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blueiskewl · 1 year

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Who Beheaded the Kritios Boy, the Masterpiece of Ancient Greek Art?

The Kritios Boy, a statue displayed at the Acropolis Museum is one of the most important works of ancient Greek art and the most characteristic of the so-called “Severe Style.”

The statue’s torso was found in 1865 to 1866 southeast of the Parthenon,while the head was found in 1888 near the south walls of the Acropolis. Archaeologists have dubbed it the “Kritios Boy,” after the name of the sculptor believed to have created it.

The “Kritios Boy” is depicted standing in the nude. He supports his weight on his left leg while the right one remains bent at the knee in the characteristic posture of the Severe Style.

Ancient Greek art masterpiece

His expression is solemn and his eyes, which were originally crafted from another material, have not survived.

His hair, which follows the shape of his scalp, is tightly gathered around a ring with a few scattered strands falling on his temples and the nape of his neck. Traces of red dye are preserved on his hair.

The attribution of this statue to the sculptor Kritios is based on the similarities it presents with the statue of Harmodios from the bronze group of the Tyrannicides, a work of Kritios in collaboration with Nesiotes.

This group, known to us today through marble copies of the Roman period, was erected in the Agora of Athens.

Who this statue portrays, however, is not known. Some scholars believe he represents a young athlete, the winner of an event in the celebration of the Greater Panathenaia.

Others claim he depicts a hero, most likely Theseus. Moreover, they link the dedication of the statue on the Acropolis with the activities of 476 to 475 BC, when Kimon transferred Theseus’ bones from the island of Skyros to Athens.

Who beheaded the Kritios Boy statue?

The statue is a touchstone of Greek art. It features prominently in textbooks and it travels to major international exhibitions.

But there is still a mystery over who beheaded the statue in antiquity with an axe-blow to the back of the neck and why.

Early scholars blamed the Persians, who sacked the Acropolis during their invasion of Greece in 480 B.C. More recently, the statue has been dated to the Early Classical period by art historians; this would then imply that the Athenians themselves did the deed.

It is clear that the Athenians did, upon occasion, behead statues; there is no other explanation for the many heads (severed from their no longer preserved bodies) that have been excavated from the Acropolis fill.

Rachel Kousser, a professor of art history at the City University of New York, is pretty sure that the beheading was the work of the Persian invaders.

Writing for the Research Bulletin of The Center for Hellenic Studies, she explains:

Many of the Acropolis korai—dated prior to 480 B.C., and indisputably attacked by the Persians—have parallel injuries, including not only the blow to the back of the head, but also the missing hands and feet.

So, too, mutilation in 480 B.C. would help to explain why the Kritios Boy was interred so soon after it was set up (otherwise, one has to assume it was created in the 470s, and ‘killed’ in thirty years or less, a rather short life expectancy for a sturdy marble statue).

I would guess that the statue was set up shortly before 480, injured, and then buried—all on the Acropolis, since as an inhabitant of sacred space, it could never lose its sanctity.

But it is hard to be sure; this murder mystery from 2,500 years ago offers few clues. What we can say for certain, though, is that this ‘murder’ testifies to the significance of the image, so powerful it had to be ‘killed’ to be negated.

By Tasos Kokkinidis.

#The Kritios Boy #Who Beheaded the Kritios Boy the Masterpiece of Ancient Greek Art?#the sculptor Kritios #sculture #marble sculpture #greek marble sculpture #ancient artifacts #archeology #archeolgst #history #history news #ancient history #ancient culture #ancient civilizations #ancient greece #greek history #greek art #the parthenon

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monogreek · 4 years

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Kritios Boy (marble, c. 480 BC)

/New Acropolis Museum, Athens-Greece. /

#greek #art #sculpture #sculptor #Kritios #boy #marble #ancient greece #Κρίτιος #γλύπτης #Αγόρι #classical art #art history #acropolis #Athens #greek model #Greece

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romegreeceart · 3 years

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Famous people

Tag list of famous people from Ancient Rome and Greece. A few hellenistic rulers and some Etruscans are also included.

