middle helladic to the late helladic i shaft graves 21 страница

Poseidonia/Paestum, and Sicily rivaled or bettered that of contemporary Athens.

Sculptors, too, could relocate on a more permanent basis. During the Hellenistic period, when the work­shops of Athens were producing sculpture for export to Rome, other artists migrated to Rome to work for Roman clients. One such case may be three artists named Hagesandros, Athenodoros, and Polydoros.

The first-century ce writer Pliny (N.H. 36.37), whose work Natural History includes many details on the his­tory of Greek sculpture and painting, mentions these sculptors as the creators of the Laocoon Group in the palace of Nero, which was found in situ during the Renaissance. Pliny tells us that the sculptors were from Rhodes, but we otherwise have no literary record of them. There has been much scholarly debate as to whether these figures were second-century bce artists in Rhodes whose work was taken to Rome, or whether the statue in Rome was copied from a Greek original by the sculptors in Rhodes.

Excavations at the grotto in Sperlonga south of Rome in the 1950s, however, brought to light five more ensembles in the same style, including one with an inscription bearing the names of the same three sculptors (Figure 11.14). As can be seen in the reconstruction, the floor of the grotto cave was crossed by a series of walkways between pools drawing water from the sea. The sculptural groups seem to have been designed for the space, making it less likely that the artists were copying older origi­nals but were, rather, creating these works in a particular stylistic tradition. The monumental group with Polyphemos shows the Cyclops lying unconscious from drinking, while Odysseus and his sailors prepare to drive a stake into his eye to blind him and aid their escape from the cave in which they were imprisoned (Figure 11.15). The works are in a full Hellenistic baroque style that we will discuss in Chapter 14. Recent scholarly opinion suggests that they were created in the first century bce by the workshop that also did the Laocoon Group and perhaps worked for other Roman clients at the time.

Most of the artists that we have been considering were likely to have been skilled workers who earned the type of normal wages we discussed earlier in the chapter. While they were accomplished, we know little about the lives or achievements of Exekias or Hagesandros outside of their extant works. The status of artists, both social and economic, throughout most of the history of Greek art was relatively modest. For some artists during the classical period, however, there were greater financial and social rewards that for a time made the most successful among them members of the elite class. Kephisodotos, the son of the fourth-century sculptor Praxiteles, is said to have outfitted three Athenian warships from his own resources, a civic act limited to the wealthiest elite families of Athens. His father Praxiteles, whose Aphrodite of Knidos might well be the most famous statue of antiquity and which we will discuss in the next chapter (see Figure 12.11, page 300), had apparently achieved great financial success as an

artist and was able to charge a premium for the quality and reputation of his work. Pliny (N.H. 35.62) tells us that a fourth-century painter, Zeuxis, “acquired such great wealth that he showed it off at Olympia by exhibit­ing his name woven into the checks of his cloaks in gold letters. Afterwards he decided to give away his works as gifts, because he maintained that no price could be con­sidered equal to their value” (tr. Pollitt 1990, 149). Cloth with threads of gold was a luxurious item, associated with royal burials such as the cloth found at the tomb in Vergina (see Figure 5.18, page 117), so we have to con­clude that Zeuxis was extremely wealthy.

As Jeremy Tanner (2006) has discussed, this change of social status is tied to a change in the intellectual status of artists. As we saw in the previous chapter (p. 243), Polykleitos wrote a treatise, the Canon, that explained the principles of his work, which were rooted in both mathematics and philosophy (see Figure 10.7, page 243). Whereas there is testimony that architects had written treatises on architecture since the sixth century, the small workshops of sculp­tors did not require written manuals or references, making the Canon of Polykleitos unusual and possibly groundbreaking. A statue was not simply a mimesis of the human form, but had a deeper and more intellectually expressive meaning at its core that could only be explained through the written word. That some artists were writing trea­tises and not just recording their names, in an era when genuine literacy belonged to a minority, supports the claim to higher status for those who were able to study and use contemporary theories in their work. Some artists also became teachers whose students, like those of Plato and Aristotle, came from elite and wealthy families. Once again, Pliny tells us that one fourth-century painter, Pamphilos of Sikyon, could charge 500 drachmas a year for tuition for one student, more than the annual income of the sculptors of the Parthenon and Epidauros (N.H. 35.76). Pliny continues that “as a result of his prestige, it came about that, first in Sikyon and then in all Greece, free-born boys were given lessons in drawing on wooden tablets, although the subject had been previously omit­ted, and thus painting was received into the front rank of the liberal arts” (tr. Pollitt 1990, 158).

