GREEK ART 



3676 



GREEK ART 



group of Laocoon and his sons, 

 with its exaggerated pathos. From 

 Tralles in Asia Minor came Apol- 

 lonius and Tauriscus, the sculptors 

 of the Farnese bull at Naples, a 

 group which represents the punish- 

 ment of Dirce by Amphion and 

 Zethus. The scientific research of 

 the time left its trace in the Bor- 

 ghese fighter of Agasias, an Ephe- 

 sian sculptor, which is interesting 

 as an example of minute ana- 

 tomical study. 



Decorative Arts 



Artists also catered for the tastes 

 of the wealthy class which sprang 

 up in the capitals and other great 

 cities of the new monarchies. 

 Painting and mosaic were employed 

 in the decoration of private houses, 

 especially at Alexandria, and the 

 discoveries of Rome and Pompeii 

 enable us to form some idea of the 

 results. Alexandria was the chief, 

 but not the only, home of Toieutic, 

 or the art of the chaser of gold and 

 silver, of whose work Roman plate 

 gives us the best impression. The 

 terra-cotta statuettes and groups 

 found in tombs, especially those of 

 Tanagra in Boeotia, are works of 

 great charm and delicacy. 



The growth of private luxury 

 was also responsible for the popu- 

 larity of genre subjects in sculp- 

 ture, of which the best example is 

 the Boy and Goose by Boethus, 

 for the loss of religious significance 

 in the representations of divinities, 

 as in the instance of the Medici 

 Venus fnd fie Aphrodite in the 

 Bath of Uoedalsas, and the hybrid 

 of painting and sculpture seen in 

 the pictorial reliefs used in wall- 

 decoration. Lastly, after the 

 Roman conquest, we find a re- 

 currence to early models in the Neo- 

 Attic school of archaising artists. 



H. Stuart-Jones 



Bibliography. Principles of Greek 

 Art, P. Gardner, 1914; Handbook of 

 Greek Sculpture, EL A. Gardner, 

 1902-3; the Art of the Greeks, H. 

 B. Walters, 1906 ; and History of 

 Greek Art, F. B. Tarbell, 1896. 



ARCHITECTURE. Before the 7th 

 century B.C. the architecture of the 

 peoples inhabiting the Greek penin- 

 sula and parts of the Asia Minor 

 coast was too deeply impregnated 

 with Persian, Egyptian, and As- 

 syrian elements to be regarded as a 

 distinctive style. The discoveries 

 atTiryns (Troy), Cnossus, Mycenae, 

 and other places have revealed the 

 existence of an elaborate archi- 

 tecture four or five centuries ear- 

 lier than the beginnings of the real 

 Greek civilizition; but those build- 

 ings had little or nothing in common 

 with the form or spirit of what is 

 now understood by Greek archi- 

 tecture. It is only after the lapse 

 of 400 years that the national archi- 



tecture begins to emerge. Even 

 then, its massiveness and bold pro- 

 portions are suggestive of Egypt 

 rather than Greece, and it is not 

 until the 5th century B.C. that 

 this massiveness is refined into 

 the combined stability and grace 

 of Doric building. 



The main principle governing 

 Greek building was ordered sym- 

 metry combined with picturesque- 

 ness of effect. Individually, the 

 Greek temple, fully developed, is 

 an oblong structure enclosed by a 

 row of columns. In its earliest 

 form it was a small square apart- 

 ment in which the image of a par- 

 ticular deity was placed, with a 

 porch formed of two flanking piers, 

 and two columns between them, 

 on its front. The next step was to 

 separate the apartment, or cella, 

 from its porch by a screen with a 

 doorway. The porch was then 

 further developed by the addition 

 of an outside screen of four columns, 

 which number was subsequently 

 increased to six, so as to enable 

 the two at the extremities to out- 

 flank the actual front and form a 

 starting-point for a range of 

 columns carried round the remain- 

 der of the building. Thus was 

 evolved the hexastyle temple, 

 which is the typical form of the 

 mature Greek temple enclosed in 

 its envelope of columns. The Par- 

 thenon itself is exceptional in that 

 it had a hexastyle portico at each 

 end of the cella, and, outside, a 

 further portico which was oota- 

 style (eight-columned ) ; but the 

 hexastyle type is the prevailing one. 

