What is special about a Greek statue? Sometimes I think

Architecture and sculpture of Ancient Greece

Cities of the ancient world usually appeared near a high rock, and a citadel was built on it so that there would be a place to hide if the enemy penetrated the city. Such a citadel was called an acropolis. In the same way, on a rock that towered almost 150 meters above Athens and has long served as a natural defensive structure, gradually formed upper city in the form of a fortress (acropolis) with various defensive, public and religious structures.
The Athenian Acropolis began to be built up in the 2nd millennium BC. During the Greco-Persian Wars (480-479 BC) it was completely destroyed; later, under the leadership of the sculptor and architect Phidias, its restoration and reconstruction began.
The Acropolis is one of those places “about which everyone insists that they are magnificent and unique. But don't ask why. No one can answer you...” It can be measured, even all its stones can be counted. It's not that big of a deal to get through it from end to end - it only takes a few minutes. The walls of the Acropolis are steep and precipitous. Four great creations still stand on this rocky hill. A wide zigzag road runs from the bottom of the hill to the only entrance. This is the Propylaea - a monumental gate with Doric style columns and a wide staircase. They were built by the architect Mnesicles in 437-432 BC. But before entering these majestic marble gates, everyone involuntarily turned to the right. There, on the high pedestal of the bastion that once guarded the entrance to the acropolis, stands the temple of the goddess of victory Nike Apteros, decorated with Ionic columns. This is the work of the architect Callicrates (second half of the 5th century BC). The temple - light, airy, unusually beautiful - stood out with its whiteness against the blue background of the sky. This fragile building, looking like an elegant marble toy, seems to smile itself and makes passers-by smile affectionately.
The restless, ardent and active gods of Greece resembled the Greeks themselves. True, they were taller, could fly through the air, take on any form, and turn into animals and plants. But in all other respects they behaved like ordinary people: they got married, deceived each other, quarreled, made peace, punished children...

Temple of Demeter, builders unknown, 6th century. BC. Olympia

Temple of Nike Apteros, architect Kallikrates, 449-421 BC. Athens

Propylaea, architect Mnesical, 437-432 BC. Athens

The goddess of victory Nike was depicted beautiful woman with large wings: victory is fickle and flies from one opponent to another. The Athenians depicted her as wingless so that she would not leave the city that she had so recently conquered. great victory over the Persians. Deprived of wings, the goddess could no longer fly and had to remain in Athens forever.
The Nika Temple stands on a rock ledge. It is slightly turned towards the Propylaea and plays the role of a beacon for processions going around the rock.
Immediately beyond the Propylaea, Athena the Warrior stood proudly, whose spear greeted the traveler from afar and served as a beacon for sailors. The inscription on the stone pedestal read: “The Athenians dedicated from the victory over the Persians.” This meant that the statue was cast from bronze weapons taken from the Persians as a result of their victories.
The Erechtheion temple ensemble was also located on the Acropolis, which (according to the plan of its creators) was supposed to connect together several sanctuaries located at different levels - the rock here is very uneven. The northern portico of the Erechtheion led to the sanctuary of Athena, where a wooden statue of the goddess was kept, supposedly falling from the sky. The door from the sanctuary opened into a small courtyard where the only sacred olive tree on the entire Acropolis grew, which rose when Athena touched the rock with her sword in this place. Through the eastern portico one could get into the sanctuary of Poseidon, where he, having struck the rock with his trident, left three furrows with gurgling water. Here was also the sanctuary of Erechtheus, revered on a par with Poseidon.
The central part of the temple is a rectangular room (24.1x13.1 meters). The temple also contained the tomb and sanctuary of the first legendary king of Attica, Cecrops. On south side The Erechtheion is the famous portico of the caryatids: at the edge of the wall, six girls carved from marble support the ceiling. Some scholars suggest that the portico served as a tribune for respectable citizens or that priests gathered here for religious ceremonies. But the exact purpose of the portico is still unclear, because “portico” means vestibule, and in this case the portico did not have doors and from here it is impossible to get inside the temple. The figures of the portico of the caryatids are essentially supports that replace a pillar or column; they also perfectly convey the lightness and flexibility of the girlish figures. The Turks, who at one time captured Athens and, due to their Muslim beliefs, did not allow images of humans, did not, however, destroy these statues. They limited themselves to only cutting off the girls' faces.

Erechtheion, builders unknown, 421-407 BC. Athens

Parthenon, architects Ictinus, Callicrates, 447-432 BC. Athens

In 1803, Lord Elgin, the English ambassador to Constantinople and a collector, using the permission of the Turkish Sultan, broke out one of the caryatids in the temple and took it to England, where he offered it to the British Museum. Interpreting the firman of the Turkish Sultan too broadly, he also took with him many of the sculptures of Phidias and sold them for 35,000 pounds sterling. Firman stated that “no one should prevent him from taking away a few stones with inscriptions or figures from the Acropolis.” Elgin filled 201 boxes with such “stones”. As he himself stated, he took only those sculptures that had already fallen or were in danger of falling, ostensibly in order to save them from final destruction. But Byron also called him a thief. Later (during the restoration of the portico of the caryatids in 1845-1847), the British Museum sent to Athens a plaster cast of the statue taken away by Lord Elgin. The cast was subsequently replaced by a more durable copy made of artificial stone, made in England.
At the end of the last century, the Greek government demanded that England return its treasures, but received the answer that the London climate was more favorable for them.
At the beginning of our millennium, when Greece was transferred to Byzantium during the division of the Roman Empire, the Erechtheion was turned into a Christian temple. Later, the crusaders, who captured Athens, made the temple a ducal palace, and during the Turkish conquest of Athens in 1458, a harem of the commandant of the fortress was installed in the Erechtheion. During the liberation war of 1821-1827, the Greeks and Turks took turns besieging the Acropolis, bombarding its structures, including the Erechtheion.
In 1830 (after the proclamation of Greek independence), only foundations could be found at the site of the Erechtheion, as well as architectural decorations lying on the ground. Funds for the restoration of this temple ensemble (as well as for the restoration of many other structures of the Acropolis) were given by Heinrich Schliemann. His closest associate V. Derpfeld carefully measured and compared the ancient fragments; by the end of the 70s of the last century he was already planning to restore the Erechtheion. But this reconstruction was subjected to severe criticism, and the temple was dismantled. The building was rebuilt under the leadership of the famous Greek scientist P. Kavadias in 1906 and finally restored in 1922.

"Venus de Milo" Agessander(?), 120 BC. Louvre, Paris

"Laocoon" Agessander, Polydorus, Athenodorus, c.40 BC. Greece, Olympia

"Hercules of Farnese" ca. 200 BC e., Nat. museum, Naples

"Wounded Amazon" Polykleitos, 440 BC. National museum rome

The Parthenon - the temple of the goddess Athena - the most large building on the Acropolis and the most beautiful creation of Greek architecture. It stands not in the center of the square, but somewhat to the side, so that you can immediately take in the front and side facades and understand the beauty of the temple as a whole. The ancient Greeks believed that the temple with the main cult statue in the center represented the house of the deity. The Parthenon is the temple of Athena the Virgin (Parthenos), and therefore in its center there was a chrysoelephantine (made of ivory and gold plates on a wooden base) statue of the goddess.
The Parthenon was erected in 447-432 BC. architects Ictinus and Callicrates from Pentelic marble. It was located on a four-level terrace, the size of its base was 69.5 x 30.9 meters. The Parthenon is surrounded on four sides by slender colonnades; gaps of blue sky are visible between their white marble trunks. Entirely permeated with light, it seems airy and light. There are no bright designs on the white columns, as is found in Egyptian temples. Only longitudinal grooves (flutes) cover them from top to bottom, making the temple seem taller and even slimmer. The columns owe their slenderness and lightness to the fact that they taper slightly towards the top. In the middle part of the trunk, not at all noticeable to the eye, they thicken and this makes them seem elastic, more able to withstand the weight of stone blocks. Iktin and Callicrates, having thought through every smallest detail, created a building that amazes with its amazing proportionality, extreme simplicity and purity of all lines. Placed on the upper platform of the Acropolis, at an altitude of about 150 meters above sea level, the Parthenon was visible not only from anywhere in the city, but also from numerous ships sailing to Athens. The temple was a Doric perimeter surrounded by a colonnade of 46 columns.

"Aphrodite and Pan" 100 BC, Delphi, Greece

"Diana the Huntress" Leochard, c.340 BC, Louvre, Paris, France

"Resting Hermes" Lysippos, IV century. BC BC, National Museum, Naples

"Hercules Fighting the Lion" Lysippos, c. 330 BC Hermitage, St. Petersburg

"Atlas Farnese" c.200 BC, Nat. museum, Naples

The most famous masters participated in the sculptural design of the Parthenon. The artistic director of the construction and decoration of the Parthenon was Phidias, one of the greatest sculptors of all time. He is responsible for the overall composition and development of the entire sculptural decoration, part of which he performed himself. The organizational side of the construction was handled by Pericles, the largest statesman of Athens.
The entire sculptural design of the Parthenon was intended to glorify the goddess Athena and her city - Athens. The theme of the eastern pediment is the birth of Zeus's beloved daughter. On the western pediment the master depicted a scene of a dispute between Athena and Poseidon for dominance over Attica. According to the myth, Athena won the dispute and gave the inhabitants of this country an olive tree.
The gods of Greece gathered on the pediments of the Parthenon: the thunderer Zeus, the mighty ruler of the seas Poseidon, the wise warrior Athena, the winged Nike. The sculptural decoration of the Parthenon was completed by a frieze, which depicted a solemn procession during the festival of the Great Panathenaia. This frieze is considered one of the pinnacles of classical art. Despite all its compositional unity, it amazed with its diversity. Of the more than 500 figures of young men, elders, girls, on foot and on horseback, not one repeated the other; the movements of people and animals were conveyed with amazing dynamism.
Sculptural figures Greek relief not flat, they have the volume and shape of the human body. They differ from statues only in that they are not processed on all sides, but seem to merge with the background formed by the flat surface of the stone. Light colors enlivened the Parthenon marble. The red background emphasized the whiteness of the figures, the narrow vertical projections that separated one slab of the frieze from the other clearly stood out in blue, and the gilding shone brightly. Behind the columns, on a marble ribbon encircling all four facades of the building, a festive procession was depicted. There are almost no gods here, and people, forever imprinted in stone, moved along the two long sides of the building and united on the eastern facade, where a solemn ceremony took place to present the priest with a robe woven by Athenian girls for the goddess. Each figure is characterized by its unique beauty, and all together they accurately reflect the true life and customs of the ancient city.

Indeed, once every five years, on one of the hot days of midsummer, a nationwide celebration took place in Athens in honor of the birth of the goddess Athena. It was called the Great Panathenaia. Not only citizens of the Athenian state, but also many guests took part in it. The celebration consisted of a solemn procession (pump), the bringing of a hecatomb (100 head of cattle) and a common meal, sports, equestrian and musical competitions. The winner received a special, so-called Panathenaic amphora filled with oil, and a wreath made from the leaves of the sacred olive tree growing on the Acropolis.

The most solemn moment of the holiday was the national procession to the Acropolis. Riders on horses were moving, statesmen, warriors in armor and young athletes were walking. Priests and nobles walked in long white robes, heralds loudly praised the goddess, musicians filled the still cool morning air with joyful sounds. Along the zigzag Panathenaic road, trampled by thousands of people, sacrificial animals climbed the high hill of the Acropolis. The boys and girls carried with them a model of the sacred Panathenaic ship with a peplos (veil) attached to its mast. A light breeze fluttered the bright fabric of the yellow-violet robe, which was carried as a gift to the goddess Athena by the noble girls of the city. For a whole year they wove and embroidered it. Other girls raised sacred vessels for sacrifices high above their heads. Gradually the procession approached the Parthenon. The entrance to the temple was made not from the Propylaea, but from the other, as if so that everyone would first walk around, examine and appreciate the beauty of all parts of the beautiful building. Unlike Christian churches, ancient Greek ones were not intended for worship inside them; the people remained outside the temple during religious activities. In the depths of the temple, surrounded on three sides by two-tiered colonnades, the famous statue of the Virgin Athena, created by the famous Phidias, stood proudly. Her clothes, helmet and shield were made of pure sparkling gold, and her face and hands shone with the whiteness of ivory.

Many book volumes have been written about the Parthenon, among them there are monographs about each of its sculptures and about each step of gradual decline from the time when, after the decree of Theodosius I, it became Christian temple. In the 15th century, the Turks turned it into a mosque, and in the 17th century, into a gunpowder warehouse. It was turned into final ruins by the Turkish-Venetian war of 1687, when an artillery shell hit it and in one moment did what all-consuming time could not do in 2000 years.

Ancient Greece sculpture

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Plan

Introduction

1. Sculpture of Ancient Greece

1.1 Sculpture in Ancient Greece. Prerequisites for its development

1.2 Archaic Greek sculpture

1.3 Classical Greek sculpture

1.4 Sculpture of Hellenistic Greece

Conclusion

Notes

List of used literature

Introduction

The subject of this essay is sculpture of Ancient Greece. In my opinion, this topic is one of the most important in the study of ancient Greek civilization, since sculpture, like all fine arts in general, reflects the entire life and entire history of the nation. In addition, studying the sculpture of Ancient Greece allows us to better understand the worldview of the Greeks, their philosophy, aesthetic ideals and aspirations. In sculpture, as nowhere else, the attitude towards man, who in Ancient Greece was the measure of all things, is manifested. It is sculpture that gives us the opportunity to judge the religious, philosophical, aesthetic ideas of the ancient Greeks. All this together allows us to better understand the life and history of Ancient Greece and the entire historical process of the formation, development and decline of this civilization.

Ancient, in particular, ancient Greek art has been a subject of study since ancient times. Since the times of Ancient Rome, it has been taken as a model, and the canons of ancient Greek fine art were immutable rules. The theoretical study of ancient Greek art, in particular sculpture, began somewhat later - from the Renaissance.

Thus, the literature on this topic is rich and varied. Almost no treatises by ancient sculptors and scientists have survived to this day, but there is a huge amount of literature from modern researchers. In addition, many statues and reliefs have survived to this day - originals and Roman copies - so the idea of ancient Greek sculpture is quite clear. The purpose of my essay is to once again review the literature on this topic and explore the entire history of Greek sculpture - from its origins to its decline. I think this topic is relevant in our time, because issues related to art never lose their relevance, and the study of art helps to study the history of a people. In addition, ancient Greek art is an ideal, a canon for the art of many later civilizations. It does not lose its relevance even today, when new types of art are being formed, and general views on art are repeatedly revised and changed.

1. Sculpture of Ancient Greece

1.1 Sculpture in Ancient Greece. Prerequisites for its development

Among all the fine arts of ancient civilizations, the art of Ancient Greece, in particular its sculpture, occupies a very special place. Nowhere else has sculpture risen to such a height—nowhere else has a person been so valued as in ancient Greek civilization. What is the reason for such an extraordinary rise of art, in particular sculpture, in Ancient Greece?