Pliny’s account regards the period after the fourth century to have been a time when the merit of art­ists was well below that of the classical period, and certainly our literary sources have fewer names and details of artists of the Hellenistic period than of the fifth and fourth centuries. The social and intellectual claims of artists appear to have retreated, but some artists continued to prosper, and the patronage of Hellenistic rulers provided new sources of opportunity that were absent before the fifth century. Some artists did achieve recognition, such as the second-century sculptor Damophon of Messene, who pro­duced a number of works in southern Greece that are mentioned by Pausanias. The civic value of his work was recorded not in literary sources like Pliny, but in an inscription found on a Doric column in Messene. It records the honors given to Damophon by seven cities, including Lykosoura, for whom he made its cult statues (see Figures 14.18 and 14.19, page 364). Lykosoura even erected a bronze statue to honor Damophon, in recognition of his making their cult statues and postponing or forgiving payment of 3,546 silver tetradrachms (4-drachma pieces) due to him (Themelis 1994). The enormous debt for­given by Damophon was a mark of civic largess, like that of Kephisodotos outfitting warships, and is a sign of his wealth and prestige. Nevertheless, the status of artists during the Hellenistic period never rivaled that of Polykleitos, Praxiteles, and others during the fifth and fourth centuries, and we must think of that phenomenon as atypical of the experience of most artists during the first millennium все.

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.

House of Commons. 1816. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Earl of Elgin’s Collection of Sculptured Marbles, &c. London: John Murray.

Johnston, A. W. 1991. “Greek Vases in the Marketplace.” In T. Rasmussen and N. Spivey, eds. Looking at Greek Vases, 203-232. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Langdon, S. 2013. “Children as Learners and Producers in Early Greece.” In J. E. Grubbs and T. Parkin, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Childhood and Education in the Classical World, 172-194. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

National Archives Currency Converter. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/default0.asp#mid (last accessed May 13, 2014).

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

Randall, R. H., Jr. 1953. “The Erechtheum Workmen” American Journal of Archaeology 57, 199-210.

Rasmussen, T. 1991. “Corinth and the Orientalizing Phenomenon.” In T. Rasmussen and N. Spivey, eds. Looking at Greek Vases, 57-78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rotroff, S. I. 1982. Hellenistic Pottery: Athenian and Imported Moldmade Bowls. The Athenian Agora, 22. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies in Athens.

Schultz, P. 2009. “Accounting for Agency at Epidauros: A Note on IG IV² 102 AI-BI and the Economies of Style.” In P. Schultz and R. von den Hoff, eds. Structure, Image, Ornament: Architectural Sculpture in the Greek World. Proceedings of an International Conference Held at the American School of Classical Studies 27-28 November 2004, 70-78. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

Stewart, A. F. 1990. Greek Sculpture: An Exploration. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Tanner, J. 2006. The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society and Artistic Rationalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Themelis, P. 1994. “Damophon of Messene: New Evidence.” In K. A. Sheedy, ed. Archaeology in the Peloponnese: New Excavations and Research, 1-37. Oxford: Oxbow Books.

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.

