Greek Sculpture

Mark D. Fullerton

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781119115311
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Greek Sculpture presents a chronological overview of the plastic and glyptic art forms in the ancient Greek world from the emergence of life-sized marble statuary at the end of the seventh century BC to the appropriation of Greek sculptural traditions by Rome in the first two centuries AD.

• Compares the evolution of Greek sculpture over the centuries to works of contemporaneous Mediterranean civilizations
• Emphasizes looking closely at the stylistic features of Greek sculpture, illustrating these observations where possible with original works rather than copies
• Places the remarkable progress of stylistic changes that took place in Greek sculpture within a broader social and historical context
• Facilitates an understanding of why Greek monuments look the way they do and what ideas they were capable of expressing
• Focuses on the most recent interpretations of Greek sculptural works while considering the fragile and fragmentary evidence uncovered

1
Beginnings and Before: Greek Sculpture in the Iron Age (circa 1000–600)

The question of beginning is always a thorny one, for nearly any topic can be pursued back in time until all evidence disappears; yet, to do so usually takes one far, too far, from the subject at hand. In studies of ancient Greek culture, an advantage is provided by the Greeks themselves, who figured their years from 776, the date of the first Olympic games. Should we do the same, we would find, at Olympia itself, the first traces of a continuous tradition in Greek sculptural production and usage. Yet the Greeks did not believe that time itself began in 776; we know from Homer the stories that the Greeks, as early as the eighth century, were telling one another of an earlier heroic age. Working from such accounts, archaeologists set out to find the physical settings for these legends – at Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns, Knossos, and other sites. They discovered earlier Greek cultures, which, unlike the neighboring kingdoms of Egypt and the Near East, left behind no historical accounts of their own. Lacking these, scholars had recourse only to material remains and so borrowed from the poet Hesiod the term “Bronze Age,” since the tools and weapons these cultures left behind were forged from that metal. Chronological structure within that era, in the absence of dynastic lists, was adapted from nearby Egypt in the form of a tripartite scheme (Early, Middle, Late) that corresponds to the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms.

In Egypt at that time, as well as in the Near East, conspicuous display of sculpture in stone and bronze, on scales ranging from miniature to colossal, played an important part in the expression of royal power. Although some Minoans and Mycenaeans surely had personal experience of these impressive sculptured monuments, they produced nothing comparable at Knossos, Mycenae, or elsewhere in the Aegean. The Bronze Age Greeks developed their own types of sculpture, working largely with native materials, in styles of their own, and serving functions that were characteristic also of later Hellenic work (see box). Small votive sculptures, for example, in bronze and terracotta especially, were used extensively in the modest domestic shrines and rural sanctuaries of the Minoans and Mycenaeans. Funerary sculpture is documented by the many marble idols from third-millennium graves on the Cycladic islands and also, a millennium later, by stone reliefs set up as markers in the royal cemetery (Grave Circle A) at Mycenae. Yet both of these categories of sculpture were limited to a particular time and place, reflecting a production that suddenly and inexplicably stopped long before the end of the Bronze Age. Despite the considerable amount of sculptured material that was produced, it is all but impossible to characterize prehistoric Aegean sculpture as a whole, since it consists of several circumscribed and largely unrelated categories of production.

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Box Uses of Sculpture in Ancient Greece

Archaic and Classical Greek sculpture served a narrow range of functions, all of which had to do with ritual practices. The Greeks themselves had little to say about the subject, so current beliefs are based more on inference than documentation. It is clear, however, that sculpture in ancient Greece was not, in either private or public spaces, used as visual embellishment without distinct religious purpose, as was conventionally done in Roman times.

It is often alleged or assumed that the most significant of ancient Greek images was the cult statue set up in the central room (cella) of a temple intended to “house” it; the statue, in which the deity could reside, could then “look” out through the temple’s front door to observe and receive the sacrifices and libations performed at an altar erected outside. The cult statue, temple, and altar together facilitated the process of interaction between deity and worshipper and ensured the presence of the god at the ritual. While this model is generally accurate, it is somewhat restrictive. The cult statue/temple/altar triad was common, but each could exist without the other(s). Moreover, a cult statue could serve more than one function; the giant gold and ivory statue in the Parthenon was at the same time part of the state treasury.