 Grouping of Buildings 



The building consisted of a single 

 storey with a low-pitched roof 

 ending in a pediment. Height 

 was not aimed at, nor is there any 

 great variety of outline. On the 

 other hand, these buildings were 

 grouped so as to secure the maxi- 

 mum effect of picturesqueness. No 

 two of those which once crowned 

 the Acropolis were placed in line 

 with each other. They were set at 

 various angles, conforming to the 

 rise and fall of the ground, from 

 which they appeared, spontane- 

 ously and naturally, to grow. 



Moreover, the Greek temple, 

 regularly outlined, exquisitely 

 though not mathematically pro- 

 portioned as it was, did not rely 

 wholly on its form. The architec- 

 tural ornament of its exterior was 

 decked out in bright primary 

 colours, sometimes gilded ; marble 

 was often covered with coloured 

 stucco, and sculpture was painted, 

 until the whole must have sparkled 

 with points of colour in the sun. 



Greek architecture was domi- 

 nated at successive periods by 

 three Orders, of which the first 



and best beloved was the Doric. 

 In Athens, one of the best pre- 

 served buildings of this Order is 

 the so-called Temple of Theseus. 

 Excavations carried out at Olym- 

 pia in 1876 laid bare the founda- 

 tions and plan of a great Doric 

 temple of Zeus, and of others, 

 while many similar structures have 

 been unearthed in Crete and the 

 islands of the Archipelago, the 

 western coast of Asia Minor, and 

 in Sicily and the toe of Italy, where 

 Greek colonies existed. 



The evolution of the Ionic Order 

 is less easy to trace than the 

 Doric. The volute capitals, which 

 are its distinguishing feature, ap- 

 pear to have originated in Asia, 

 and there are no known examples 

 in Greece itself earlier than the 

 5th century. The Erectheum, on 

 the Acropolis, the greatest of all 

 Ionic temples, was built about 

 420 B.C. In Asia Minor, however, 

 Ionic temples existed before the 

 Persian Wars. 



Just as the use of the Doric 

 Order reached its climax of splen- 

 dour a few years after the building 

 of the Parthenon (447 B.C.), so the 

 maturity of the Ionic followed the 

 Erectheum within the space of. a 

 few years, as if, in each case, the 

 production of a great example was 

 needed to give the impetus to the 

 development of the style. Doric 

 had satisfied the early aspirations 

 of the Greek builders to comeliness 

 of form and fine proportions, but 

 denied them the greater freedom 

 of purely architectural ornament 

 which they desired. 



The Ionic Order gave them a 

 new opportunity. The Ionic vol- 

 ute, in its original form, had a two- 

 sided capital. This was found un- 

 satisfactory at the corners of build- 

 ings where the capitals had to 

 show their ends, while those next 

 to them showed their broadsides 

 and volutes. A new corner capital 

 was accordingly invented which, 

 by a slight modification of the 

 volutes, was transformed into a 

 four-sided capital, thus enabling 

 the continuity in the whole line of 

 capitals on a front to be preserved. 

 This order also admitted more 

 than one tr< atment of the bases of 

 columns, and variety in the treat- 

 ment of the entablature. 



The Corinthian Order 



The Corinthian Order, the latest 

 of the three employed by the 

 Greeks, was not introduced much 

 earlier than the age of Alexander 

 the Great. Its foliated capital ap- 

 pears to have been borrowed from 

 the bell-shaped capital of the an- 

 cient Egyptians, though the acan- 

 thus leaf ornament with which the 

 Greeks covered it was practically 

 their own device. A little circular 