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

Burford, A. 1969. The Greek Temple Builders at Epidauros: A Social and Economic Study of Building in the Asklepian Sanctuary, during the Fourth and Early Third Centuries B.C. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Hasaki, E. 2012. “Workshops and Technology.” In T. J. Smith and D. Planzos, eds. A Companion to Greek Art, Chapter 14. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Langridge-Noti, E. 2013. “Consuming Iconographies.” In A. Tsingarida and D. Viviers, eds. Pottery Markets in the Ancient Greek World (8th-1st Centuries B.C.). Proceedings of the International Symposium held at the Universite libre de Bruxelles, 19-21 June 2008. Etudes d’archeologie 5, 61-72. Brussels: CReA-Patrimoine.

Papadopoulos, J. 2003. Ceramicus Redivivus: The Early Iron Age Potters’ Field in the Area of the Classical Athenian Agora. Hesperia Supplement 31. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Stansbury-O’Donnell, M. D. 2011. Looking at Greek Art, 110-133. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.

Tanner, J. 2006. The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society and Artistic Rationalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

the fourth century to

c. 330 bce

Timeline

Architecture

Sculpture

Art and Individuals Pottery

Mosaic and Fresco Textbox: The Copy Hypothesis

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

he Peloponnesian War ended in 404 все with the victory of Sparta and a dictatorship of aristocrats called the “Thirty Tyrants” taking control of Athens. The city was forced to dis­mantle its so-called Long Walls that had lined the road to its harbor at Piraeus; these and the city’s circuit walls had protected Athens since its sack by Persia in 480 and all through the years of war with Sparta. While Sparta’s victory seemed nearly total, within a year the Athenians overthrew the imposed government and reinstated a democracy; by 391 Athens had rearmed and rebuilt its walls. The city of Thebes in Boeotia rose to greater political and military prominence at this time, and during the fourth century there was a complex and shifting pattern of alliances and wars that was only brought to a temporary end by the rise of Macedonia in northern Greece. That kingdom had grown under Philip II (r. 359-336), who formed a powerful army that defeated the various alliances of Greek cities and imposed unified control over Greece. Following Philip’s assassination in 336, his son Alexander the Great (r. 336-323) reasserted control of Greece and then expanded outward, cre­ating one of the largest empires of the ancient world, stretching from the Balkans in the north to Egypt in the south and the Indus Valley in the east. With the establishment of many new cities by Alexander and his successors, the Greek world became significantly broader. Alexander’s reign is typically regarded as a marker for the transition from the classical period of the fifth and fourth centuries to the Hellenistic period.

The changes in fourth-century culture from the fifth century are perhaps less dramatic, but are distinctive nevertheless. Fourth-century art is less Athenocentric than fifth-century art, surpassing it in some ways, departing from several of its principles, and inaugurating qualities that will dominate the Hellenistic period. Athens continued to be a primary artistic center, but the changes in the politi­cal and social landscape parallel important developments in patronage and artistic activity in new places like Epidauros and Macedonia. Culturally, new schools of philosophy such as the Cynics and the Stoics articulated a different type of relationship between the individual and the world. The Cynics taught that happiness resulted from living as close to a natural state as possible, rejecting the demands of social institutions and norms; the Stoics held that happiness resulted from virtue based on human reason and understanding the nature of the world. As J. J. Pollitt has described, the fourth century is a period in which there is less emphasis on what it means to be a member of a community (polis) than on what it is to be an individual and a human being (Pollitt 1972, 137-143). As we will see, for art and architecture this meant a greater emphasis on monuments for individuals rather than cities. Art became more diverse in both its style and mood, with a new concentration on expression, emotion, realism, and sensuality. Fourth-century art remains classical in terms of its mimetic and idealistic qualities, but relaxes some of the canon inherited from artists like Polykleitos and stresses visual effects and illusionism to a greater extent.

architecture

There is less construction of monumental buildings such as temples in the fourth century все than in the fifth, and almost nowhere are fourth-century buildings as well preserved as their predecessors in Athens, Poseidonia/Paestum, or Sicily. The most significant sanctuary building program is found at the sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros, which included a new temple, a theater, and a circular tholos. As we saw in the last chapter, the building expenditures at Epidauros were modest in scale compared to the massive building program in fifth-century Athens (see pages 267-270). Nevertheless, there are several important innovations in fourth-century architecture at Epidauros and elsewhere that are of particular interest.