I. Ten in his “Lectures on Aesthetics” explains the simplicity of the form of Hellenic art by the physical structure of the region. This is understandable. The Greek was not amazed, like the Egyptian, by the endless sandy ocean of the Sahara, the infinitely huge Nile; his imagination was not suppressed by the masses of the Himalayan mountains, the dry plane of the Caspian coast. No, everything around him was so light, fresh, clean, clear and simple. Small rounded mountains, groves growing at their feet, a sea dotted with islands lying so close to one another that it is difficult to find a point where distant land is not visible on the horizon; tiny rivers and streams. The gaze fully embraces every form and does not get lost, hence the development of certain, precise concepts. Citizens knew everyone in their state by sight. From the city citadel one could see the entire state. City, suburbs, farms, towns - that's it. There is never fog here, there is almost no rain. The heat is moderated by the proximity of the sea. There is eternal summer all around; olives, oranges, lemons, cypresses, grapes provide constant free food for the resident. He is not the “sad stepson of nature,” but rather her equal brother. He does not need to invent warm clothes and shelters, pavements, sidewalks - there is no dirt here. He doesn’t need to build a theater, because it’s stuffy to sit in, but sitting on the terrace of the mountain is so nice and cool. Place a stage in the center of the terrace - and it's over*.

The miniature nature of nature and the precise impression of small contours developed in the Hellenes an amazing sensitivity for perceiving the smallest details that make up the masses. The accessibility of form and disgust from everything colossal forced him to build small temples and sculpt life-size gods. The beauty, freshness and brightness of his surroundings made him become so close to this beauty that any deviation from it was taken as an anomaly, as an exceptional phenomenon, unworthy of the generalized ideals of art. Hence the characteristic feature of the absence of ugly forms in Hellenic art. Simplicity and beauty go hand in hand in the classical world.

The Greek’s way of life led him in such a way that his artist was given excellent material for plastic images. The Greek's views on the ideal human personality can be equated, according to the apt remark of the French critic, to the ideal of a factory stallion. Aristotle, depicting a brilliant future for the young man, says: “And you will be with a full chest, white skin, broad shoulders, well-developed legs, wearing a wreath of flowering reeds, walking through the sacred groves, inhaling the aroma of herbs and blossoming poplars.” The Greeks valued the living body, capable of any muscular task, above all else. The lack of clothes shocked no one. They treated everything too simply to be ashamed of anything. And at the same time, of course, chastity did not lose from this.

Now let's move on to a consistent study of all stages of the development of ancient Greek sculpture - from its origins to the crisis of the entire civilization.

1.2 Archaic Greek sculpture

The Archaic period is the period of formation of ancient Greek sculpture. The sculptor’s desire to convey the beauty of the ideal human body, which was fully manifested in the works of a later era, is already understandable, but it was still too difficult for the artist to move away from the shape of the stone block, and the figures of this period are always static.

The first monuments of ancient Greek sculpture of the archaic era are determined by the geometric style (8th century). These are sketchy figurines found in Athens, Olympia, and Boeotia. The archaic era of ancient Greek sculpture falls on the 7th - 6th centuries. (early archaic - about 650 - 580 BC; high - 580 - 530; late - 530 - 500/480). The beginning of monumental sculpture in Greece dates back to the middle of the 7th century. BC e. and is characterized by orientalizing styles, of which the most important was the Daedalian style, associated with the name of the semi-mythical sculptor Daedalus. The circle of “Daedalian” sculpture includes a statue of Artemis of Delos and a female statue of Cretan work, stored in the Louvre (“Lady of Auxerre”). Mid-7th century BC e. The first kouroses also date back. The first sculptural temple decoration dates back to the same time - reliefs and statues from Prinia on the island of Crete. Subsequently, the sculptural decoration fills the fields highlighted in the temple by its very design - pediments and metopes in the Doric temple, a continuous frieze (zophorus) in the Ionic one. The earliest pediment compositions in ancient Greek sculpture come from the Athenian Acropolis and from the Temple of Artemis on the island of Kerkyra (Corfu). Funerary, dedicatory and cult statues are represented in the archaic by the type of kouros and kora. Archaic reliefs decorate the bases of statues, pediments and metopes of temples (later, round sculptures take the place of reliefs in the pediments), and tombstones. Among the famous monuments of archaic round sculpture are the head of Hera, found near her temple in Olympia, the statues of Cleobis and Biton from Delphi, Moschophorus (“Taurus Bearer”) from the Athenian Acropolis, Hera of Samos, statues from Didyma, Nikka Arherma, etc. The last statue demonstrates the archaic a diagram of the so-called “kneeling run”, used to depict a flying or running figure. In archaic sculpture, a whole series of conventions are also adopted - for example, the so-called “archaic smile” on the faces of archaic sculptures.

In that era, spiritual horizons expanded unusually; man seemed to feel himself standing face to face with the universe and wanted to comprehend its harmony, the secret of its integrity. Details eluded, ideas about the specific “mechanism” of the universe were the most fantastic, but the pathos of the whole, the consciousness of universal interconnection - this was what constituted the strength of philosophy, poetry and art of archaic Greece*.

Just as philosophy, then still close to poetry, shrewdly guessed the general principles of development, and poetry - the essence of human passions, fine art created a generalized human appearance. Let's look at the kouros, or, as they are sometimes called, "archaic Apollos." It is not so important whether the artist really intended to depict Apollo, or a hero, or an athlete. qh depicted a Man. The man is young, naked, and his chaste nakedness does not need shameful coverings. He always stands straight, his body is imbued with a readiness to move. The body structure is shown and emphasized with utmost clarity; You can immediately see that the long muscular legs can bend at the knees and run, the abdominal muscles can tense, the chest can swell with deep breathing. The face does not express any specific experience or individual character traits, but the possibilities of various experiences are hidden in it. And the conventional “smile” - slightly raised corners of the mouth - is only the possibility of a smile, a hint of the joy of being inherent in this seemingly newly created person.

Kouros statues were created mainly in areas where the Dorian style dominated, that is, on the territory of mainland Greece; female statues - kora - mainly in Asia Minor and island cities, centers of the Ionian style. Beautiful female figures were found during excavations of the archaic Athenian Acropolis, built in the 6th century BC. e., when Pisistratus ruled there, and destroyed during the war with the Persians. For twenty-five centuries marble crusts were buried in “Persian rubbish”; Finally they were taken out of there, half broken, but without losing their extraordinary charm. Perhaps some of them were performed by Ionic masters invited by Pisistratus to Athens; their art influenced Attic plasticity, which now combines the features of Doric severity with Ionian grace. In the barks of the Athenian Acropolis, the ideal of femininity is expressed in its pristine purity. The smile is bright, the gaze is trusting and as if joyfully amazed at the spectacle of the world, the figure is chastely draped in a peplos - a veil, or a light robe - a chiton (in the archaic era, female figures, unlike male ones, were not yet depicted naked), hair flows over the shoulders in curly strands. These kora stood on pedestals in front of the temple of Athena, holding an apple or flower in their hand.

The search for the rational foundations of beauty, harmony based on measure and number, is a very important point in the aesthetics of the Greeks. Pythagorean philosophers sought to grasp the natural numerical relationships in musical harmonies and in the arrangement of heavenly bodies, believing that musical harmony corresponds to the nature of things, the cosmic order, the “harmony of the spheres.” Artists were looking for mathematically verified proportions of the human body and the “body” of architecture. In this, early Greek art was fundamentally different from Cretan-Mycenaean art, which was alien to any mathematics.

Let's look at a late archaic relief from the Dipylon necropolis in Athens, depicting gymnastic games. A very lively genre scene: two naked wrestlers compete in a duel, a fan stands on the left, and a caretaker marks the border of the fighting area with a stick on the right. But how symmetrically and constructively this composition is constructed! The central group of wrestlers, with their legs apart, clasping their hands and clasping their foreheads, forms a balanced closed figure, like a triangle, the side figures flank it - an almost geometric formation, despite the naturalness of body movements and poses.

Thus, in the archaic era, the foundations of ancient Greek sculpture, directions and options for its development were laid. Even then, the main goals of sculpture, aesthetic ideals and aspirations of the ancient Greeks were clear. In later periods, these ideals and the skill of ancient sculptors developed and improved.

1.3 Classical Greek sculpture

The classical period of ancient Greek sculpture falls on the V - IV centuries BC. (early classic or “strict style” - 500/490 - 460/450 BC; high - 450 - 430/420 BC; “rich style” - 420 - 400/390 . BC; late classic - 400/390 BC). At the turn of two eras - archaic and classical - stands the sculptural decor of the Temple of Athena Aphaia on the island of Aegina. The sculptures of the western pediment date back to the time of the founding of the temple (510 - 500 BC), the sculptures of the second eastern pediment, which replaced the previous ones, date back to the early classical period (490 - 480 BC). The central monument of ancient Greek sculpture of the early classics is the pediments and metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (about 468 - 456 BC). Another significant work of early classics is the so-called “Throne of Ludovisi”, decorated with reliefs. A number of bronze originals have also survived from this time - the “Delphic Charioteer”, the statue of Poseidon from Cape Artemisium, Bronzes from Riace. The largest sculptors of the early classics are Pythagoras of Rhegium, Calamis and Myron. We judge the work of famous Greek sculptors mainly from literary evidence and later copies of their works. High classics are represented by the names of Phidias and Polykleitos. Its short-term heyday was associated with work at Athens Acropolis, that is, with the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon (pediments, metopes and zophoros survived, 447 - 432 BC). The pinnacle of ancient Greek sculpture was, apparently, the chrysoelephantine statues of Athena Parthenos and Olympian Zeus by Phidias (both have not survived). “Rich style” is characteristic of the works of Callimachus, Alkamen, Agorakrit and other sculptors of the 5th century. BC e.. Its characteristic monuments are the reliefs of the balustrade of the small temple of Nike Apteros on the Athenian Acropolis (about 410 BC) and a number of funerary steles, among which the most famous is the Hegeso stele. The most important works of ancient Greek sculpture of the late classics are the decoration of the temple of Asclepius in Epidaurus (about 400 - 375 BC), the temple of Athena Aley in Tegea (about 370 - 350 BC), the temple of Artemis in Ephesus ( about 355 - 330 BC) and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (about 350 BC), on the sculptural decoration of which Scopas, Briaxides, Timothy and Leochares worked. The latter is also credited with the statues of Apollo Belvedere and Diana of Versailles. There are also a number of bronze originals from the 4th century. BC e. The largest sculptors of the late classics are Praxiteles, Scopas and Lysippos, who in many ways anticipated the subsequent era of Hellenism.

In the sculpture of the first half of the century, when there were wars with the Persians, a courageous, strict style prevailed. Then a statue-like group of tyrannicides was created: a mature husband and a young man, standing side by side, make an impetuous movement forward, the younger raises his sword, the older shades him with his cloak. This is a monument to historical figures - Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who killed the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus several decades earlier - the first political monument in Greek art. At the same time, it expresses the heroic spirit of resistance and love of freedom that flared up during the era of the Greco-Persian wars. “They are not slaves to mortals, they are not subject to anyone,” says the Athenians in Aeschylus’s tragedy “The Persians.”

Battles, skirmishes, exploits of heroes... The art of the early classics is replete with these warlike subjects. On the pediments of the Temple of Athena in Aegina - the struggle of the Greeks with the Trojans. On the western pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia is the struggle of the Lapiths with the centaurs, on the metopes are all twelve labors of Hercules. Another favorite set of motifs is gymnastic competitions; in those distant times, physical fitness and mastery of body movements were decisive for the outcome of battles, so athletic games were far from just entertainment. Since the 8th century BC. e. Gymnastic competitions were held in Olympia once every four years (their beginning was later considered the beginning of the Greek calendar), and in the 5th century they were celebrated with special solemnity, and now poets who read poetry were also present at them. The Temple of Olympian Zeus - a classic Doric peripterus - was located in the center of the sacred district, where competitions took place, they began with a sacrifice to Zeus. On the eastern pediment of the temple, the sculptural composition depicted the solemn moment before the start of the horse lists: in the center is the figure of Zeus, on either side of it are statues of the mythological heroes Pelops and Oenomaus, the main participants in the upcoming competition, in the corners are their chariots drawn by four horses. According to the myth, the winner was Pelops, in whose honor the Olympic Games were established, which were later resumed, as legend has it, by Hercules himself.

Themes of hand-to-hand combat, equestrian competitions, running competitions, and discus throwing competitions taught sculptors to depict the human body in dynamics. The archaic rigidity of the figures was overcome. Now they act, they move; complex poses, bold angles, and broad gestures appear. The brightest innovator was the Attic sculptor Myron. Myron’s main task was to express the movement as fully and powerfully as possible. Metal does not allow for such precise and delicate work as marble, and perhaps that is why he turned to finding the rhythm of movement. (The name rhythm refers to the overall harmony of the movement of all parts of the body.) And indeed, the rhythm was perfectly captured by Myron. In the statues of athletes, he conveyed not only movement, but the transition from one stage of movement to another, as if stopping a moment. This is his famous “Discobolus”. The athlete bent over and swung before throwing, a second - and the disc will fly, the athlete will straighten up. But for that second his body froze in a very difficult, but visually balanced position.

Balance, a stately "ethos", is preserved in classical sculpture of a strict style. The movement of the figures is neither erratic, nor overly excited, nor too rapid. Even in the dynamic motifs of fighting, running, and falling, the feeling of “Olympic calm,” holistic plastic completeness, and self-closure is not lost. Here is a bronze statue of “Auriga”, found in Delphi, one of the few well-preserved Greek originals. It dates back to the early period of the strict style - around 470 BC. e.. This young man stands very straight (he stood on a chariot and drove a quadriga of horses), his legs are bare, the folds of a long chiton are reminiscent of the deep flutes of Doric columns, his head is tightly covered with a silver-plated bandage, his inlaid eyes look as if they were alive. He is restrained, calm and at the same time full of energy and will. From this bronze figure alone, with its strong, cast plastic, one can feel the full measure of human dignity as the ancient Greeks understood it.

Their art at this stage was dominated by masculine images, but, fortunately, a beautiful relief depicting Aphrodite emerging from the sea, the so-called “throne of Ludovisi”, a sculptural triptych, the upper part of which has been broken off, has also been preserved. In its central part, the goddess of beauty and love, “foam-born,” rises from the waves, supported by two nymphs who chastely protect her with a light veil. She is visible from the waist up. Her body and the bodies of the nymphs are visible through transparent tunics, the folds of clothes flow in a cascade, a stream, like streams of water, like music. On the side parts of the triptych there are two female figures: one nude, playing the flute; the other, wrapped in a veil, lights a sacrificial candle. The first is a hetaera, the second is a wife, the keeper of the hearth, like two faces of femininity, both under the protection of Aphrodite.