And for some reason the page is not working properly. The HTML code is there, but it only works on my dashboard. On this page links are inactive. I figure that page only understands “/tagged/Agrippina-the-Elder” - versions, but I’m too lazy / busy to rewrite the code. So if you want to check a tag, you’ll have to copy and paste it after the word “ .../tagged/”. And same goes for all the lists below.

URLs + copy&paste:

https://romegreeceart.tumblr.com/tagged/

https://romegreeceart.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/

Aelia Flaccilla- Pillar of the Church

Agrippina the Elder

Agrippina the Younger

Aemilia Lepida and her descendants v emperor Nero

Aeschylus

Aetius

Alaric

Alcibiades

Alexander the Great

Ancus Marcius

Antinous

Antiochus I Soter

Antiochus III the Great

Antisthenes (philosopher, cynic school)

Antonia Minor - mother of Claudius and Germanicus

Antoninus Pius

Apicius

Apollodorus of Damascus

Apollonius of Tralles (Greek sculptor)

Aristotle

Arsinoe II

Arsinoe III

Artemisia II of Caria

Aspasia

Atticus (Cicero’s friend)

Attila

Augustus

Aulus Rustius Verus (Pompeian politician)

Aurelianus

Baltimore painter (Apulia, 4th century BCE)

Berenike II

Britannicus

Brygos Painter

Brutus (liberator, founder of the republic)

Brutus (assassin)

Caesarion

Caligula

Callimachus

Caracalla

Carausius (Roman Britain, emperor)

Carinus

Cassius Dio

Catiline

Cato the Elder

Cato the Younger

Cicero

Claudia Antonia (emperor’s daughter)

Claudius

Claudius Gothicus

Cleopatra

Cleopatra Selene

Cleopatra III

Clodius Albinus

Commodus

Constantine the Great

Constantius II

Constantius Chlorus

Corbulo

Cornelia Africana

Cornelia Minor (Caesar’s wife)

Crispina

Crispus (Constantine’s eldest son)

Croesus

Cynisca (Spartan princess, olympic winner)

Darius III

Decius

Demosthenes

Didia Clara (daughter of Didius Julianus)

Didius Julianus

Diocletianus

Dioscorides Pedanius (physician, botanist)

Diva Claudia (daughter of Nero)

Domitianus

Drusus Caesar (son of Germanicus)

Drusus the Younger (son of Tiberius)

Drusus the Elder (son of Livia)

Elagabalus

Eumachia (Pompeian priestess and patroness)

Euripides

Fabius Maximus Cunctator (”The Shield of Rome”)

Faustina Maior

Faustina Minor

Female painters

Flavian dynasty

Gaius Caesar

Galerius

Galba

Galen

Galla Placidia

Gallic emperors

Gallienus

Germanicus

Gelon

Gens Aemilia

Gens Cornelia

Gens Calpurnia

Geta

Gordian I

Gordian II

Gordian III

Gracchi Brothers

Gratian

Greek tyrants

Hadrianus

Hannibal

Hegias (Greek sculptor, 5th century BCE

Hellenistic kings

Herennius Etruscus (co-emperor)

Hermione Grammatike

Herodes Atticus

Herodotus

Hippocrates

Historians

Homeros

Honorius

Hostilianus

Iaia of Cyzicus (female painter)

Jovianus

Juba II

Julia (Augustus’ daughter)

Julia Aquilia Severa (Vestal virgin and empress)

Julia Domna

Julia Drusilla

Julia Felix (Pompeian business woman)

Julia Flavia (Titus’ daughter)

Julia Maesa

Julia Soaemias

Julian the Apostate

Julio-Claudian family (julioclaudian)

Julio-Claudian dynasty

Julio-Claudian

Julio-Claudian dynasty

Julius Caesar 1

Julius Caesar (2)

Julius Vindex

Kings

Kresilas (Athenian sculptor)

Kritios (Athenian sculptor)

Lady of Aigai

Lady of Vix (Celtic woman, late 6th century BCE)

Lassia (priestess of Ceres, Pompeii)

Lepidus

Leonidas

Livia

Livilla

Livius

Lucilla (daughter of Marcus Aurelius)

Lucius Appuleius Saturninus

Lucius Caecilius Jucundus (Pompeian banker)

Lucius Caesar

Lucius Herennius Flores (Boscoreale Villa, real owner ?)