The site is an extra-urban or rural sanctuary 13 kilometers inland from the actual town of Epidauros, which was located on the Saronic Gulf and had a relatively small population. Archaeological evidence shows there was religious activity at the site in the Geometric period, but it was not until the fifth century все that we have the first clear evidence for the cult of Asklepios at Epidauros and a

12.1 Reconstruction of the sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros facing to the north, 4th cent. and later bce. 3D model: John Goodinson. Scientific advisor: John Svolos. Image courtesy of John Goodinson. Center:

Thymele (tholos); Temple of Asklepios, Abaton (stoa). Center-left: Stadion. Far right: Propylaion.

significant growth in religious activity. Asklepios, a mortal son of Apollo and Coronis, was a physician and healer who was deified after his death. His cult began to receive wide attention in Greece in the fifth century as a source of healing for diseases and afflictions, including an Asklepieion that was established in Athens around 420 in the aftermath of the plague that had hit the city at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Sometime in the early fourth century, the city of Epidauros began to raise funds to rebuild its sanctuary, resulting first in the construction of the Temple of Asklepios and the carving of its sculpture. The building of the temple was begun in the 370s and construction continued on many other buildings through most of the fourth century.

As can be seen in the reconstruction of the site (Figure 12.1), the sanctuary has the typical features discussed in Chapter 7, including an entry or propylaion on the east side (far right in the picture), a temple at the corner of the central cluster of buildings, a stoa on the northeast (upper-right) side of the temple and an altar to the west (left), and a stadion to the northwest. A theater, which we will discuss later, is 500 meters southwest of the main sanctuary area. Public worship at the festival hon­oring Asklepios was similar to festivals elsewhere, with processions, sacrifices, and performances. Private worship, however, played a very important role throughout the year, particularly for those who were sick and came to be healed. Suppliants began with a three-day period of purification and abstinence. After this, there were offerings: the sacrifice to Apollo of an animal and cakes for the other gods. Next, there was the sacrifice of a piglet at the main altar of Asklepios and a monetary offering. Finally, there was a period of incubation for the suppliant, in which he or she would stay in the sanctuary while waiting for the response of the god. The suppliant would wear a laurel wreath, offer more cakes in the evening, and sleep in the abaton, a stoa-type structure in the central area. Here suppliants were to receive a vision of the god, either through sleep or by being approached by a sacred snake. If there were a cure, the god would be thanked and more offerings made; numerous surviving slabs record some of these cures, which confirmed the effectiveness of the cult for

The Doric temple is modest in size and was one of the first parts of the new building program; its accounts and contracts are preserved, as we saw in the last chapter. The temple was constructed in the 370 s with limestone from Corinth, but its pediments (see Figure 11.1, page 270) and acroteria (see Figure 11.2, page 271) were made of Pentelic marble from Athens. There was a chryselephan­tine statue of Asklepios in the interior, but it was less than half the height of similar statues in the Parthenon or the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (see Figure 7.12, page 168). The building accounts tell us that the temple cost 23-24 talents to construct, with another 50 talents being estimated for the cost of the cult statue. This is only a fraction of the 470 talents spent on the Parthenon’s building, not including its chryselephantine statue, an indication of the more restrained scope of building projects in the fourth century.