The search for surviving Greek originals continues today; From time to time, lucky finds are discovered either in the ground or at the bottom of the sea: for example, in 1928, an excellently preserved bronze statue of Poseidon was found in the sea, near the island of Euboea.

But the overall picture of Greek art during its heyday has to be mentally reconstructed and completed; we know only randomly preserved, scattered sculptures. And they existed in the ensemble.

Among famous masters, the name of Phidias eclipses all sculpture of subsequent generations. A brilliant representative of the age of Pericles, he said the last word in plastic technology, and until now no one has dared to compare with him, although we know him only from hints. A native of Athens, he was born a few years before the Battle of Marathon and, therefore, became precisely a contemporary of the celebration of victories over the East. At first he acted as a painter, and then switched to sculpture. According to the drawings of Phidias and his drawings, under his personal supervision, the Periclean buildings were erected. Fulfilling order after order, he created marvelous statues of gods, personifying the abstract ideals of deities in marble, gold and bone. The image of the deity was developed by him not only in accordance with his qualities, but also in relation to the purpose of honor. He was deeply imbued with the idea of what this idol represented, and sculpted it with all the strength and might of a genius.

Athena, which he made by order of Plataea and which cost this city very dearly, strengthened the fame of the young sculptor. He was commissioned to create a colossal statue of Athena the patroness for the Acropolis. It reached 60 feet in height and was taller than all the surrounding buildings; From afar, from the sea, it shone like a golden star and reigned over the entire city. It was not acrolitic (composite), like the Plataean one, but was entirely cast in bronze. Another Acropolis statue, Athena the Virgin, made for the Parthenon, was made of gold and ivory. Athena was depicted in a battle suit, wearing a golden helmet with a high relief sphinx and vultures on the sides. In one hand she held a spear, in the other a piece of victory. A snake curled at her feet - the guardian of the Acropolis. This statue is considered the best assurance of Phidias after his Zeus. It served as the original for countless copies.

But the height of perfection of all the works of Phidias is considered to be his Zeus Olympian. This was the greatest work of his life: the Greeks themselves gave him the palm. He made an irresistible impression on his contemporaries.

The statue died unknown how and when: it probably burned down along with the Olympic temple. But her charms must have been great if Caligula insisted on transporting her to Rome at all costs, which, however, turned out to be impossible.

The admiration of the Greeks for the beauty and wise structure of the living body was so great that they aesthetically thought of it only in statuary completeness and completeness, allowing them to appreciate the majesty of posture and the harmony of body movements. To dissolve a person in a shapeless crowd, to show him in a random aspect, to remove him deep into the shadows - would be contrary to the aesthetic creed of the Hellenic masters, and they never did this, although the basics of perspective were clear to them. Both sculptors and painters showed man with extreme plastic clarity, close-up(one figure or a group of several figures), trying to place the action in the foreground, as if on a narrow stage parallel to the background plane. Body language was also the language of the soul. It is sometimes said that Greek art was alien to psychology or had not matured to it. This is not entirely true; Perhaps the art of the archaic was still non-psychological, but not the art of the classics. Indeed, it did not know that scrupulous analysis of characters, that cult of the individual that arises in modern times. It is no coincidence that portraiture in Ancient Greece was relatively poorly developed. But the Greeks mastered the art of conveying, so to speak, typical psychology - they expressed a rich range of mental movements based on generalized human types. Distracting from the shades of personal characters, Hellenic artists did not neglect the shades of experience and were able to embody a complex system of feelings. After all, they were contemporaries and fellow citizens of Sophocles, Euripides, Plato.

But still, expressiveness lay not so much in facial expressions as in body movements. Looking at the mysteriously serene Moira of the Parthenon, at the swift, playful Nike untying her sandal, we almost forget that their heads have been broken off - the plasticity of their figures is so eloquent.

Every purely plastic motif - be it the graceful balance of all members of the body, support on both legs or one, transfer of the center of gravity to an external support, the head bowed to the shoulder or thrown back - was thought by the Greek masters as an analogue of spiritual life. The body and psyche were perceived as inseparable. Characterizing the classical ideal in his Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel said that in “the classical form of art, the human body in its forms is no longer recognized only as a sensory existence, but is recognized only as the existence and natural appearance of the spirit.”

Movements and postures in most cases are simple, natural and not necessarily associated with anything sublime. Nika unties her sandal, a boy removes a splinter from his heel, a young runner at the start line prepares to run, and Myrona the discus throws a discus. Myron's younger contemporary, the famous Polykleitos, unlike Myron, never depicted rapid movements and instantaneous states; his bronze statues of young athletes are in calm poses of light, measured movement, running in waves across the figure. The left shoulder is slightly extended, the right is abducted, the left hip is pushed back, the right is raised, the right leg is firmly on the ground, the left is slightly behind and slightly bent at the knee. This movement either does not have any “plot” pretext, or the pretext is insignificant - it is valuable in itself. This is a plastic hymn to clarity, reason, wise balance. This is Doryphoros (spearman) Polykleitos, known to us from marble Roman copies. He seems to be walking and at the same time maintaining a state of rest; position of arms, legs

Ancient Greece was one of the greatest states in the world. During its existence and on its territory, the foundations of European art were laid. The surviving cultural monuments of that period testify to the highest achievements of the Greeks in the field of architecture, philosophical thought, poetry and, of course, sculpture. Few originals have survived: time does not spare even the most unique creations. We know largely about the skill for which the ancient sculptors of Ancient Greece were famous thanks to written sources and later Roman copies. However, this information is enough to understand the significance of the contribution of the Peloponnese inhabitants to

Periods

The sculptors of Ancient Greece were not always great creators. The era of the heyday of their skill was preceded by the archaic period (VII-VI centuries BC). The sculptures that have come down to us from that time are distinguished by their symmetry and static nature. They do not have that vitality and hidden internal movement that makes the statues look like frozen people. All the beauty of these early works is expressed through the face. It is no longer as static as the body: a smile radiates a feeling of joy and serenity, giving a special sound to the entire sculpture.

After the completion of the archaic period, the most fruitful time follows, in which the ancient sculptors of Ancient Greece created their most famous works. It is divided into several periods:

early classic - beginning of the 5th century. BC e.;
high classic - 5th century BC e.;
late classic - 4th century. BC e.;
Hellenism - end of the 4th century. BC e. - I century n. e.

Transition time

Early Classics is the period when the sculptors of Ancient Greece began to move away from static body position and look for new ways to express their ideas. Proportions are filled with natural beauty, poses become more dynamic, and faces become expressive.

The sculptor of Ancient Greece Myron created precisely during this period. In written sources, he is characterized as a master of conveying the anatomically correct structure of the body, capable of capturing reality with high accuracy. Myron's contemporaries also pointed out his shortcomings: in their opinion, the sculptor did not know how to impart beauty and liveliness to the faces of his creations.

The master's statues embody heroes, gods and animals. However, the sculptor of Ancient Greece Myron gave greatest preference to the depiction of athletes during their achievements in competitions. The famous “Discobolus” is his creation. The sculpture has not survived to this day in the original, but there are several copies of it. “Disco thrower” depicts an athlete preparing to launch his projectile. The athlete's body is superbly executed: tense muscles indicate the heaviness of the disc, the twisted body resembles a spring ready to unfold. It seems like just a second and the athlete will throw the projectile.

The statues “Athena” and “Marsyas” are also considered to be superbly executed by Myron, which have also come down to us only in the form of later copies.

Heyday

Outstanding sculptors of Ancient Greece worked throughout the entire period of high classics. At this time, the masters of creating reliefs and statues comprehend both the methods of conveying movement and the basics of harmony and proportions. High classics is the period of formation of those foundations of Greek sculpture, which later became the standard for many generations of masters, including the creators of the Renaissance.

At this time, the sculptor of Ancient Greece Polykleitos and the brilliant Phidias worked. Both of them made people admire themselves during their lifetime and were not forgotten for centuries.

Peace and Harmony

Polykleitos worked in the second half of the 5th century. BC e. He is known as a master of creating sculptures depicting athletes at rest. Unlike Miron’s “Disco Thrower,” his athletes are not tense, but relaxed, but at the same time the viewer has no doubt about their power and capabilities.

Polykleitos was the first to use a special body position: his heroes often rested on a pedestal with only one leg. This pose created a feeling of natural relaxation characteristic of a resting person.

Canon

Most famous sculpture Polykleitos is considered "Doriphoros", or "Spear-bearer". The work is also called the master's canon, since it embodies some of the provisions of Pythagoreanism and is an example of a special way of posing a figure, contrapposto. The composition is based on the principle of cross-uneven movement of the body: the left side (the hand holding the spear and the leg set back) is relaxed, but at the same time in motion, in contrast to the tense and static right (the supporting leg and the arm straightened along the body).

Polykleitos later used a similar technique in many of his works. Its basic principles are set out in a treatise on aesthetics that has not reached us, written by the sculptor and called “Canon”. Enough great place in it, Polykleitos devoted a principle that he also successfully applied in his works, when this principle did not contradict the natural parameters of the body.

Recognized genius

All the ancient sculptors of Ancient Greece during the high classical period left behind admirable creations. However, the most outstanding among them was Phidias, rightfully considered the founder of European art. Unfortunately, the majority of the master’s works have survived to this day only as copies or descriptions on the pages of treatises by ancient authors.

Phidias worked on decorating the Athenian Parthenon. Today, an idea of the sculptor’s skill can be gathered from the preserved marble relief, 1.6 m long. It depicts numerous pilgrims heading to the rest of the Parthenon’s decorations were lost. The same fate befell the statue of Athena, installed here and created by Phidias. The goddess, made of ivory and gold, symbolized the city itself, its power and greatness.

Wonder of the world

Others outstanding sculptors Ancient Greece may have been little inferior to Phidias, but none of them could boast of creating a wonder of the world. Olympic was made by a master for the city where the famous Games took place. The height of the Thunderer, seated on a golden throne, was amazing (14 meters). Despite such power, the god did not look formidable: Phidias created a calm, majestic and solemn Zeus, somewhat strict, but at the same time kind. Before its death, the statue attracted many pilgrims seeking solace for nine centuries.

Late classic

With the end of the 5th century. BC e. The sculptors of Ancient Greece did not dry out. The names Scopas, Praxiteles and Lysippos are known to everyone who is interested in ancient art. They created in the next period, called late classic. The works of these masters develop and complement the achievements of the previous era. Each in their own way, they transform the sculpture, enriching it with new subjects, ways of working with material and options for conveying emotions.

Boiling passions

Skopas can be called an innovator for several reasons. The great sculptors of Ancient Greece who preceded him preferred to use bronze as a material. Skopas created his creations mainly from marble. Instead of the traditional calm and harmony that filled his works in Ancient Greece, the master chose expression. His creations are full of passions and emotions, they are more like real people than imperturbable gods.

The frieze of the mausoleum at Halicarnassus is considered the most famous work of Skopas. It depicts Amazonomachy - the struggle of the heroes of Greek myths with the warlike Amazons. The main features of the style inherent in the master are clearly visible in the surviving fragments of this creation.

Smoothness

Another sculptor of this period, Praxiteles, is considered the best Greek master in terms of conveying the grace of the body and inner spirituality. One of his outstanding works - Aphrodite of Knidos - was recognized by the master's contemporaries as the best creation ever created. The marble statue of the goddess became the first monumental depiction of the naked female body. The original has not reached us.

The features of the style characteristic of Praxiteles are fully visible in the statue of Hermes. With the special posing of the naked body, the smoothness of the lines and the softness of the halftones of the marble, the master was able to create a somewhat dreamy mood that literally envelops the sculpture.

Attention to detail

At the end of the late classical era, another famous Greek sculptor, Lysippos, worked. His creations were distinguished by special naturalism, careful elaboration of details, and some elongation of proportions. Lysippos strove to create statues full of grace and elegance. He honed his skills by studying the canon of Polykleitos. Contemporaries noted that the works of Lysippos, unlike Doryphoros, gave the impression of being more compact and balanced. According to legend, the master was the favorite creator of Alexander the Great.

Eastern influence

A new stage in the development of sculpture begins at the end of the 4th century. BC e. The border between the two periods is considered to be the time of the conquests of Alexander the Great. With them, the era of Hellenism actually begins, which was a combination of the art of Ancient Greece and eastern countries.

The sculptures of this period are based on the achievements of masters of previous centuries. Hellenistic art gave the world such works as the Venus de Milo. At the same time, the famous reliefs of the Pergamon Altar appeared. In some works of late Hellenism, there is a noticeable appeal to everyday subjects and details. This time had a strong influence on the development of the art of the Roman Empire.

Finally

The importance of antiquity as a source of spiritual and aesthetic ideals cannot be overestimated. Ancient sculptors in Ancient Greece laid not only the foundations of their own craft, but also the standards for understanding the beauty of the human body. They were able to solve the problem of depicting movement by changing the pose and shifting the center of gravity. The ancient sculptors of Ancient Greece learned to convey emotions and experiences with the help of processed stone, to create not just statues, but practically living figures, ready to move at any moment, sigh, smile. All these achievements will form the basis for the flourishing of culture during the Renaissance.

1.1 Sculpture in Ancient Greece. Prerequisites for its development

Among all the fine arts of ancient civilizations, the art of Ancient Greece, in particular its sculpture, occupies a very special place. The Greeks valued the living body, capable of any muscular task, above all else. The lack of clothes shocked no one. They treated everything too simply to be ashamed of anything. And at the same time, of course, chastity did not lose from this.

1.2 Archaic Greek sculpture

The Archaic period is the period of formation of ancient Greek sculpture. The sculptor’s desire to convey the beauty of the ideal human body, which is fully manifested in the works of more late era, but it was still too difficult for the artist to move away from the shape of the stone block, and the figures of this period are always static.

First monuments ancient greek sculpture Archaic eras are determined by the geometric style (8th century). These are sketchy figurines found in Athens, Olympia , in Boeotia. The archaic era of ancient Greek sculpture falls on the 7th - 6th centuries. (early archaic - about 650 - 580 BC; high - 580 - 530; late - 530 - 500/480). The beginning of monumental sculpture in Greece dates back to the middle of the 7th century. BC e. and is characterized by orientalizing styles, of which the most important was the Daedalian style, associated with the name of the semi-mythical sculptor Daedalus . The circle of “Daedalian” sculpture includes a statue of Artemis of Delos and a female statue of Cretan work, stored in the Louvre (“Lady of Auxerre”). Mid-7th century BC e. The first kouroses also date back . The first sculptural temple decoration dates back to the same time. - reliefs and statues from Prinia on the island of Crete. Subsequently, the sculptural decoration fills the fields highlighted in the temple by its very design - pediments and metopes V Doric temple, continuous frieze (zophorus) - in Ionic. The earliest pediment compositions in ancient Greek sculpture come from the Athenian Acropolis and from the Temple of Artemis on the island of Kerkyra (Corfu). Funerary, dedicatory and cult statues are represented in the archaic by the type of kouros and kora . Archaic reliefs decorate the bases of statues, pediments and metopes of temples (later, round sculpture takes the place of reliefs in the pediments), and tombstones . Among the famous monuments of archaic round sculpture are the head of Hera, found near her temple at Olympia, the statue of Kleobis and Beaton from Delphi, Moschophorus (“Taurus Bearer”) from the Athenian Acropolis, Hera of Samos , statues from Didyma, Nikka Arherma and others. The last statue shows the archaic design of the so-called “kneeling run”, used to depict a flying or running figure. In archaic sculpture, a whole series of conventions are also adopted - for example, the so-called “archaic smile” on the faces of archaic sculptures.

