic undertakings, but in scale they are not too different from a large campus or civic building today. Their construction would require planning and some additional resources, but not necessarily a heavy tax or special levy.

By comparison with the work at Epidauros and based on the more incomplete Acropolis inscrip­tions, estimates of the cost of the Parthenon are about 470 talents, although this might be a little low and does not include the cost of the monumental chryselephantine sculpture of Athena on the interior, which may have been 800 talents more. The Parthenon, then, cost fourteen times more than the temple in Epidauros, and was just one of several major building projects being funded by Athens at that time. Using the figure of $1 million = 1 talent, the cost of the Parthenon’s construction would be roughly $470 million, about the same as a new sports stadium without a roof. The total annual revenue for Athens around this time is estimated to have been 400 talents, which was far more than was available to other cities. The Parthenon, then, would have consumed at least 10 per­cent of the total annual city budget over the ten years of its basic construction, and was one of only several simultaneous building projects underway. Given the controversies over funding such large projects today, one can see the advantage for Perikles of using revenue from both the silver mines and the Delian League Treasury to help fund the Parthenon and all of the rest of his building pro­gram, rather than relying on the city budget or imposing additional taxes on the citizens of Athens. While this was not popular with the members of the Delian League, who had essentially become tributary states in an Athenian empire, it meant that the building program would provide substan­tial income for the city’s workers and residents and could be politically advantageous for Perikles, enabling him to remain in power.

PRODUCTION: ARCHITECTURAL SCULPTURE

The accounts at Epidauros provide finer details about parts of the building costs. For example, the contract to a man named Marsyas for the fluting of the interior and exterior columns in the last year of construction showed a payment of 1,336 Aiginetan drachmas, or 1,908 Attic drachmas. Thus, an expenditure of 1,900 drachmas would equal approximately 1,900 worker-days. At 300 worker-days per year, this would suggest that Marsyas had a team of six workers for the year, probably including himself.

For the pediments at Epidauros, sculpture workshops were set up in Phase/Year 3 and work on the sculpture occurred mostly in Phase/Year 4. Payment was made for the west pediment, half of the east pediment and acroteria that year, and for the rest of the east pediment in Phase/Year 5. The subject of the west pediment is an Amazonomachy (Figure 11.1) and that of the east pediment an Iliupersis. Both pediments originally had about twenty figures, each carved in the round and using Pentelic marble from Athens, rather than the limestone from Corinth that was used for the temple’s structure. Marble was harder both to quarry and then to carve, but would give greater durability, detail, and luster to the sculpture. For the architectural sculpture at Epidauros, then, the materials would have created additional costs for quarrying and transportation. There are other cases, such as the archaic temple at Delphi and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, where marble was imported from afar and used for the architectural sculpture rather than limestone. For example, John Younger and Paul Rehak calculate that the marble sculpture at Olympia (see Figure 9.14, page 228; Figure 10.9, page 246), which was made with marble from the island of Paros, would have cost 2.40 talents for the carving, between 7 and 10.67 talents for the quarrying, and 40-80 talents for the transportation, much more than the cost of the entire temple at Epidauros (Younger and Rehak 2009).

For the carving of the pedimental figures at Epidauros, the building accounts tell us that each pedimental group cost 4,300 Attic drachmas (3,010 Aiginetan drachmas) and the acroteria for each end were 3,200 Attic drachmas (2,240 Aiginetan drachmas), with the total cost of the sculptural program coming to 15,000 Attic drachmas, or 2.5 talents, about 7.3 percent of the total building cost.

11.1 West pediment from the Temple of Asklepios at Epidauros, c. 370 bce.

Detail of warrior and Amazon. 215/8 in (0.55 m).

Athens, National Archaeological Museum 139, 140, 149, 4752. Photo: National Archaeological Museum, Athens (Kostas Xenikakis) © Hellenic Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs, Culture and Sports/Archaeological Receipts Fund.

The contract for the west pediment was given to Hektoridas in two parts, and seems to have taken two years to complete, while the contract for the east pediment was given for one year to someone whose name is missing from the tablets. Each of the pedimental figures at Epidauros would, then, have cost about 215 drachmas for the carving (Schultz 2009; Younger and Rehak 2009). Such an amount is about three-fourths of the median annual wage; since the figures are three-quarters life- size, this would generally agree with estimates that it would take about a working year for one sculp­tor to carve a life-size marble statue. Since the ensemble was finished within a year, this indicates that the contractors had teams of sculptors working for them; Hektoridas’s workshop may have been smaller, which is perhaps why that work was divided over two years.

As we shall see with the Erechtheion frieze, the wages for the pedimental sculptors at Epidauros would generally be about the same as for other skilled labor. For the acroteria sculpture, however, there was a higher wage rate. The two sculptors for these, Timotheos and someone whose name began Theo--, were paid 3,200 Attic drachmas each, about 800 drachmas per figure (Figure 11.2). While the acroteria figures are a bit larger than the pedimental figures, they are made of the same material, so that the time to carve them was not four times greater. This means that Timotheos and his colleague were paid at a higher wage rate than the pedimental sculptors. As Peter Schultz has argued, the style of the acroteria figures is more complex, intricate, and finished than that of the pedimental figures (Schultz 2009). Some of the additional cost of the figures, then, must be attributable to the greater labor involved, but some of that labor includes the effort demanded of a more accomplished technique and style. This may be a case where a premium is paid for a higher level of skill and artistry. Even so, given the longer time needed for fabrication, it still amounts to no more than a doubling of the wages. Whereas Hektoridas and his crew seem to have been paid the same wage as those who did the quarrying and transportation, Timotheos was paid more.