Lucius Verus

Lysippos

Lysippos 2

Maecenas

Macrinus

Magnus Maximus

Mamia (Pompeian priestess and patroness)

Marcellus (Augustus’ heir)

Marcus Agrippa

Marcus Antonius

Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Claudius Tacitus (emperor)

Marcus Licinius Crassus

Marcus Terentius Varro

Marius

Martialis

Masinissa

Maussollos of Halicarnassos

Maxentius

Maximianus

Maximinus Daia

Maximinus Thrax

Members of imperial families

Menander

Miami painter

Milonia Caesonia

Miltiades (Greek general)

Mona Lisa of Galilee

Myron

Nero

Nero Julius Caesar (son of Germanicus)

Nerva

Nerva-Antonine family

Numa Pompilius

Octavia the Younger (Augustus’ sister)

Octavia (Claudius’ daughter)

Optimates

Otho

Ovidius

Paionios (Greek sculptor)

Patronesses

Penthesilea painter

Pericles

Pertinax

Pescennius Niger

Pheidias

Philip the Arab

Philosophers

Philip II of Macedonia

Phryne (Greek courtesan)

Plancia Magna

Plato

Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Younger

Poets

Polykleitos

Pompeius

Poppaea Sabina

Populares

Postumus Agrippa

Postumus (Gallic emperor)

Probus

Ptolemy of Mauretania

Praxiteles

Ptolemy I

Publius Clodius Pulcher

Publius Fannius Synistor

Publius Licinius Crassus (triumvir’s younger son)

Publius Sittius

Publius Quinctilius Varus

Pythagoras

Pyrrhus

Pytheas (a greek explorer)

Queens

Roman Caesars (= princes, heirs to the throne)

Roman Civil War Commanders

Roman client kings

Roman consuls

Roman dictators

Roman emperors

Roman empresses

Roman generals

Roman gentes

Romans who declined the throne

Romulus Augustulus

Romulus and Remus

Sabina

Sallustius

Sappho

Scipio Africanus

Scopas

Sejanus

Septimius Severus

Seven sages

Severan dynasty

Severus Alexander

Sextus Pompeius

Shuvalov painter

Silanion ( Greek sculptor)

Socrates

Solon

Sophocles

Stilicho

Strabo

Sulla

Sulpicia (Roman female poet)

Tacitus

Tarpeia

Tarquinius Superbus

Themistocles

Theodosius

Theophrastus

Thucydides

Tiberius

Tiberius Claudius Verus (Pompeian politician)

Tigranes the Great

Titus

Titus Labienus

Titus Tatius

Titus Quinctius Flaminius

Trajanus

Trebonianus Gallus

Tribunes of the plebs

Ulpia Severina (interim sovereign in 275 CE)

Urban prefects

Usurpers

Vaballathus (Palmyran king)

Valens

Valentinianus I

Valentinianus III (murderer of Aetius)

Valerianus

Valeria Messalina

Vel Saties

Velia Velcha (“Mona Lisa of antiquity”)

Velimna family (Hypogeum, Brescia)

Vercingetorix

Vergilius

Vespasianus

Vibia Sabina

Vipsania Agrippina

Viriathus (Lusitanian freedom fighter)

Vitellius

Volusianus

Xenophon

Zenobia

#my tags #famous people #ancient Rome #ancient Greece #Etruscans #ancient art #ancient world

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evansjil · 3 years

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Fine Art and Forms of Fine Art an Expression of Aesthetic Imagination

The phrase “art for art's sake” expresses the spirit of fine art, which holds more aesthetic appeal than functional value. It is this very characteristic which distinguishes antique fine art from crafts, which has a utilitarian focus. Tracing back the history of human civilization, one can find examples of various artifacts crafted for the sole purpose of aesthetics.

According to the aesthetic theories, vintage fine art is the highest form of art as it allows a wholesome expression of artistic imagination unlike other forms of art that are governed by practical considerations. Another distinguishing factor is the number of people involved in completing the artwork. Fine art is all about a single artist completing a piece or series, whereas applied art and craft involves dividing tasks among people with specialized skills.