The sculpture of the Archaic era is dominated by statues of slender naked youths and draped young girls - kouros and koras. Neither childhood nor old age attracted the attention of artists then, because only in mature youth are vital forces in full bloom and balance. Early Greek art creates images of Man and Woman in their ideal form. In that era, spiritual horizons expanded unusually; man seemed to feel himself standing face to face with the universe and wanted to comprehend its harmony, the secret of its integrity. Details eluded, ideas about the specific “mechanism” of the universe were the most fantastic, but the pathos of the whole, the consciousness of universal interconnection - this was what constituted the strength of philosophy, poetry and art of archaic Greece*. Just as philosophy, then still close to poetry, shrewdly guessed the general principles of development, and poetry - the essence of human passions, fine art created a generalized human appearance. Let's look at the kouros, or, as they are sometimes called, "archaic Apollos." It is not so important whether the artist really intended to depict Apollo, or a hero, or an athlete. The man is young, naked, and his chaste nakedness does not need shameful coverings. He always stands straight, his body is imbued with a readiness to move. The body structure is shown and emphasized with utmost clarity; You can immediately see that the long muscular legs can bend at the knees and run, the abdominal muscles can tense, the chest can swell with deep breathing. The face does not express any specific experience or individual character traits, but the possibilities of various experiences are hidden in it. And the conventional “smile” - slightly raised corners of the mouth - is only the possibility of a smile, a hint of the joy of being inherent in this seemingly newly created person.

Kouros statues were created mainly in areas where the Dorian style dominated, that is, on the territory of mainland Greece; female statues - kora - mainly in Asia Minor and island cities, centers of the Ionian style. Beautiful female figures were found during excavations of the archaic Athenian Acropolis, built in the 6th century BC. e., when Pisistratus ruled there, and destroyed during the war with the Persians. For twenty-five centuries marble crusts were buried in “Persian garbage”; Finally they were taken out of there, half broken, but without losing their extraordinary charm. Perhaps some of them were performed by Ionic masters invited by Pisistratus to Athens; their art influenced Attic plasticity, which now combines the features of Doric severity with Ionian grace. In the barks of the Athenian Acropolis, the ideal of femininity is expressed in its pristine purity. The smile is bright, the gaze is trusting and as if joyfully amazed at the spectacle of the world, the figure is chastely draped in a peplos - a veil, or a light robe - a chiton (in the archaic era, female figures, unlike male ones, were not yet depicted naked), hair flows over the shoulders in curly strands. These kora stood on pedestals in front of the temple of Athena, holding an apple or flower in their hand.

Archaic sculptures (as well as classical ones) were not as monotonously white as we imagine them now. Many still have traces of painting. The marble girls' hair was golden, their cheeks were pink, and their eyes were blue. Against the background of the cloudless sky of Hellas, all this should have looked very festive, but at the same time strict, thanks to the clarity, composure and constructiveness of the forms and silhouettes. There was no excessive floweriness or variegation. The search for rational foundations of beauty, harmony based on measure and number is very important point in Greek aesthetics. Pythagorean philosophers sought to grasp the natural numerical relationships in musical harmonies and in the arrangement of heavenly bodies, believing that musical harmony corresponds to the nature of things, the cosmic order, the “harmony of the spheres.” Artists were looking for mathematically verified proportions of the human body and the “body” of architecture. In this, early Greek art was fundamentally different from Cretan-Mycenaean art, which was alien to any mathematics.

Very lively genre scene: Thus, in the archaic era, the foundations of ancient Greek sculpture, directions and options for its development were laid. Even then, the main goals of sculpture, aesthetic ideals and aspirations of the ancient Greeks were clear. In more later periods there is a development and improvement of these ideals and the skill of ancient sculptors.

1.3 Classical Greek sculpture

The classical period of ancient Greek sculpture falls on the V - IV centuries BC. (early classic or “strict style” - 500/490 - 460/450 BC; high - 450 - 430/420 BC; “rich style” - 420 - 400/390 . BC; late classic - 400/390 - OK. 320 BC e.). At the turn of two eras - archaic and classical - stands the sculptural decor of the Temple of Athena Aphaia on the island of Aegina . The sculptures of the western pediment date back to the founding of the temple (510 - 500 BC BC), sculptures of the second eastern, replacing the previous ones, - to the early classical time (490 - 480 BC). The central monument of ancient Greek sculpture of the early classics is the pediments and metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (about 468 - 456 BC e.). Another significant work of the early classics - the so-called “Throne of Ludovisi”, decorated with reliefs. A number of bronze originals have also survived from this time - the “Delphic Charioteer”, statue of Poseidon from Cape Artemisium, Bronze from Riace . The largest sculptors of the early classics - Pythagoras Regian, Kalamid and Miron . About the creativity of the famous Greek sculptors we judge mainly from literary evidence and later copies of their works. High classicism is represented by the names of Phidias and Polykleitos . Its short-term heyday is associated with work on the Athenian Acropolis, that is, with the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon (Pediments, metopes and zophoros survived, 447 - 432 BC). The pinnacle of ancient Greek sculpture was, apparently, chrysoelephantine Athena Parthenos statues and Zeus of Olympus by Phidias (both have not survived). “Rich style” is characteristic of the works of Callimachus, Alcamenes, Agorakrit and other sculptors of the 5th century. BC BC. Its characteristic monuments are the reliefs of the balustrade of the small temple of Nike Apteros on the Athenian Acropolis (circa 410 BC) and a number of funerary steles, among which the most famous is the Hegeso stele . The most important works of ancient Greek sculpture of the late classics - the decoration of the Temple of Asclepius in Epidaurus (about 400 - 375 BC), temple of Athena Aley in Tegea (about 370 - 350 BC), the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (about 355 - 330 BC) and the Mausoleum in Halicarnassus (c. 350 BC), on the sculptural decoration of which Scopas, Briaxides, Timothy worked and Leohar . The latter is also credited with the statues of Apollo Belvedere and Diana of Versailles . There are also a number of bronze originals from the 4th century. BC e. The largest sculptors of the late classics - Praxiteles, Scopas and Lysippos, in many ways anticipating the subsequent era of Hellenism.

Greek sculpture partially survived in rubble and fragments. Most of the statues are known to us from Roman copies, which were made in large numbers, but did not convey the beauty of the originals. Roman copyists roughened and dried them, and when converting bronze items into marble, they disfigured them with clumsy supports. The large figures of Athena, Aphrodite, Hermes, Satyr, which we now see in the halls of the Hermitage, are only pale rehashes of Greek masterpieces. You walk past them almost indifferently and suddenly stop in front of some head with a broken nose, with a damaged eye: this is a Greek original! And the amazing power of life suddenly wafted from this fragment; The marble itself is different from that in Roman statues - not deathly white, but yellowish, see-through, luminous (the Greeks also rubbed it with wax, which gave the marble a warm tone). So gentle are the melting transitions of light and shade, so noble is the soft sculpting of the face, that one involuntarily recalls the delights of the Greek poets: these sculptures really breathe, they really are alive*. In the sculpture of the first half of the century, when there were wars with the Persians, a courageous, strict style prevailed. Then a statue-like group of tyrannicides was created: a mature husband and a young man, standing side by side, make an impetuous movement forward, the younger raises his sword, the older shades him with his cloak. This is a monument to historical figures - Harmodius and Aristogeiton, who killed the Athenian tyrant Hipparchus several decades earlier - the first political monument in Greek art. At the same time, it expresses the heroic spirit of resistance and love of freedom that flared up during the era of the Greco-Persian wars. “They are not slaves to mortals, they are not subject to anyone,” says the Athenians in Aeschylus’s tragedy “The Persians.” Battles, skirmishes, exploits of heroes... The art of the early classics is replete with these warlike subjects. On the pediments of the Temple of Athena in Aegina - the struggle of the Greeks with the Trojans. On the western pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia is the struggle of the Lapiths with the centaurs, on the metopes are all twelve labors of Hercules. Another favorite set of motifs is gymnastic competitions; in those distant times, physical fitness and mastery of body movements were decisive for the outcome of battles, so athletic games were far from just entertainment. The themes of hand-to-hand combat, equestrian competitions, running competitions, and discus throwing taught sculptors to depict human body in dynamics. The archaic rigidity of the figures was overcome. Now they act, they move; complex poses, bold angles, and broad gestures appear. The brightest innovator was the Attic sculptor Myron. Myron’s main task was to express the movement as fully and powerfully as possible. Metal does not allow for such precise and delicate work as marble, and perhaps that is why he turned to finding the rhythm of movement. Balance, a stately "ethos", is preserved in classical sculpture of a strict style. The movement of the figures is neither erratic, nor overly excited, nor too rapid. Even in the dynamic motifs of fighting, running, and falling, the feeling of “Olympic calm,” holistic plastic completeness, and self-closure is not lost.

Zeus was depicted on the throne. In one hand he held a scepter, in the other - an image of victory. The body was made of ivory, the hair was gold, the robe was gold and enameled. The throne included ebony, and bone, and gems. The walls between the legs were painted by Phidias's cousin, Panen; the foot of the throne was a marvel of sculpture. The admiration of the Greeks for the beauty and wise structure of the living body was so great that they aesthetically thought of it only in statuary completeness and completeness, allowing them to appreciate the majesty of posture and the harmony of body movements. But still, expressiveness lay not so much in facial expressions as in body movements. Looking at the mysteriously serene Moira of the Parthenon, at the swift, playful Nike untying her sandal, we almost forget that their heads have been broken off - the plasticity of their figures is so eloquent.

Indeed, the bodies of Greek statues are unusually spiritual. The French sculptor Rodin said about one of them: “This headless youthful torso smiles more joyfully at the light and spring than eyes and lips could.” Movements and postures in most cases are simple, natural and not necessarily associated with anything sublime. The heads of Greek statues, as a rule, are impersonal, that is, little individualized, reduced to a few variations of a general type, but this general type has a high spiritual capacity. In the Greek type of face, the idea of the “human” in its ideal version triumphs. The face is divided into three parts of equal length: forehead, nose and lower part. Correct, gentle oval. The straight line of the nose continues the line of the forehead and forms a perpendicular to the line drawn from the beginning of the nose to the opening of the ear (straight facial angle). Oblong section of rather deep-set eyes. A small mouth, full convex lips, the upper lip is thinner than the lower and has a beautiful smooth cut like a cupid's bow. The chin is large and round. Wavy hair softly and tightly fits the head, without interfering with the visibility of the rounded shape of the skull. This classic beauty may seem monotonous, but, representing the expressive “natural appearance of the spirit,” it lends itself to variation and is capable of embodying Various types ancient ideal. A little more energy in the lips, in the protruding chin - before us is the strict virgin Athena. There is more softness in the contours of the cheeks, the lips are slightly half-open, the eye sockets are shaded - before us is the sensual face of Aphrodite. The oval of the face is closer to a square, the neck is thicker, the lips are larger - this is already the image of a young athlete. But the basis remains the same strictly proportional classical appearance.

After the war….The characteristic pose of the standing figure changes. In the archaic era, statues stood completely straight, frontally. Mature classics enliven and animate them with balanced, smooth movements, maintaining balance and stability. And the statues of Praxiteles - the resting Satyr, Apollo Saurocton - with lazy grace lean on pillars, without them they would have to fall. The thigh on one side is arched very strongly, and the shoulder is lowered low towards the thigh - Rodin compares this position of the body with a harmonica, when the bellows are compressed on one side and pushed apart on the other. External support is required for balance. This is a dreamy rest position. Praxiteles follows the traditions of Polykleitos, uses the motives of movements he found, but develops them in such a way that a different internal content shines through in them. “The Wounded Amazon” Polykletai also leans on a half-column, but she could have stood without it, her strong, energetic body, even suffering from a wound, stands firmly on the ground. Praxiteles' Apollo is not struck by an arrow; he himself aims at a lizard running along a tree trunk - an action that would seem to require strong-willed composure, yet his body is unstable, like a swaying stem. And this is not a random detail, not a whim of the sculptor, but a kind of new canon in which a changed view of the world finds expression. However, not only the nature of movements and poses changed in sculpture of the 4th century BC. e. For Praxiteles, the range of his favorite topics becomes different; he moves away from heroic subjects into the “light world of Aphrodite and Eros.” He sculpted the famous statue of Aphrodite of Knidos. Praxiteles and the artists of his circle did not like to depict the muscular torsos of athletes; they were attracted by the delicate beauty of the female body with the soft flow of volumes. They preferred the type of youth, distinguished by “first youth and effeminate beauty.” Praxiteles was famous for the special softness of his sculpting and skill in processing the material, his ability to convey the warmth of a living body in cold marble2.

The only surviving original of Praxiteles is considered to be the marble statue “Hermes with Dionysus”, found in Olympia. Naked Hermes, leaning on a tree trunk where his cloak has been carelessly thrown, holds little Dionysus on one bent arm, and in the other a bunch of grapes, to which the child is reaching (the hand holding the grapes is lost). All the charm of pictorial marble processing is in this statue, especially in the head of Hermes: transitions of light and shadow, the finest “sfumato” (haze), which, many centuries later, was achieved in painting by Leonardo da Vinci. All other works of the master are known only from mentions of ancient authors and later copies. But the spirit of Praxiteles’ art lingers over the 4th century BC. e., and best of all it can be felt not in Roman copies, but in small Greek plastic, in Tanagra clay figurines. They were produced at the end of the century in large quantities, it was a kind of mass production with the main center in Tanagra. (A very good collection of them is kept in the Leningrad Hermitage.) Some figurines reproduce famous large statues, others simply give various free variations of the draped female figure. The living grace of these figures, dreamy, thoughtful, playful, is an echo of the art of Praxiteles.