Many statues were votives, so-called because they fulfill a vow; inscribed dedications make clear that these were given as gifts (either personal or communal) to a deity in hopes of securing its beneficence in return. A term often used was agalma, or “pleasing thing,” but what constituted an agalma was not always obvious. It could represent the god himself or even another god, or it could substitute for a worshipper; it is not always easy to tell the difference. It could be an animal, perhaps but not necessarily representing a substitute sacrifice, or another creature such as a sphinx. Votives could be statues or reliefs, large or small, cheap or expensive, in almost any material. The cost was important, as an indicator of the magnitude of devotion involved, but equally so was the ritual act itself, of which the votive was a lasting reminder.

Sculptures were also used to adorn temples, in locations that were dictated by the architectural order employed. Subjects were drawn all but exclusively from episodes in Greek mythology. Some with universal applicability, such as the battle between gods and giants (Gigantomachy), were used frequently. Others were more local or limited in signification and occur rarely. Scholars focus intently on the relationships among the stories on a temple and consider how the embodied themes relate to the historical circumstances of the building’s construction. Did they simply reflect the shared values and religious beliefs of the society, were some myths meant to be metaphors for actual historical events, or were both readings simultaneously possible and intended?

Sculptures were also used as grave markers. Especially in Archaic times, funerary statues are mostly of the same types as used for votive functions – nude male kouroi, draped female korai, sphinxes and other beasts – and are equally enigmatic in subject and meaning. Grave reliefs are usually more specific than statues, characterizing the deceased as a warrior, athlete, mother, or child. The Classical era has no counterpart to the Archaic funerary kouros and kore. Relief sculptures are now much more commonly used as grave monuments than statuary; these become so frequent and elaborate in fourth-century Athens that they were banned as excessively boastful by Macedonian overlords in 317, testifying once again to the social and political power of publicly displayed images.

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Later Greeks on occasion came across artifacts from the heroic era, and that experience played no small role in their conception and construction of their own past. Occasionally we can be certain that this happened, as in the case of the fifteenth-century terracotta head reused seven centuries later as a cult object on Cycladic Kea. The most conspicuous of all such relics must have been the great Lion Gate at Mycenae, which has stood above the ground, with the fortifications it adorned, continuously from its installation around 1250 (Figure 1.1). The only monumental work of sculpture from the Greek Bronze Age, this great limestone relief sits atop the citadel’s main gate as part of an enlarged circuit erected from massive stones in anticipation of troubles that would indeed materialize a half-century later. The relief has an architectural as well as decorative function: it screens the triangular open space left in the masonry in order to relieve the stress atop the gate’s huge lintel block. The scene is static, symmetrical, and governed by principles of heraldic symmetry, influenced by Minoan sources and ultimately the Near East. The idea of gate decoration, and perhaps the carving technique as well, may also have come from parts east, most likely from the Hittites of central Anatolia. But the individual forms here, the felines (lions, griffins, sphinxes?), the hourglass-shaped altars on which they rest their forepaws, and the downwardly tapering column, are all part of a Minoan legacy that had been transformed over the previous centuries into a distinctly Mycenaean art. Like its Hittite counterparts, this sculpture was meant to be apotropaic, that is, to turn back unseen threats just as the gate it adorns was to repel more tangible dangers. Most important, it was, as far as we can tell, a unique monument, a synthesis of influences from other media and cultures, made for this one particular purpose at this one point in time, by a culture with no known tradition of monumental sculpture.

Figure 1.1 Mycenae, Lion Gate. Limestone. Circa 1250. H. 10′ 2″ (3.1 m).

Source: © age fotostock/Alamy.

Sculpture and the Geometric Style

Not only was the Lion Gate without predecessors, it had no immediate followers either; it may have inspired the mythmakers of succeeding generations, but not its sculptors. Nor did it fulfill its intended function, for Mycenae was brought down – and Tiryns, and Pylos and the rest of the citadel sites catalogued by Homer in the Iliad. Some fell suddenly and violently, others more gradually owing to the changed economic circumstances that were brought about by the collapse of Mycenaean palace society. While there are important elements of continuity, such as language and religion, some features of Bronze Age society disappear altogether in the eleventh and tenth centuries: fortified palatial complexes and associated monumental tombs, figural wall painting, and writing. Yet, tombs with imported goods are more common in this era than had been previously thought. One important import from Cyprus was the technique of extracting and forging iron, a metal more readily available in Greece than those needed to make bronze (copper and tin) and one that could be worked to a sharper and more durable edge. This early “Iron Age” (or “Dark Age”) culture was not entirely imageless, but the artifacts that were locally made, mostly pottery, reflect a distinct lack of interest in the representation of any identifiable object; the human figure is especially conspicuous by its near total absence. Moreover, explicit representations of the scenes and subjects of Greek mythology, only imaginatively detected even in the considerable corpus of Minoan and Mycenaean art, were long believed to have firs...