2 Most Beautiful Forms of Fine Art

Oil Painting: The earliest paintings were made with egg tempera. With this technique, egg yolk is mixed with an agent as it dries. Church walls were decorated using liquid myrrh. The egg tempera technique paved the way for antique oil paintings. The earliest oil paintings date back to the 7th century CE.

Oil paints are one of the great classic media. They have been used for hundreds of years and have stood the test of time with great durability and steadfast color.

Oil painting is one of the most widely practiced forms of fine art. Pigments are suspended in drying oils, including linseed oil, walnut oil, poppy seed oil, and safflower oil. Several oils can be used in the same oil painting to achieve a particular outcome. The consistency of color paste has an important role to play in the quality of oil paints. A smooth paste is required

Oil painting, painting in oil colors, a medium consisting of pigments suspended in drying oils. The outstanding facility with which fusion of tones or color is achieved makes it unique among fluid painting mediums; at the same time, satisfactory linear treatment and crisp effects are easily obtained.

Sculpture: Sculpture is another noteworthy form of fine art. The Great Sphinx of Giza in Egypt is one of the famous sculptures in the world. Carved in limestone bedrock, the Sphinx measures 66 feet high by 240 feet long. For the early Greeks, the Egyptian style set an artistic foundation with block-like carvings in stone. Sculptures soon gained a realistic look with the increasing use of marble and bronze. The Kritios Boy in marble is one of the best examples of Greek sculpture. Hence, many vintage sculptures depicted Greek gods. The subject of sculpture changed with the rise of Christianity under Emperor Constantine.

The Renaissance period was an age of renewed learning and the rebirth of cultural, political, and artistic ideas. Some of the master sculptors of the Renaissance age included Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, and Raphael. A famous anecdote associated with Michelangelo emphasizes the prominence of sculpture in this period.

Over time, the use of sculptures evolved such that by the start of civilization, people used them as a representation of gods. Ancient kings who wished to immortalize their rules had statues made in their likeness, and in so doing, they led to the beginning of portrait sculpting, an art that continues to date.

Sculpture is promiscuous, wayward and at its best badly behaved. Sculpture demands practice, risky stuff, of doing and doing and doing, and the occasional undoing. Sculpture questions our relationship to objects, to search for the other side of the commodity object. An art that is concerned with other ways to think and feel. Sculpture is a great pretender; a fabrication that points to our need for storytelling and artifice. We have art so we won’t die of truth.

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salomi · 5 years

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Kritios Boy

The Kritios Boy is an Early Classical Greek sculpture with an eventful history. He began his life in the world-renowned Acropolis of Athens 2,500 years ago, was damaged during a Persian onslaught in 480 BC, was buried to prevent further destruction, had its body rediscovered in rubble over two millennia later, and was reunited with its head after 23 years. He remains as a prime example of the artistic transition between the Archaic and Classical sculptural style of ancient Greece.

This famous sculpture was masterfully created out of marble, and is believed to have been sculpted in the early 5th century BC. The Kritios Boy was named as such due to the belief that it was the work of the Athenian sculptor Kritios. This attribution was based on the resemblance between the head of this sculpture and that of Harmodius, another of Kritios’ work.

(Athens, New Acropolis Museum.)

#sculpture #Kritios Boy #His face is so cute

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douris · 4 years

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Satyr statuette or applique, probably originally attached to the base of a larger bronze statue, ca. 160–150 BCE. Berlin, Antikensammlung Misc. 7466.

The youthful satyr carries a set of panspipes in his right hand as he defends himself with his left hand which probably originally held a lagobolon, a type of stick that was used to hunt rabbits.

It was common for Hellenistic satyrs to carry a lagobolon, but here this youthful satyr defends himself in a pose known as the Harmodios blow. This pose comes from the classical sculpture group of the Tyrannicides, Harmodios and Aristogeiton by sculptors Kritios and Nesiotes. Aside from his pose, the delicate and youthful form of the satyr certainly alludes to Harmodios, who was the eromenos of Aristogeiton.

#classical art #greek art #ancient art #sculpture #hellenistic art #hellenistic #ancient greece #ancient world #art history #Antikkensamlung #berlin #satyr #Harmodius #aristogeiton #tyrannicides

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luckywilliams · 4 years

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APPRECIATING SCULPTURE

Prehistoric Sculpture.