1.4 Sculpture of Hellenistic Greece

The very concept of “Hellenism” contains an indirect indication of the victory of the Hellenic principle. Even in remote areas of the Hellenistic world, in Bactria and Parthia (today middle Asia), uniquely transformed ancient forms of art appear. And Egypt is difficult to recognize, it new town Alexandria is already a real enlightened center of ancient culture, where the exact sciences, the humanities, and philosophical schools, originating from Pythagoras and Plato, flourish. Hellenistic Alexandria gave the world the great mathematician and physicist Archimedes, the geometer Euclid, Aristarchus of Samos, who eighteen centuries before Copernicus proved that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The cabinets of the famous Library of Alexandria, designated by Greek letters, from alpha to omega, contained hundreds of thousands of scrolls - “works that have shone in all branches of knowledge.” There stood a grandiose Faros lighthouse, considered one of the seven wonders of the world; there the Museyon was created, the palace of the muses - the prototype of all future museums. Compared to this rich and opulent port city, the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, the city of the Greek metropolis, even Athens probably looked modest. But these modest ones small towns were the main sources of those cultural treasures that were kept and revered in Alexandria, those traditions that continued to be followed. If Hellenistic science owed much to the heritage Ancient East, then the plastic arts retained a predominantly Greek character.

The basic formative principles came from Greek classics, the content became different. There was a decisive demarcation between public and private life. In Hellenistic monarchies, a cult of a single ruler was established, equated to a deity, similar to what was in the ancient Eastern despotisms. But the similarity is relative: the “private man,” who is not affected by political storms or is only slightly affected, is not nearly as impersonal as in the ancient eastern states. He has his own life: he is a merchant, he is an entrepreneur, he is an official, he is a scientist. In addition, he is often Greek by origin - after the conquests of Alexander, the mass migration of Greeks to the east began - the concepts of human dignity, brought up by Greek culture, are not alien to him. Even if he is removed from power and government affairs, his isolated private world requires and finds artistic expression, the basis of which is the traditions of the late Greek classics, reworked in the spirit of greater intimacy and genre. And in “state” art, official art, in large public buildings and monuments, the same traditions are processed, on the contrary, towards pomp.

Pomp and intimacy are opposite traits; Hellenistic art is full of contrasts - gigantic and miniature, ceremonial and everyday, allegorical and natural. The world has become more complex, and aesthetic needs have become more diverse. The main trend is a departure from the generalized human type to an understanding of man as a concrete, individual being, and hence the increasing attention to his psychology, interest in events, and a new vigilance to national, age, social and other characteristics of personality. But since all this was expressed in a language inherited from the classics, which did not set themselves such tasks, a certain inorganicity is felt in the innovative works of the Hellenistic era; they do not achieve the integrity and harmony of their great predecessors. The portrait head of the heroic statue “Diadochi” does not fit with his naked torso, which repeats the type of a classical athlete. The drama of the multi-figure sculptural group “Farnese Bull” is contradicted by the “classical” representativeness of the figures; their poses and movements are too beautiful and smooth to believe in the truth of their experiences. In numerous park and chamber sculptures, the traditions of Praxiteles are diminished: Eros, “the great and powerful god,” turns into a playful, playful Cupid; Apollo - into the flirtatious and effeminate Apollo; strengthening the genre does not benefit them. And the famous Hellenistic statues of old women carrying provisions, a drunken old woman, an old fisherman with a flabby body lack the power of figurative generalization; art masters these new types externally, without penetrating into the depths - after all, the classical heritage did not provide the key to them. The statue of Aphrodite, traditionally called the Venus de Milo, was found in 1820 on the island of Melos and immediately gained worldwide fame as the perfect creation of Greek art. This high assessment was not shaken by many later discoveries of Greek originals - Aphrodite de Milo occupies a special place among them. Apparently executed in the 2nd century BC. e. (by the sculptor Agesander or Alexander, as the half-erased inscription on the base says), it bears little resemblance to contemporary statues depicting the goddess of love. Hellenistic aphrodites most often went back to the type of Aphrodite of Cnidus by Praxiteles, making her sensually seductive, even slightly cutesy; such, for example, is the famous Aphrodite of Medicine. Aphrodite of Milo, only half naked, draped to the hips, is stern and sublimely calm. She personifies not so much the ideal of female beauty as the ideal of man in a general and highest sense. The Russian writer Gleb Uspensky found a successful expression: the ideal of a “straightened man.” The statue was well preserved, but its hands were broken off. There have been many speculations about what these hands were doing: was the goddess holding an apple? or a mirror? or was she holding the hem of her robe? No convincing reconstruction has been found; in fact, there is no need for it. The “armlessness” of Aphrodite of Milo over time has become, as it were, her attribute; it does not in the least interfere with her beauty and even enhances the impression of the majesty of her figure. And since not a single one remained intact greek statue, then it is in this partially damaged state that Aphrodite appears before us, like a “marble riddle”, given to us by antiquity, as a symbol of distant Hellas.

Another wonderful monument of Hellenism (of those that have come down to us, and how many have disappeared!) is the altar of Zeus in Pergamon. The Pergamon school, more than others, gravitated towards pathos and drama, continuing the traditions of Skopas. Its artists did not always resort to mythological subjects, as was the case in the classical era. On the square of the Pergamon Acropolis there were sculptural groups that perpetuated a genuine historical event - the victory over the “barbarians”, the Gaul tribes that besieged the kingdom of Pergamon. Full of expression and dynamics, these groups are also notable for the fact that the artists pay tribute to the vanquished, showing them both valiant and suffering. They depict a Gaul killing his wife and himself to avoid captivity and slavery; depict a mortally wounded Gaul reclining on the ground with his head bowed low. It is immediately clear from his face and figure that he is a “barbarian,” a foreigner, but he dies a heroic death, and this is shown. In their art the Greeks did not stoop to humiliate their opponents; This feature of ethical humanism comes out with particular clarity when the opponents - the Gauls - are depicted realistically. After Alexander's campaigns, much changed in general in attitudes towards foreigners. As Plutarch writes, Alexander saw himself as the reconciler of the universe, “causing all to drink... from the same cup of friendship, and mixing together lives, manners, marriages, and forms of life.” Morals and forms of life, as well as forms of religion, really began to mix in the Hellenistic era, but friendship did not reign and peace did not come, strife and war did not stop. The wars of Pergamum with the Gauls are only one of the episodes. When the victory over the Gauls was finally achieved, the altar of Zeus was erected in her honor, completed in 180 BC. e. This time, the long-term war with the “barbarians” appeared as a gigantomachy - the struggle of the Olympian gods with the giants. According to ancient myth, the giants - giants who lived far in the west, the sons of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky) - rebelled against the Olympians, but were defeated by them after a fierce battle and buried under volcanoes, in the deep bowels of mother earth, from where they remind us of themselves with volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. A grandiose marble frieze, about 120 meters long, made using the high relief technique, encircled the base of the altar. The remains of this structure were excavated in the 1870s; Thanks to the painstaking work of restorers, it was possible to connect thousands of fragments and get a fairly complete picture of the general composition of the frieze. Mighty bodies are piled up, intertwined, like a ball of snakes, the defeated giants are tormented by shaggy-maned lions, dogs bite their teeth, horses trample under their feet, but the giants fight fiercely, their leader Porphyrion does not retreat before the thunderer Zeus. The mother of the giants, Gaia, begs to spare her sons, but they do not listen to her. The battle is terrible. There is something prescient of Michelangelo in the tense angles of the bodies, in their titanic power and tragic pathos. Although battles and fights were a frequent theme in ancient reliefs, starting with the archaic, they were never depicted as on the Pergamon Altar - with such a shuddering feeling of a cataclysm, a battle for life and death, where all cosmic forces, all demons participate earth and sky. The structure of the composition has changed, it has lost its classical clarity and has become swirling and confusing. Let us remember the figures of Skopas on the relief of the Halicarnassus mausoleum. They, with all their dynamism, are located in the same spatial plane, they are separated by rhythmic intervals, each figure has a certain independence, masses and space are balanced. It’s different in the Pergamon frieze - those fighting here are cramped, the mass has suppressed the space, and all the figures are so intertwined that they form a stormy mess of bodies. And the bodies are still classically beautiful, “sometimes radiant, sometimes menacing, living, dead, triumphant, dying figures,” as I. S. Turgenev said about them*. The Olympians are beautiful, and so are their enemies. But the harmony of the spirit fluctuates. Faces distorted by suffering, deep shadows in the eye sockets, snake-like hair... The Olympians are still triumphant over the forces of the underground elements, but this victory is not for long - the elemental principles threaten to blow up the harmonious, harmonious world. Just as the art of the Greek archaic should not be assessed only as the first harbingers of the classics, so Hellenistic art as a whole cannot be considered a late echo of the classics, underestimating the fundamentally new things that it brought. This new thing was connected both with the expansion of the horizons of art and with its inquisitive interest in the human personality and the specific, real conditions of its life. Hence, first of all, the development of the portrait, the individual portrait, which was almost unknown to the high classics, and the late classics were only on the approaches to it. Hellenistic artists, even making portraits of people who had long been dead, gave them a psychological interpretation and sought to reveal the uniqueness of both external and internal appearance. Not contemporaries, but descendants left us the faces of Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, Demosthenes and even the legendary Homer, an inspired blind storyteller. The portrait of an unknown old philosopher is amazing in its realism and expression - apparently, an irreconcilable passionate polemicist, whose wrinkled face with sharp features has nothing in common with the classical type. Previously, it was considered a portrait of Seneca, but the famous Stoic lived later than this bronze bust was sculpted.

For the first time, a child with all the anatomical features of childhood and with all the charm characteristic of him becomes the subject of plastic surgery. IN classical era If young children were depicted, it was more like miniature adults. Even in Praxiteles in the group “Hermes with Dionysus” Dionysus bears little resemblance to a baby in his anatomy and proportions. It seems that only now have they noticed that the child is a completely special creature, playful and crafty, with his own special habits; noticed and were so captivated by him that the god of love Eros himself began to be represented as a child, marking the beginning of a tradition that has been established for centuries. The plump, curly children of Hellenistic sculptors are busy with all sorts of tricks: riding a dolphin, messing with birds, even strangling snakes (this is baby Hercules). Particularly popular was the statue of a boy fighting a goose. Such statues were placed in parks, decorated fountains, were placed in the sanctuaries of Asclepius, the god of healing, and were sometimes used for tombstones.

Conclusion

We examined the sculpture of Ancient Greece throughout the entire period of its development. We saw the entire process of its formation, flourishing and decline - the entire transition from strict, static and idealized archaic forms through balanced harmony classical sculpture to the dramatic psychologism of Hellenistic statues. The sculpture of Ancient Greece was rightfully considered a model, an ideal, a canon for many centuries, and now it never ceases to be recognized as a masterpiece of world classics. Nothing like this has been achieved before or since. All modern sculpture can be considered to one degree or another a continuation of the traditions of Ancient Greece. The sculpture of Ancient Greece went through a difficult path in its development, preparing the ground for the development of sculpture in subsequent eras in various countries. In later times, the traditions of ancient Greek sculpture were enriched with new developments and achievements, while the ancient canons served as the necessary foundation, the basis for the development of plastic art of all subsequent eras.

Plan

Introduction

1. Sculpture of Ancient Greece

1.1 Sculpture in Ancient Greece. Prerequisites for its development

1.2 Archaic Greek sculpture

1.3 Classical Greek sculpture

1.4 Sculpture of Hellenistic Greece

Conclusion

Notes

List of used literature

Introduction

Ancient, in particular, ancient Greek art has been a subject of study since ancient times. Since the time Ancient Rome he was taken as a model, and the canons of ancient Greek fine art were immutable rules. The theoretical study of ancient Greek art, in particular sculpture, began somewhat later - from the Renaissance.

Thus, the literature on this topic is rich and varied. Almost no treatises by ancient sculptors and scientists have survived to this day, but there is great amount literature of modern researchers. In addition, many statues and reliefs have survived to this day - originals and Roman copies - so the idea of ancient Greek sculpture is quite clear. The purpose of my essay is to once again review the literature on this topic and explore the entire history of Greek sculpture - from its origins to its decline. I think this topic is relevant in our time, because issues related to art never lose their relevance, and the study of art helps to study the history of a people. In addition, ancient Greek art is an ideal, a canon for the art of many later civilizations. It does not lose its relevance even today, when new types of art are being formed, and general views on art are repeatedly revised and changed.

1. Sculpture of Ancient Greece

1.1 Sculpture in Ancient Greece. Prerequisites for its development

I. Ten in his “Lectures on Aesthetics” explains the simplicity of the form of Hellenic art by the physical structure of the region. This is understandable. The Greek was not amazed, like the Egyptian, by the endless sandy ocean of the Sahara, the infinitely huge Nile; his imagination was not suppressed by the masses Himalayan mountains, dry plane of the Caspian coast. No, everything around him was so light, fresh, clean, clear and simple. Small rounded mountains, groves growing at their feet, a sea dotted with islands lying so close to one another that it is difficult to find a point where distant land is not visible on the horizon; tiny rivers and streams. The gaze fully embraces every form and does not get lost, hence the development of certain, precise concepts. Citizens knew everyone in their state by sight. From the city citadel one could see the entire state. City, suburbs, farms, towns - that's it. There is never fog here, there is almost no rain. The heat is moderated by the proximity of the sea. There is eternal summer all around; olives, oranges, lemons, cypresses, grapes provide constant free food for the resident. He is not the “sad stepson of nature,” but rather her equal brother. He does not need to invent warm clothes and shelters, pavements, sidewalks - there is no dirt here. He doesn’t need to build a theater, because it’s stuffy to sit in, but sitting on the terrace of the mountain is so nice and cool. Place a stage in the center of the terrace - and it's over.

The Greek’s way of life led him in such a way that his artist was given excellent material for plastic images. The Greek's views on the ideal human personality can be equated, according to the apt remark of the French critic, to the ideal of a factory stallion. Aristotle, drawing a brilliant future for the young man, says: “And you will walk along the sacred groves, inhaling the aroma of herbs and blossoming poplars.” The Greeks valued the living body, capable of any muscular task, above all else. The lack of clothes shocked no one. They treated everything too simply to be ashamed of anything. And at the same time, of course, chastity did not lose from this.

Now let's move on to a consistent study of all stages of the development of ancient Greek sculpture - from its origins to the crisis of the entire civilization.

1.2 Archaic Greek sculpture

The first monuments of ancient Greek sculpture of the archaic era are determined by the geometric style (8th century). These are sketchy figurines found in Athens, Olympia , in Boeotia. The archaic era of ancient Greek sculpture falls on the 7th - 6th centuries. (early archaic - about 650 - 580 BC; high - 580 - 530; late - 530 - 500/480). The beginning of monumental sculpture in Greece dates back to the middle of the 7th century. BC e. and is characterized by orientalizing styles, of which the most important was Daedalian, associated with the name of the semi-mythical sculptor Daedalus . The circle of “Daedalian” sculpture includes a statue of Artemis of Delos and a female statue of Cretan work, stored in the Louvre (“Lady of Auxerre”). Mid-7th century BC e. The first kouroses also date back . The first sculptural temple decoration dates back to the same time. - reliefs and statues from Prinia on the island of Crete. Subsequently, the sculptural decoration fills the fields highlighted in the temple by its very design - pediments and metopes V Doric temple, continuous frieze (zophorus) - in Ionic. The earliest pediment compositions in ancient Greek sculpture come from the Athenian Acropolis and from the Temple of Artemis on the island of Kerkyra (Corfu). Funeral, dedication and cult statues represented in the archaic by the type of kouros and bark . Archaic reliefs decorate the bases of statues, pediments and metopes of temples (later, round sculpture takes the place of reliefs in the pediments), and tombstones . Among the famous monuments of archaic round sculpture are the head of Hera, found near her temple at Olympia, the statue of Kleobisai Bitonais Delphi, Moschophorus (“Taurus Bearer”) from the Athenian Acropolis, Hera of Samos , statues from Didyma, Nikka Arherma, etc. The last statue demonstrates the archaic design of the so-called “kneeling run,” which was used to depict a flying or running figure. In archaic sculpture, a whole series of conventions are also adopted - for example, the so-called “archaic smile” on the faces of archaic sculptures.