It is in some of the other buildings at Epidauros that we see significant innovations in fourth- century architecture. The first is the round building called the thymele, or hearth, in the ancient accounts. In form, the building is a tholos, a type that begins to appear in sanctuaries in the fourth century, first at Delphi around 375 все, and later at Olympia where it was a Philippeion, dedicated to Philip II of Macedonia (see Figure 7.3, page 158). In form, the tholos consisted of a cylinder defined by a solid wall with one doorway; at Epidauros there were both interior and exterior colon­nades and a conical-shaped roof (Figure 12.2). The thymele at Epidauros was probably started around 360 according to the building accounts, but its construction was more intermittent and it was probably not completed until 330. Pausanias (2.27.5) tells us that the architect was Polykleitos, who is usually called Polykleitos the Younger to distinguish him from the earlier fifth-century sculptor of the same name. Since names are often repeated in families, it is possible that he was a descendant of the sculptor.

Only the foundations of the building are well preserved, along with some elements of the super­structure, but the computer-generated reconstruction gives a good idea of its original appearance. On the exterior was a ring of twenty-six Doric columns that created a porch around the solid wall defining the interior. The single doorway was on the east side, leading from the open space framed by the abaton and the back of the temple into the interior chamber. Here there was a second circular colonnade of fourteen Corinthian columns (see Figure 7.10, page 166). The foundations preserve three rings of walls in the center of the building under the main floor that created a basement area. The doors in these walls are set at different points of orientation and the space was probably used for some type of ritual, but its character or purpose is not well known.

The thymele was both wider and taller than the Temple of Asklepios, and its unusual form would have been quite distinctive to a visitor. Furthermore, it also dominated the functioning of the site by its placement. The entry to the temple was off the road leading into the central area, making the entrance to the tholos the main point of transit off the open area flanked by the altar, the abaton, and the rear of the temple. The circular space and the central opening in the floor would have been unusual visual points to consider once inside the building. Richard Tomlinson (1983) suggests that the thymele symbolized the tomb of the mortal Asklepios; the round shape would be analogous to Bronze Age tholoi or tombs that had become hero shrines in later times. The nearby temple, then, would recognize the deified Asklepios. Both buildings were visible from the abaton as signs of Asklepios’s powers.

twenty-one rows above, providing space for 12,000-14,000 spectators. One effect of this geometric transformation of the theater is that sound projects naturally from the orchestra to all of the seats. Not only were the acoustics excellent, but all of the seats were angled toward the stage and each seat in a row had an equal view of the theatrical action. This design became standard for theaters in the Greek world.

Another major development in fourth-century architecture is the large personal monument. Perhaps the most famous is the tomb of Mausolos, the king of Caria. Mausolos had become king of Caria in 377 bce and ten years later moved his capital to Halikarnassos. He likely started the tomb at that time as part of the orthogonal grid design of the town; the tomb was finished after his death in 353 by his wife and sister Artemisia, who was later buried in the structure as well. The plan of the Mausoleion, the root of our word mausoleum, easily overshadowed in scale most temples like Epidauros and rivaled buildings like the Parthenon in its lavish sculptural program.

The Mausoleion was set within a rectangular temenos entered by a propylon, sequestering it from the rest of the city (Figure 12.4). Ancient descriptions of the structure are inconsistent in details, but the Mausoleion consisted of a high podium with relief sculpture, a colonnaded story, and then a pyramidal roof that supported a colossal quadriga (see summary in Jenkins 2006, 203-235). In all, the structure must have been over 40 meters tall, and would have dominated the cityscape and the view for ships entering the harbor. The king’s sarcophagus occupied a relatively small space on the inside,

and most attention was focused on the exterior, where there were four sets of sculpture decorating all four sides of the building. The smallest, a half-life-size frieze with an Amazonomachy that we shall discuss later, was at the top of the podium just below the colonnade (see Figure 12.9, page 297). There were also small friezes of the Gigantomachy and chariots whose positioning is uncertain. In addition, there were life-size figures of Greeks battling Persians, heroic-scale (about 2.3 m high) standing figures, and colossal-scale (about 3 m high) figures that included dynastic portraits and scenes of hunting and sacrifice.