Such primitive sculptures begin to appear in the paleolithic era (ending in about 10,000 BC). For example, there is the basalt figurine known as the Venus of Berekhat Ram, and a quartz figurine called the Venus of Tan-Tan. Both sculptures are probably over 200,000 years old, judging from carbon dating evidence. Later in the pre-history period, early humans like the Cro-Magnons began to produce simple carvings of birds, animals and other phenomena.

Small sculptures of obese females called ‘venus figurines’ have been unearthed at various Stone Age settlements around Europe. These figures were probably fertility symbols, and were carved from a variety of materials including clay, limestone and mammoth bone. These females all look very similar, wherever they’ve been found. During the Neolithic era, bronze sculptures began to appear in greater numbers, as the result of the development of more secure human settlements, which allowed for the expansion of smelting and metallurgy.

Ancient Egyptian Sculpture.

Ancient Egyptian sculptures were mostly linked to architecture and the building of temples and tombs. Temples were viewed as being the eternal resting places of the Gods. A statue of the God(s) would be hidden in the temple, within a series of closed halls, and viewed for a limited time by a select group of people. Tombs were full of sculptures; of pharaohs, their queens, and of other prominent officials.

Ancient Greek Sculpture.

Early Greek sculpture was very similar to that produced in Egypt, with a focus on rather stiff figures carved out of stone. However, a significant change came about in the Early Classical period, when more realistic sculptures began to be produced such as the Kritios Boy (c.480BC) which showed the male nude in the contrapposto position – weight resting on one leg, which is straight, with the other leg bent. This type of contrapposto male nude statue reached its apogee with Polykleitos’s Spear Bearer (c. 450-440 BC).

Rome & Christianity.

Ancient Greek and pre-Christian Roman sculpture was produced for a variety of reasons: The figures were meant to honour the Gods, and to act as funerary items. They were also developed to celebrate the beauty of the nude body, and to emphasise the power and prestige of individual rulers. The emphasis changed to a degree with the advent of Christianity, when sculptures of warriors and Gods began to be replaced by statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

Medieval Sculpture, and Some Definitions.

Diptychs, with a religious theme, and carved in wood, ivory or other materials, were a very common feature of this time. These diptychs, and other carvings and sculptures, were reliefs with scenes carves into a flat block, which stood out from the background. LOW RELIEF sculpture (and not just within the Medieval period) is where a scene or figure is carved out from its background – whatever the material – but only to a shallow depth. HIGH RELIEF sculpture (again, across many periods from antiquity onwards) is where the scene is carved out from the background material to a much greater depth, and may even be in-the-round, completely detached from its background.

During the subsequent Gothic period, there was a considerable expansion in the use of high relief sculptures within churches and cathedrals, often of key Biblical figures, which could appear almost free standing from the walls and other background materials behind. This monumental sculpture was combined with the increasing popularity, throughout the 17th Century, of much smaller hand-held Memento Mori sculptures (particularly in strongly catholic areas of Europe – see Activities section) and of small figurines of the Virgin Mary given to women about to be married – probably as symbols of continued piety.

The Renaissance.

Sculpture during the 14th & 15th Centuries began to encompass a broader range of topics – not just religious/Biblical narratives. There was a developing focus on sculpture which depicted classical myths, and which drew inspiration from the art of Ancient Greece and Rome. The Renaissance master sculptors were Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael and Leonardo, and wealthy patronage was important to them all. Michelangelo had the pope, amongst others. Donatello, who worked in Florence in the early to mid-15th Century, had the fabulously wealthy and powerful Cosimo de Medici, who was a massively important patron of aspiring painters and sculptors. For example, he commissioned Donatello to create the first free standing male nude since antiquity – ‘David’, a bronze completed between 1430-2. Of course, the presence of Michelangelo, the master sculptor, also has to be considered. Michelangelo dominated the Italian Renaissance scene, slightly later on in the 15th and early 16th Centuries, being born in 1475.

The Baroque and Rococo Styles.