1.3 Classical Greek sculpture

The classical period of ancient Greek sculpture falls on the V - IV centuries BC. (early classic or “strict style” - 500/490 - 460/450 BC; high - 450 - 430/420 BC; “rich style” - 420 - 400/390 . BC; late classic - 400/390 - OK. 320 BC e.). At the turn of two eras - archaic and classical - stands the sculptural decor of the Temple of Athena Aphaia on the island of Aegina . The sculptures of the western pediment date back to the founding of the temple (510 - 500 BC BC), sculptures of the second eastern, replacing the previous ones, - to the early classical time (490 - 480 BC). The central monument of ancient Greek sculpture of the early classics is the pediments and metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (about 468 - 456 BC e.). Another significant work of the early classics - the so-called “Throne of Ludovisi”, decorated with reliefs. A number of bronze originals have also survived from this time - the “Delphic Charioteer”, the statue of Poseidon from Cape Artemisium, Bronzes from Riace . The largest sculptors of the early classics - Pythagoras Regius, Calamis and Myron . We judge the work of famous Greek sculptors mainly from literary evidence and later copies of their works. High classics are represented by the names of Phidias and Polykleitos . Its short-term heyday is associated with work on the Athenian Acropolis, that is, with the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon (pediments, metopes and zophoros survived, 447 - 432 BC). The pinnacle of ancient Greek sculpture was, apparently, the chrysoelephantine statues of Athena Parthenos and Olympian Zeus by Phidias (both have not survived). “Rich style” is characteristic of the works of Callimachus, Alkamen, Agorakrit and other sculptors of the 5th century. BC BC. Its characteristic monuments are the reliefs of the balustrade of the small temple of Nike Apteros on the Athenian Acropolis (circa 410 BC) and a number of funerary steles, among which the most famous is the Hegeso stele . The most important works of ancient Greek sculpture of the late classics are the decoration of the temple of Asclepius in Epidaurus (about 400 - 375 BC), the temple of Athena Aley in Tegea (about 370 - 350 BC), the temple of Artemis in Ephesus ( about 355 - 330 BC) and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (about 350 BC), on the sculptural decoration of which Scopas, Briaxides, and Timotheus Leocharus worked . The latter is also credited with the statues of Apollo Belvedere and Diana of Versailles . There are also a number of bronze originals from the 4th century. BC e. The largest sculptors of the late classics were Praxiteles, Scopas and Lysippos, who in many ways anticipated the subsequent era of Hellenism.

But the overall picture of Greek art during its heyday has to be mentally reconstructed and completed; we know only randomly preserved, scattered sculptures. And they existed in the ensemble.

Among famous masters, the name of Phidias eclipses all sculpture of subsequent generations. A brilliant representative of the age of Pericles, he said the last word plastic technique, and until now no one has dared to compare with him, although we know him only from hints. A native of Athens, he was born a few years before the Battle of Marathon and, therefore, became precisely a contemporary of the celebration of victories over the East. Speak first l he as a painter and then switched to sculpture. According to the drawings of Phidias and his drawings, under his personal supervision, the Periclean buildings were erected. Fulfilling order after order, he created marvelous statues of gods, personifying the abstract ideals of deities in marble, gold and bone. The image of the deity was developed by him not only in accordance with his qualities, but also in relation to the purpose of honor. He was deeply imbued with the idea of what this idol represented, and sculpted it with all the strength and might of a genius.

But the height of perfection of all the works of Phidias is considered to be his Olympian Zeus. This was the greatest work of his life: the Greeks themselves gave him the palm. He made an irresistible impression on his contemporaries.

The admiration of the Greeks for the beauty and wise structure of the living body was so great that they aesthetically thought of it only in statuary completeness and completeness, allowing them to appreciate the majesty of posture and the harmony of body movements. To dissolve a person in a shapeless crowd, to show him in a random aspect, to remove him deep into the shadows - would be contrary to the aesthetic creed of the Hellenic masters, and they never did this, although the basics of perspective were clear to them. Both sculptors and painters showed a person with extreme plastic clarity, close-up (one figure or a group of several figures), trying to place the action in the foreground, as if on a narrow stage parallel to the background plane. Body language was also the language of the soul. It is sometimes said that Greek art was alien to psychology or had not matured to it. This is not entirely true; Perhaps the art of the archaic was still non-psychological, but not the art of the classics. Indeed, it did not know that scrupulous analysis of characters, that cult of the individual that arises in modern times. It is no coincidence that portraiture in Ancient Greece was relatively poorly developed. But the Greeks mastered the art of conveying, so to speak, typical psychology - they expressed a rich range of mental movements based on generalized human types. Distracting from the shades of personal characters, Hellenic artists did not neglect the shades of experience and were able to embody a complex system of feelings. After all, they were contemporaries and fellow citizens of Sophocles, Euripides, Plato.

The heads of Greek statues, as a rule, are impersonal, that is, little individualized, reduced to a few variations of a general type, but this general type has a high spiritual capacity. In the Greek type of face, the idea of the “human” in its ideal version triumphs. The face is divided into three parts of equal length: forehead, nose and lower part. Correct, gentle oval. The straight line of the nose continues the line of the forehead and forms a perpendicular to the line drawn from the beginning of the nose to the opening of the ear (straight facial angle). Oblong section of rather deep-set eyes. A small mouth, full convex lips, the upper lip is thinner than the lower and has a beautiful smooth cut like a cupid's bow. The chin is large and round. Wavy hair softly and tightly fits the head, without interfering with the visibility of the rounded shape of the skull.

This classical beauty may seem monotonous, but, representing the expressive “natural appearance of the spirit,” it lends itself to variation and is capable of embodying various types of the ancient ideal. A little more energy in the lips, in the protruding chin - before us is the strict virgin Athena. There is more softness in the contours of the cheeks, the lips are slightly half-open, the eye sockets are shaded - before us is the sensual face of Aphrodite. The oval of the face is closer to a square, the neck is thicker, the lips are larger - this is already the image of a young athlete. But the basis remains the same strictly proportional classical appearance.

However, there is no place in it for something that, from our point of view, is very important: the charm of the uniquely individual, the beauty of the wrong, the triumph of the spiritual principle over bodily imperfection. The ancient Greeks could not give this; for this, the original monism of spirit and body had to be broken, and aesthetic consciousness had to enter the stage of their separation - dualism - which happened much later. But Greek art also gradually evolved towards individualization and open emotionality, concreteness of experiences and characterization, which becomes obvious already in the era of the late classics, in the 4th century BC. e.

At the end of the 5th century BC. e. The political power of Athens was shaken, undermined by the long Peloponnesian War. At the head of Athens's opponents was Sparta; it was supported by other states of the Peloponnese and provided financial assistance by Persia. Athens lost the war and was forced to conclude an unfavorable peace; they retained their independence, but the Athenian Maritime Union collapsed, monetary reserves dried up, and the internal contradictions of the policy intensified. Athenian democracy managed to survive, but democratic ideals faded, free expression of will began to be suppressed by cruel measures, an example of this is the trial of Socrates (in 399 BC), which imposed a death sentence on the philosopher. The spirit of cohesive citizenship is weakening, personal interests and experiences are isolated from public ones, and the instability of existence is felt more alarmingly. Critical sentiments are growing. A person, according to the behest of Socrates, begins to strive to “know himself” - himself as an individual, and not just as a part of the social whole. The work of the great playwright Euripides, in whom the personal principle is much more emphasized than in his older contemporary Sophocles, is directed towards understanding human nature and characters. According to Aristotle, Sophocles “represents people as they should be, and Euripides as they really are.”

In the plastic arts, generalized images still predominate. But the spiritual stamina and vigorous energy that breathes the art of early and mature classics gradually give way to the dramatic pathos of Skopas or the lyrical, tinged with melancholy, contemplation of Praxiteles. Scopas, Praxiteles and Lysippos - these names are associated in our minds not so much with certain artistic individuals (their biographies are unclear, and almost no original works of theirs have survived), but with the main trends of the late classics. Just like Myron, Polykleitos and Phidias personify the features of a mature classic.

And again, plastic motives are indicators of changes in the worldview. The characteristic pose of the standing figure changes. In the archaic era, statues stood completely straight, frontally. Mature classics enliven and animate them with balanced, smooth movements, maintaining balance and stability. And the statues of Praxiteles - the resting Satyr, Apollo Saurocton - with lazy grace lean on pillars, without them they would have to fall.

The thigh on one side is arched very strongly, and the shoulder is lowered low towards the thigh - Rodin compares this position of the body with a harmonica, when the bellows are compressed on one side and pushed apart on the other. External support is required for balance. This is a dreamy rest position. Praxiteles follows the traditions of Polykleitos, uses the motives of movements he found, but develops them in such a way that a different internal content shines through in them. “The Wounded Amazon” Polykletai also leans on a half-column, but she could have stood without it, her strong, energetic body, even suffering from a wound, stands firmly on the ground. Praxiteles' Apollo is not hit by an arrow, he himself aims at a lizard running along a tree trunk - an action that would seem to require strong-willed composure, yet his body is unstable, like a swaying stem. And this is not a random detail, not a whim of the sculptor, but a kind of new canon in which a changed view of the world finds expression.

However, not only the nature of movements and poses changed in sculpture of the 4th century BC. e. For Praxiteles, the range of his favorite topics becomes different; he moves away from heroic subjects into the “light world of Aphrodite and Eros.” He sculpted the famous statue of Aphrodite of Knidos.

Praxiteles and the artists of his circle did not like to depict the muscular torsos of athletes; they were attracted by the delicate beauty of the female body with the soft flow of volumes. They preferred the type of youth, distinguished by “first youth and effeminate beauty.” Praxiteles was famous for his special softness of modeling and skill in processing the material, his ability to convey the warmth of a living body in cold marble2.

All other works of the master are known only from mentions of ancient authors and later copies. But the spirit of Praxiteles’ art lingers over the 4th century BC. e., and best of all it can be felt not in Roman copies, but in small Greek plastic, in Tanagra clay figurines. They were produced at the end of the century in large quantities, it was a kind of mass production with the main center in Tanagra. (A very good collection of them is kept in the Leningrad Hermitage.) Some figurines reproduce famous large statues, others simply give various free variations of the draped female figure. The living grace of these figures, dreamy, thoughtful, playful, is an echo of the art of Praxiteles.

Almost as little remains of the original works of the chisel Skopas, an older contemporary and antagonist of Praxiteles. Debris remained. But the wreckage also speaks volumes. Behind them rises the image of a passionate, fiery, pathetic artist.

He was not only a sculptor, but also an architect. As an architect, Skopas created the temple of Athena in Tegea and he also supervised its sculptural decoration. The temple itself was destroyed long ago, by the Goths; Some fragments of sculptures were found during excavations, among them a remarkable head of a wounded warrior. There were no others like her in the art of the 5th century BC. e., there was no such dramatic expression in the turn of the head, such suffering in the face, in the gaze, such mental tension. In his name, the harmonic canon adopted in Greek sculpture was violated: the eyes are set too deep and the break in the brow ridges is dissonant with the outlines of the eyelids.

What Skopas' style was in multi-figure compositions is shown by partially preserved reliefs on the frieze of the Halicarnassus Mausoleum - a unique structure, ranked in ancient times as one of the seven wonders of the world: the peripterus was erected on a high base and topped with a pyramidal roof. The frieze depicted the battle of the Greeks with the Amazons - male warriors with female warriors. Skopas did not work on it alone, together with three sculptors, but, guided by the instructions of Pliny, who described the mausoleum, and stylistic analysis, the researchers determined which parts of the frieze were made in Skopas’ workshop. More than others, they convey the drunken fervor of battle, the “ecstasy in battle,” when both men and women surrender to it with equal passion. The movements of the figures are impetuous and almost lose their balance, directed not only parallel to the plane, but also inward, into depth: Skopas introduces a new sense of space.

"Maenad" enjoyed great fame among his contemporaries. Skopas depicted a storm of Dionysian dance, straining the entire body of the Maenad, convulsively arching her torso, throwing back her head. The statue of the Maenad is not designed for frontal viewing, it needs to be viewed from different sides, each point of view reveals something new: sometimes the body is likened in its arch to a stretched bow, sometimes it seems bent in a spiral, like a tongue of flame. One cannot help but think: the Dionysian orgies must have been serious, not just amusement, but truly “mad games.” The Mysteries of Dionysus were allowed to be held only once every two years and only on Parnassus, but at that time the frantic bacchantes discarded all conventions and prohibitions. To the beat of tambourines, to the sound of tympanums, they rushed and whirled in ecstasy, driving themselves into a frenzy, letting down their hair, tearing their clothes. The maenad of Skopas held a knife in her hand, and on her shoulder was a kid that she had torn to pieces 3.

Dionysian festivals were a very ancient custom, like the cult of Dionysus itself, but in art the Dionysian element had not previously broken through with such force, with such openness as in the statue of Skopas, and this is obviously a symptom of the times. Now clouds were gathering over Hellas, and reasonable clarity of spirit was disrupted by the desire to forget, to throw off the shackles of restrictions. Art, like a sensitive membrane, responded to changes in the social atmosphere and transformed its signals into its own sounds, its own rhythms. The melancholy languor of Praxiteles' creations and the dramatic impulses of Skopas are just different reactions to the general spirit of the times.

The young man’s marble tombstone belongs to Skopas’s circle, and perhaps to himself. To the right of the young man stands his old father with an expression of deep thought; one can feel that he is asking the question: why did his son leave in the prime of his youth, and he, the old man, remained to live? The son looks ahead and no longer seems to notice his father; he is far from here, in the carefree Champs Elysees - the abode of the blessed.

The dog at his feet is one of the symbols of the afterlife.

Here it is appropriate to talk about Greek tombstones in general. There are relatively many of them preserved, from the 5th, and mainly from the 4th century BC. e.; their creators are, as a rule, unknown. Sometimes the relief of a tombstone stele depicts only one figure - the deceased, but more often his loved ones are depicted next to him, one or two, who say goodbye to him. In these scenes of farewell and parting, strong grief and grief are never expressed, but only quiet; sad thoughtfulness. Death is peace; the Greeks personified her not in a terrible skeleton, but in the figure of a boy - Thanatos, the twin of Hypnos - sleep. The sleeping baby is also depicted on the Skopasovsky tombstone of the young man, in the corner at his feet. The surviving relatives look at the deceased, wanting to capture his features in their memory, sometimes they take him by the hand; he (or she) himself does not look at them, and one can feel relaxation and detachment in his figure. In the famous tombstone of Gegeso (late 5th century BC), a standing maid gives her mistress, who is sitting in a chair, a box of jewelry, Hegeso takes a necklace from it with a familiar, mechanical movement, but she looks absent and drooping.

Authentic tombstone from the 4th century BC. e. the works of the Attic master can be seen in State Museum Fine Arts named after. A.S. Pushkin. This is the tombstone of a warrior - he holds a spear in his hand, next to him is his horse. But the pose is not at all militant, the body members are relaxed, the head is lowered. On the other side of the horse stands a farewell; he is sad, but one cannot be mistaken about which of the two figures depicts the deceased and which one depicts the living, although they would seem to be similar and of the same type; Greek masters knew how to make one feel the transition of the deceased into the valley of shadows.

Lyrical scenes of the last farewell were also depicted on funeral urns, where they are more laconic, sometimes just two figures - a man and a woman - shaking hands with each other.

But even here it is always clear which of them belongs to the kingdom of the dead.

There is some special chastity of feeling in Greek tombstones with their noble restraint in expressing sadness, something completely opposite to Bacchic ecstasy. The tombstone of the youth attributed to Skopas does not violate this tradition; it stands out from others, in addition to its high plastic qualities, only by the philosophical depth of the image of a thoughtful old man.

Despite all the contrast in the artistic natures of Scopas and Praxiteles, both of them are characterized by what can be called an increase in picturesqueness in plastic - the effects of chiaroscuro, thanks to which the marble seems alive, which is what the Greek epigrammatists emphasize every time. Both masters preferred marble to bronze (whereas bronze predominated in early classical sculpture) and achieved perfection in processing its surface. The strength of the impression made was facilitated by the special qualities of the types of marble that the sculptors used: translucency and luminosity. Parian marble transmitted light by 3.5 centimeters. Statues made of this noble material looked both humanly alive and divinely incorruptible. Compared with the works of early and mature classics, late classical sculptures lose something, they do not have the simple grandeur of the Delphic “Auriga,” or the monumentality of Phidias’ statues, but they gain in vitality.

History has preserved many more names of outstanding sculptors of the 4th century BC. e. Some of them, cultivating life-likeness, brought it to the point beyond which genre and specificity begins, thus anticipating the tendencies of Hellenism. Demetrius of Alopeka was distinguished by this. He attached little importance to beauty and consciously sought to portray people as they were, without hiding large bellies and bald spots. His specialty was portraits. Demetrius made a portrait of the philosopher Antisthenes, polemically directed against the idealizing portraits of the 5th century BC. e., - His Antisthenes is old, flabby and toothless. The sculptor could not spiritualize ugliness, make it charming; such a task was impossible within the boundaries of ancient aesthetics. Ugliness was understood and portrayed simply as a physical defect.

Others, on the contrary, tried to support and cultivate the traditions of mature classics, enriching them with greater grace and complexity of plastic motifs. This was the path followed by Leochares, who created the statue of Apollo Belvedere, which became the standard of beauty for many generations of neoclassicists until the end of the twentieth century. Johann Winckelmann, author of the first scientific History of Art of Antiquity, wrote: “The imagination cannot create anything that would surpass the Vatican Apollo with his more than human proportionality of a beautiful deity.” For a long time, this statue was regarded as the pinnacle of ancient art; the “Belvedere idol” was synonymous with aesthetic perfection. As is often the case, over-the-top praise over time caused the opposite reaction. When the study of ancient art advanced far and many of its monuments were discovered, the exaggerated assessment of the statue of Leochares gave way to an understated one: it began to be found pompous and mannered. Meanwhile, Apollo Belvedere is a truly outstanding work in its plastic merits; the figure and gait of the ruler of the muses combines strength and grace, energy and lightness, walking on the ground, he at the same time soars above the ground. Moreover, its movement, in the words of the Soviet art critic B. R. Vipper, “is not concentrated in one direction, but, as if rays, diverge in different directions.” To achieve such an effect required the sophisticated skill of a sculptor; the only trouble is that the calculation for the effect is too obvious. Apollo Leochara seems to invite one to admire his beauty, while the beauty of the best classical statues does not publicly declare itself: they are beautiful, but they do not show off. Even Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Cnidus wants to hide rather than demonstrate the sensual charm of her nudity, and earlier classical statues are filled with a calm self-satisfaction, excluding any demonstrativeness. It should therefore be recognized that in the statue of Apollo Belvedere the ancient ideal begins to become something external, less organic, although in its own way this sculpture is remarkable and marks a high level of virtuoso skill.

A big step towards “naturalness” was made by the last great sculptor of the Greek classics - Lysippos. Researchers attribute him to the Argive school and claim that he had a completely different direction than the Athenian school. In essence, he was her direct follower, but, having adopted her traditions, he stepped further. In his youth, the artist Eupomp answered his question: “Which teacher should I choose?” - answered, pointing to the crowd crowded on the mountain: “Here is the only teacher: nature.”

These words sank deep into the soul of the brilliant young man, and he, not trusting the authority of the Polykleitan canon, took up the exact study of nature. Before him, people were sculpted in accordance with the principles of the canon, that is, in full confidence that true beauty lies in the proportionality of all forms and in the proportion of people of average height. Lysippos preferred a tall, slender figure. His limbs became lighter, his stature taller.

Unlike Scopas and Praxiteles, he worked exclusively in bronze: fragile marble requires stable balance, and Lysippos created statues and statuary groups in dynamic states, in complex actions. He was inexhaustibly diverse in the invention of plastic motifs and very prolific; they said that after completing each sculpture he put a gold coin in the piggy bank, and in total he accumulated one and a half thousand coins, that is, he allegedly made one and a half thousand statues, some of very large sizes, including a 20-meter statue of Zeus. Not a single work of his has survived, but a fairly large number of copies and repetitions, dating back either to the originals of Lysippos or to his school, give an approximate idea of the master’s style. In terms of plot, he clearly preferred male figures, as he loved to depict the difficult exploits of husbands; His favorite hero was Hercules. In understanding plastic form, Lysippos' innovative achievement was the reversal of the figure in the space surrounding it on all sides; in other words, he did not think of the statue against the background of any plane and did not assume one, main point of view from which it should be viewed, but counted on walking around the statue. We have seen that Skopas' Maenad was already built on the same principle. But what was the exception with previous sculptors became the rule with Lysippos. Accordingly, he gave his figures effective poses, complex turns, and treated them with equal care not only from the front side, but also from the back.

In addition, Lysippos created a new sense of time in sculpture. The former classical statues, even if their poses were dynamic, looked unaffected by the flow of time, they were outside of it, they were, they were at rest. The heroes of Lysippos live in the same real time as living people, their actions are included in time and are transient, the presented moment is ready to be replaced by another. Of course, Lysippos had predecessors here too: we can say that he continued the traditions of Myron. But even the Discobolus of the latter is so balanced and clear in his silhouette that he seems “abiding” and static in comparison with Lysippos’ Hercules fighting a lion, or Hermes, who for a minute (precisely for a minute!) sat down to rest on a roadside stone in order to continue later flying on your winged sandals.

Whether the originals of these sculptures belonged to Lysippos himself or his students and assistants has not been established precisely, but undoubtedly he himself made the statue of Apoxyomenes, a marble copy of which is in the Vatican Museum. A young naked athlete, with his arms outstretched, uses a scraper to remove the accumulated dust. He was tired after the struggle, relaxed slightly, even seemed to stagger, spreading his legs for stability. Strands of hair, treated very naturally, stuck to the sweaty forehead. The sculptor did everything possible to give maximum naturalness within the framework of the traditional canon. However, the canon itself has been revised. If you compare Apoxyomenes with Doryphorus of Polykleitos, you can see that the proportions of the body have changed: the head is smaller, the legs are longer. Doryphoros is heavier and stockier compared to the flexible and slender Apoxyomenes.

Lysippos was the court artist of Alexander the Great and painted a number of his portraits. There is no flattery or artificial glorification in them; The head of Alexander, preserved in a Hellenistic copy, is executed in the traditions of Skopas, somewhat reminiscent of the head of a wounded warrior. This is the face of a man who lives a tense and difficult life, whose victories are not easy to achieve. The lips are half-open, as if breathing heavily; despite his youth, there are wrinkles on his forehead. However, the classic type of face with proportions and features legitimized by tradition has been preserved.

The art of Lysippos occupies the border zone at the turn of the classical and Hellenistic eras. It is still true to classical concepts, but it is already undermining them from the inside, creating the basis for a transition to something else, more relaxed and more prosaic. In this sense, the head of a fist fighter is indicative, belonging not to Lysippos, but, possibly, to his brother Lysistratus, who was also a sculptor and, as they said, was the first to use masks removed from the model’s face for portraits (which was widespread in Ancient Egypt, but completely alien to Greek art). It is possible that the head of a fist fighter was also made using the mask; it is far from the canon, far from the ideal ideas of physical perfection that the Hellenes embodied in the image of an athlete. This winner in a fist fight is not at all like a demigod, just an entertainer for an idle crowd. His face is rough, his nose is flattened, his ears are swollen. This type of “naturalistic” images subsequently became common in Hellenism; an even more unsightly fist fighter was sculpted by the Attic sculptor Apollonius already in the 1st century BC. e.

What had previously cast shadows on the bright structure of the Hellenic worldview came at the end of the 4th century BC. e.: decomposition and death of the democratic polis. This began with the rise of Macedonia, the northern region of Greece, and the virtual capture of all Greek states Macedonian king Philip II. The 18-year-old son of Philip, Alexander, the future great conqueror, took part in the Battle of Chaeronea (in 338 BC), where the troops of the Greek anti-Macedonian coalition were defeated. Starting with a victorious campaign against the Persians, Alexander advanced his army further east, capturing cities and founding new ones; as a result of a ten-year campaign, a huge monarchy was created, stretching from the Danube to the Indus.

Alexander the Great tasted the fruits of the highest Greek culture in his youth. His tutor was the great philosopher Aristotle, and his court artists were Lysippos and Apelles. This did not prevent him, having captured the Persian state and taken the throne of the Egyptian pharaohs, from declaring himself a god and demanding that he be given divine honors in Greece as well. Unaccustomed to eastern customs, the Greeks chuckled and said: “Well, if Alexander wants to be a god, let him be” - and officially recognized him as the son of Zeus. The Orientalization that Alexander began to instill was, however, a more serious matter than the whim of a conqueror intoxicated with victories. It was a symptom of the historical turn of ancient society from slave-owning democracy to the form that had existed since ancient times in the East - to the slave-owning monarchy. After the death of Alexander (and he died young), his colossal but fragile power disintegrated, the spheres of influence were divided among himself by his military leaders, the so-called diadochi - successors. The states that emerged again under their rule were no longer Greek, but Greco-Eastern. The era of Hellenism has arrived - the unification under the auspices of the monarchy of Hellenic and Eastern cultures.

1.4 Sculpture of Hellenistic Greece

ancient greek sculpture statue

The states of the Diadochi existed in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor; the most powerful and influential was the Egyptian state of the Ptolemies. Despite the fact that the countries of the East had their own, very ancient and very different from Greek artistic traditions, the expansion of Greek culture overpowered them. The very concept of “Hellenism” contains an indirect indication of the victory of the Hellenic principle, of the Hellenization of these countries. Even in remote areas Hellenistic world, in Bactria and Parthia (present-day Central Asia), uniquely transformed ancient forms of art appear. But Egypt is difficult to recognize; its new city of Alexandria is already a real enlightened center of ancient culture, where the exact sciences, the humanities, and philosophical schools, originating from Pythagoras and Plato, flourish. Hellenistic Alexandria gave the world the great mathematician and physicist Archimedes, the geometer Euclid, Aristarchus of Samos, who eighteen centuries before Copernicus proved that the Earth revolves around the Sun. The cabinets of the famous Library of Alexandria, designated by Greek letters, from alpha to omega, contained hundreds of thousands of scrolls - “works that have shone in all branches of knowledge.” There stood the grandiose Faros lighthouse, considered one of the seven wonders of the world; there the Museyon was created, the palace of the muses - the prototype of all future museums. Compared to this rich and opulent port city, the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, the city of the Greek metropolis, even Athens probably looked modest.

But these modest, small cities were the main sources of those cultural treasures that were preserved and revered in Alexandria, those traditions that continued to be followed. If Hellenistic science owed much to the heritage of the Ancient East, then the plastic arts retained a predominantly Greek character.

The basic formative principles came from the Greek classics, the content became different. There was a decisive demarcation between public and private life. In Hellenistic monarchies, a cult of a single ruler was established, equated to a deity, similar to what was in the ancient Eastern despotisms. But the similarity is relative: the “private man,” whom political storms do not touch or only slightly touch, is far from being as impersonal as in the ancient eastern states. He has his own life: he is a merchant, he is an entrepreneur, he is an official, he is a scientist. In addition, he is often Greek by origin - after the conquests of Alexander, the mass migration of Greeks to the east began - the concepts of human dignity, brought up by Greek culture, are not alien to him. Even if he is removed from power and government affairs, his isolated private world requires and finds artistic expression, the basis of which is the traditions of the late Greek classics, reworked in the spirit of greater intimacy and genre. And in “state” art, official art, in large public buildings and monuments, the same traditions are processed, on the contrary, towards pomp.

All of the above does not mean that the Hellenistic era did not leave great monuments of art. Moreover, she created works that, in our opinion, synthesize the highest achievements of ancient sculpture and are its unattainable examples - Aphrodite of Milo, Nike of Samothrace, the altar of Zeus in Pergamon. These famous sculptures were created during the Hellenistic era. Their authors, about whom nothing or almost nothing is known, worked in line with the classical tradition, developing it truly creatively.

Cities of the Greek metropolis in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC. e., having lost their former political and economic significance, continued to remain recognized artistic centers, including Athens. Art there did not stand still, although it did not change its character as radically as in the new settlements of the Diadochi, where it collided with other, local, traditions and a different way of life. In the Mediterranean basin, in Asia Minor and on the islands of the Aegean archipelago, the evolution from Hellenic to Hellenistic art proceeded more organically. The classical tradition did not become dead; it had the potential for self-development. The largest center Hellenistic art was Pergamon, as well as the island of Rhodes - the only state that preserved the republican system. In Rhodes, a grandiose statue of Helios (Colossus of Rhodes) 30 meters high was erected, then destroyed by an earthquake; it was sculpted by Chares, a student of Lysippos. Subsequently, Pliny, describing this statue, added: “In the same city there are a hundred other colossi smaller than this, but each of them would glorify any place where it stood.”