Baroque sculptures were almost always in the round, and full of fluidity, movement and drama. The undisputed master of baroque sculpture was Gian Lorenzo Bernini. A visit to the Vatican City in Rome is certainly advantageous here, in order to appreciate how pivotal a figure Bernini was in the art and sculpture of the Catholic Counter Reformation.

Rococo.

Rococo sculpture places less of an emphasis on the large scale than was the case in the Renaissance and baroque periods. Instead, the stress was on small and delicate sculptures, often in porcelain rather than marble. Porcelain was an expensive and fragile commodity, recently introduced into Europe from China. As a consequence, Rococo sculptures were often the preserve of the wealthy aristocracy, and monarchs like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Sculpture in the 19th and 20th Century.

As with painting, impressionism became a key feature of sculpture in this period. The Renaissance focus on perfect anatomy and narrative shifted to one highlighting personal expression, stylization and different surface textures. For example, the rough texture left on Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker (a bronze created in 1913) was very different to the smooth surface typical of a Bernini sculpture. Rodin was one of the greatest sculptors of the 20th Century, and in his selection of surface textures, he was attempting something new and quite radical.

Modernism.

The term ‘modernism’ really encapsulates a variety of movements such as surrealism, minimalism, cubism, pop art and Dadaism. Marcel Duchamp, for instance, was a key Dadaist – a member of the post First World War Dada movement, which rejected most mainstream ideas of the day about what constituted ‘art’, and which felt largely alienated from the artistic establishment of the time. Sculptures like Duchamp’s 1917 piece ‘Fountain’ were intentionally controversial. The sculpture was thought by many to be vulgar, and totally lacking in artistic merit – a reaction which it was intended to provoke!

Constantin Brancusi was a FUTURIST sculptor. One of his most famous pieces was called ‘Bird in Space’ and produced in 1923. For many, the sculpture bore little resemblance to a bird, because there were no wings at all, and, instead, the focus was entirely on a stretched body and beak. When the work was imported into the USA, customs officials refused to recognise it as a work of art at all, instead branding it as a piece of worked metal. Only after a legal battle lasting 5 years was this non-representational sculpture legally accepted as a work of art by the US court authorities.

ACTIVITIES

Task 1: Have a look at copies of both the Kritios Boy and Polykleitos’s Spear Bearer (using any appropriate on-line and/or textbook sources) and compare and contrast them as sculptures. For example, you might assess their contropposto positions, and the general complexity of each sculpture.

Task 2: Use either google or a dictionary in order to define the term ‘diptych’.

Task 3: Find out a little more about Memento Mori sculptures. What were they, and why were they so popular?

Task 4: Much can be learned about the development of Michelangelo’s skills as a sculptor, by comparing and contrasting his Madonna & Child (produced in 1491) with his a Pieta, created in 1497: Have a look at copies of both, and then suggest how and why a Pieta can be judged to be the more complex and skilled work of art.

Task 5: Identify how 2 Bernini sculptures of your choice can be said to show fluidity, movement and drama (for example you could look at the ‘Ecstasy of Saint Teresa’ completed between 1647-52, and ‘Apollo & Daphne’ completed between 1622-5, both of which can be easily examined via on-line and/or textbook sources).

Adrian L. Bridge

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tumblerk-003 · 3 years

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Fine Art and Forms of Fine Art an Expression of Aesthetic Imagination

2 Most Beautiful Forms of Fine Art

Oil Painting: The earliest paintings were made with egg tempera. With this technique, egg yolk is mixed with an agent as it dries. Church walls were decorated using liquid myrrh. The egg tempera technique paved the way for oil painting. The earliest oil paintings date back to the 7th century CE.

Oil paints are one of the great classic media. They have been used for hundreds of years and have stood the test of time with great durability and steadfast color.

0 notes

tumblerk-003 · 3 years

Text

Fine Art and Forms of Fine Art an Expression of Aesthetic Imagination

2 Most Beautiful Forms of Fine Art

Oil Painting: The earliest paintings were made with egg tempera. With this technique, egg yolk is mixed with an agent as it dries. Church walls were decorated using liquid myrrh. The egg tempera technique paved the way for oil painting. The earliest oil paintings date back to the 7th century CE.

Oil paints are one of the great classic media. They have been used for hundreds of years and have stood the test of time with great durability and steadfast color.

0 notes