Obviously, the Rhodian master owned the most beautiful of the monumental statues - the Nike of Samothrace. Once upon a time, a winged goddess stood blowing a horn on a cliff on the seashore, exposed to the wind and the spray of sea foam; the pedestal was the bow of the warship. Now she greets visitors to the Louvre on the landing of the wide staircase. Headless, without arms, with broken wings, here too she reigns over the surrounding space and seems to fill it with the sound of the surf and wind, the sparkle of the sun, and the blue of the sky. The folds of the clothing flutter and flutter, and in front the wind pressed the wet fabric to the body of the goddess, enveloping and outlining her figure, directed forward. In front of the statue of Nika, you begin to understand that true monumentality does not require any simplification of the form; the finest elaboration of the texture only emphasizes the titanism of this powerful, joyful body. It was impossible to sculpt such a statue without relying on the experience of Skopas and Lysippos, but perhaps they themselves could not have created it: it has a new sense of the breadth of the world, the vastness of space, and unity with nature.

The statue of Aphrodite, traditionally called the Venus de Milo, was found in 1820 on the island of Melos and immediately gained worldwide fame as the perfect creation of Greek art. This high assessment was not shaken by many later discoveries of Greek originals - Aphrodite de Milo occupies a special place among them. Apparently executed in the 2nd century BC. e. (by the sculptor Agesander or Alexander, as the half-erased inscription on the base says), it bears little resemblance to contemporary statues depicting the goddess of love. Hellenistic aphrodites most often went back to the type of Aphrodite of Cnidus by Praxiteles, making her sensually seductive, even slightly cutesy; such, for example, is the famous Aphrodite of Medicine. Aphrodite of Milo, only half naked, draped to the hips, is stern and sublimely calm. She personifies not so much the ideal of female beauty as the ideal of man in a general and highest sense. The Russian writer Gleb Uspensky found a successful expression: the ideal of a “straightened man,” the very contemplation of which straightens the soul. The sculptor apparently followed Phidias or his student Alcamenes more than Praxiteles. One might think that he consciously wanted, rising above the present day, to resurrect the spirit of Phidias’s high classics, without compromising what was achieved after Phidias—the exquisite treatment of the marble surface, the free positioning of the figure in space. And the artist’s victory turned out to be complete: in his creation one can hear “the silenced sound of divine Hellenic speech.”

The statue is well preserved, but its hands are broken off. There have been many speculations about what these hands were doing: was the goddess holding an apple? or a mirror? or was she holding the hem of her robe? No convincing reconstruction has been found; in fact, there is no need for it. The “armlessness” of Aphrodite of Milo over time has become, as it were, her attribute; it does not in the least interfere with her beauty and even enhances the impression of the majesty of her figure. And since not a single intact Greek statue has survived, it is in this partially damaged state that Aphrodite appears before us as a “marble riddle”, given to us by antiquity, as a symbol of distant Hellas.

Morals and forms of life, as well as forms of religion, really began to mix in the Hellenistic era, but friendship did not reign and peace did not come, strife and war did not stop. The wars of Pergamum with the Gauls are only one of the episodes. When the victory over the Gauls was finally achieved, the altar of Zeus was erected in her honor, completed in 180 BC. e. This time, the long-term war with the “barbarians” appeared as a gigantomachy - the struggle of the Olympian gods with the giants. According to ancient myth, the giants - giants who lived far in the west, the sons of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky) - rebelled against the Olympians, but were defeated by them after a fierce battle and buried under volcanoes, in the deep bowels of mother earth, from where they remind us of themselves with volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

A grandiose marble frieze, about 120 meters long, made using the high relief technique, encircled the base of the altar. The remains of this structure were excavated in the 1870s; Thanks to the painstaking work of restorers, it was possible to connect thousands of fragments and get a fairly complete picture of the general composition of the frieze. Mighty bodies are piled up, intertwined, like a ball of snakes, the defeated giants are tormented by shaggy-maned lions, dogs bite their teeth, horses trample under their feet, but the giants fight fiercely, their leader Porphyrion does not retreat before the thunderer Zeus. The mother of the giants, Gaia, begs to spare her sons, but they do not listen to her. The battle is terrible. There is something prescient of Michelangelo in the tense angles of the bodies, in their titanic power and tragic pathos.

Although battles and fights were a frequent theme in ancient reliefs, starting with the archaic, they were never depicted as on the Pergamon Altar - with such a shuddering feeling of a cataclysm, a battle for life and death, where all cosmic forces, all demons participate earth and sky. The structure of the composition has changed, it has lost its classical clarity and has become swirling and confusing. Let us remember the figures of Skopas on the relief of the Halicarnassus mausoleum. They, with all their dynamism, are located in the same spatial plane, they are separated by rhythmic intervals, each figure has a certain independence, masses and space are balanced. It’s different in the Pergamon frieze - those fighting here are cramped, the mass has suppressed the space, and all the figures are so intertwined that they form a stormy mess of bodies. And the bodies are still classically beautiful, “sometimes radiant, sometimes menacing, living, dead, triumphant, dying figures,” as I. S. Turgenev said about them. The Olympians are beautiful, and so are their enemies. But the harmony of the spirit fluctuates. Faces distorted by suffering, deep shadows in the eye sockets, snake-like hair... The Olympians are still triumphant over the forces of the underground elements, but this victory is not for long - the elemental principles threaten to blow up the harmonious, harmonious world.

By the end of the 2nd century BC. e. The kingdom of Pergamum, like other Hellenistic states, entered a period of internal crisis and political subordination to Rome. Fall in 146 BC. e. Carthage was a watershed event; Rome also took over Greece, completely destroying Corinth. The Seleucid monarchy in Syria retained only the ghost of independence. In 30 BC. e. Egypt became part of the Roman Empire. In this late Hellenistic period, the culture of all these states no longer bears such rich fruits, since they descend to the status of Roman provinces, although Alexandria remained the custodian of the cultural treasures of the ancient world for several centuries, until the Arab conquest.

Just as the art of the Greek archaic should not be assessed only as the first harbingers of the classics, so Hellenistic art as a whole cannot be considered a late echo of the classics, underestimating the fundamentally new that it brought. This new thing was associated both with the expansion of the horizons of art and with its inquisitive interest in the human personality and the specific, real conditions of its life. Hence, first of all, the development of the portrait, the individual portrait, which was almost unknown to the high classics, and the late classics were only on the approaches to it. Hellenistic artists, even making portraits of people who had long been dead, gave them a psychological interpretation and sought to reveal the uniqueness of both external and internal appearance. Not contemporaries, but descendants left us the faces of Socrates, Aristotle, Euripides, Demosthenes and even the legendary Homer, an inspired blind storyteller. The portrait of an unknown old philosopher is amazing in its realism and expression - apparently, an irreconcilable passionate polemicist, whose wrinkled face with sharp features has nothing in common with the classical type. Previously, it was considered a portrait of Seneca, but the famous Stoic lived later than this bronze bust was sculpted.

We have already mentioned such a trait as curiosity about everyday details, about various scenes and types of everyday life. They begin to willingly portray children, servants, old people, foreigners, and poor people. Although such statues and figurines glide more on external features than penetrate deeply, this is still a new word spoken by Hellenistic art. Moreover, not all works of this kind are “typical”; there are also those that are warmed by feeling - one can name the terracotta figurine “The Old Teacher”, made by an Attic master.

For the first time, a child with all the anatomical features of childhood and with all the charm characteristic of him becomes the subject of plastic surgery. In the classical era, if small children were depicted, it was more like miniature adults. Even in Praxiteles in the group “Hermes with Dionysus” Dionysus bears little resemblance to a baby in his anatomy and proportions. It seems that only now have they noticed that the child is a completely special creature, playful and crafty, with his own special habits; noticed and were so captivated by him that the god of love Eros himself began to be represented as a child, marking the beginning of a tradition that has been established for centuries. The plump, curly children of Hellenistic sculptors are busy with all sorts of tricks: riding a dolphin, messing with birds, even strangling snakes (this is baby Hercules). Particularly popular was the statue of a boy fighting a goose. Such statues were placed in parks, decorated fountains, were placed in the sanctuaries of Asclepius, the god of healing, and were sometimes used for tombstones.

We see how diverse the artistic movements of Hellenism are: in some, former classical traditions are continued (and sometimes elevated to a new level), in others, quests begin that will be picked up only in subsequent eras. It is necessary to mention another famous work by the masters of the Rhodian school, dating back to the 1st century BC. e., - sculptural group “JIaokoon”. Its plot is drawn from the tales of the Trojan War and is very impressively set out in the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil. They even thought that the sculpture illustrates Virgil’s text, but, apparently, it precedes it: “The Aeneid” was written later. The Trojan priest Laocoon suffered a terrible punishment from the gods who patronized the Greeks for convincing his fellow citizens not to trust the Greeks and not to bring into the city the wooden horse they had left behind (“Fear the Danaans who bring gifts!”). For this, the gods sent huge snakes against him, strangling the sons of Laocoon and himself. The sculpture depicts the desperate and clearly futile efforts of the hero to free himself from the clutches of the monsters, which wrapped tightly around the bodies of the three victims, squeezing and biting them. The futility of struggle and the inevitability of death are obvious.

This is the latest creation from the authentic ones that have come down to us. Greek sculptures was found before all the others. It was unearthed in Rome at the beginning of the 16th century, and soon gained worldwide fame 4 . In the mid-18th century, the great German educator Lessing devoted a special study to Laocoon, treating the problem of boundaries and differences between poetry and the plastic arts. Lessing drew attention to the fact that the ancient sculptor, even conveying severe pain, still subordinated his statue to the demands of beauty and showed Laocoon not screaming, but only moaning, unlike Virgil, in whom the unfortunate priest makes piercing screams. Lessing's observation is correct: the ancient sense of proportion, as well as the traditions of Greek plastic art in general, are preserved in the Laocoon group. But both the choice of the plot and its interpretation are deeply pessimistic. Greek art often depicted the death of heroes, but this was death in struggle. Here we have before us not a battle, but a cruel execution of the innocent: after all, Laocoon did not commit any crime, on the contrary, he fulfilled his duty, warning the Trojans; Moreover, his children are not to blame for anything.

The traditional idea of the Greeks about the power of fate is now mixed with the idea of the helplessness of man - the play of blind forces.

The deeper this thought penetrates into consciousness, the more illusory the classical ideal that was formed in the bosom of the Greek city-republics becomes - the ideal of a “straightened”, free, almost godlike person. At the end of the Hellenistic era, only the outer shell remains of it; there is no longer any faith in the rationality of the world order. During the time when
"Laocoon" was created, the Roman legions had already captured the Eastern Mediterranean, Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, and in Asia Minor he successfully dealt with Pharnaces, who made the last attempt to take it away from the Romans. Resistance to an alien force was as useless as fighting against
giant snakes that strangled Laocoon.

Conclusion

We examined the sculpture of Ancient Greece throughout the entire period of its development. We saw the entire process of its formation, flourishing and decline - the entire transition from strict, static and idealized archaic forms through the balanced harmony of classical sculpture to the dramatic psychologism of Hellenistic statues. The sculpture of Ancient Greece was rightfully considered a model, an ideal, a canon for many centuries, and now it never ceases to be recognized as a masterpiece of world classics. Nothing like this has been achieved before or since. All modern sculpture can be considered to one degree or another a continuation of the traditions of Ancient Greece. The sculpture of Ancient Greece went through a difficult path in its development, preparing the ground for the development of sculpture in subsequent eras in various countries. In later times, the traditions of ancient Greek sculpture were enriched with new developments and achievements, while the ancient canons served as the necessary foundation, the basis for the development of plastic art of all subsequent eras.

Notes

1 Contemporaries dedicated verses of praise to Aphrodite of Knidos:

Seeing Cyprida on Knidos, Cyprida said bashfully:

“Woe is me, where did Praxiteles see me naked?”

2 Most of all, what can be attributed to the school of Praxiteles is that Rodin speaks of a peculiar picturesqueness antique sculptures: “Look at these highlights on the chest, at these thick shadows in the folds of the body... look at these blond hazes, at this transparent chiaroscuro on the most delicate parts of this divine body, at these shimmers of light that are gradually blurred, spraying in the air. What do you say to this? Isn’t this a magical symphony blancheetnoire?

3 One of the epigrams said:

The Parian stone is a bacchante, But the sculptor gave the stone a soul.

And, drunk as she was, she jumped up and started dancing.

Having created this fiad, in a frenzy, with a killed goat,

You have performed a miracle with your idolizing chisel, Skopas.

4 Poems were written on the plot of Laocoon. The famous Spanish artist El Greco, a Greek by origin, interpreted him figuratively in a painting of the same name, and the head of Laocoön closely follows the head antique statue, although the angles of the bodies are different. “Laocoon” remains a wonderful anatomical work, so classical that Mr. Fo even included a dissected “Laocoon” in his atlas. However, the realism of the original is so great that the feeling is not offended by this, as it would be offended if such an experiment was carried out, well, with the Venus de Milo.

List of used literature

1. 500 masters of foreign classics. Encyclopedia/ed. V.D. Sinyukova and M.I. Andreeva - M.-SPb, 1996

2. Ancient culture. Dictionary-reference book/under general. ed. V.N. Yarkho - M., 2002

3. Whipper B.R. Art of Ancient Greece. – M., 1972

4. Gnedich P.P. World History of Arts - M., 2000

5. Gribunina N.G. History of world artistic culture, in 4 parts. Parts 1, 2. – Tver, 1993

6. Dmitrieva, Akimova. Ancient art. Essays. – M., 1988

7. Kolobova K.M. Ancient city Athens and its monuments - L., 1961

8. Kolpinsky Yu.D. Sculpture ancient Hellas. – M., 1963

9. Miretskaya N.V., Miretskaya E.V. Lessons from ancient culture. - Obninsk, 1998

10. Polevoy L.M. Art of Greece. Ancient world. – M., 1970

11. Rivkin B.I. Ancient art. – M., 1972

Gnedich P.P. World Art History. – M., 2000. P. 90

Dmitrieva, Akimova. Ancient art. Essays. – M., 1988. P. 35

Dmitrieva, Akimova. Ancient art. Essays. – M., 1988. P. 52

Gnedich P.P. World Art History. – M., 2000. P. 97

Dmitrieva, Akimova. Ancient art. Essays. – M., 1988. P. 76

Dmitrieva, Akimova. Ancient art. Essays. – M., 1988. P. 107

The goddess emerges from the airy sea foam near Cyprus. Hence Aphrodite - Cypris, “Cyprus-born”

White and black

Gnedich P.P. World Art History. – M., 2000. P. 107

What is special about a Greek statue? Sometimes I think

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Ancient Greece sculpture

Periods

Transition time

Heyday

Peace and Harmony

Canon

Recognized genius

Wonder of the world

Late classic

Boiling passions

Smoothness

Attention to detail

Eastern influence

Finally

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