Explain the Similarities of Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman Art
Introduction
The fine art of the aboriginal Greeks and Romans is chosen classical art. This proper name is used also to draw afterwards periods in which artists looked for their inspiration to this ancient style. The Romans learned sculpture and painting largely from the Greeks and helped to transmit Greek fine art to later ages. Classical art owes its lasting influence to its simplicity and reasonableness, its humanity, and its sheer beauty.
The starting time and greatest catamenia of classical fine art began in Greece about the center of the 5th century bc. By that time Greek sculptors had solved many of the issues that faced artists in the early primitive period. They had learned to represent the human form naturally and easily, in activity or at rest. They were interested importantly in portraying gods, however. They thought of their gods as people, merely grander and more than beautiful than any human being. They tried, therefore, to portray platonic beauty rather than any detail person. Their best sculptures achieved about godlike perfection in their calm, ordered beauty.
The Greeks had plenty of cute marble and used information technology freely for temples as well as for their sculpture. They were non satisfied with its common cold whiteness, all the same, and painted both their statues and their buildings. Some statues accept been found with their vivid colors still preserved, just most of them lost their paint through weathering. The works of the great Greek painters accept disappeared completely, and we know simply what aboriginal writers tell united states of america well-nigh them. Parrhasius, Zeuxis, and Apelles, the great painters of the 4th century bc, were famous as colorists. Polygnotus, in the fifth century, was renowned as a draftsman.
Fortunately we have many examples of Greek vases. Some were preserved in tombs; others were uncovered by archaeologists in other sites. The cute decorations on these vases give usa some idea of Greek painting. They are examples of the wonderful feeling for course and line that made the Greeks supreme in the field of sculpture.
The primeval vases—produced from virtually the 12th century to the 8th century bc—were decorated with brown pigment in the so-called geometric way. Sticklike figures of people and animals were fitted into the over-all pattern. In the next period the figures of people and gods began to be more realistic and were painted in black on the red dirt. In the 6th century bc the figures were left in carmine and a black background was painted in.
By the 8th century bc the Greeks had become a seafaring people and began to visit other lands. In Arab republic of egypt they saw many beautiful examples of both painting and sculpture. In Asia Minor they were impressed past the enormous Babylonian and Assyrian sculptures that showed narrative scenes.
The early Greek statues were stiff and flat, but in about the 6th century bc the sculptors began to study the man body and work out its proportions. For models they had the finest of immature athletes. The Greeks wore no habiliment when they proficient sports, and the sculptor could observe their cute, strong bodies in every pose.
Greek religion, Greek love of beauty, and a growing spirit of nationalism found fuller and fuller expression. Only it took the crisis of the Persian invasion (490–479 bc) to arouse the young, virile race to great achievements. Subsequently driving out the invaders, the Greeks of a sudden, in the 5th century, reached their full stature. What the Persians had destroyed, the Greeks ready to work to rebuild. Their poets sang the glories of the new epoch, and Greek genius, as shown in the slap-up creations at Athens, came to full strength and beauty. It was and then, under Pericles, that the Athenian Acropolis was restored and adorned with the matchless Parthenon, the Erechtheum, and other cute buildings. In that location were beautiful temples in other cities of Greece besides, notably that of Zeus at Olympia, which are known from descriptions by the aboriginal writers and from a few fragments that have been discovered in recent times. (For Greek architecture encounter architecture.)
The 5th century bc was made illustrious in sculpture also by the piece of work of iii dandy masters, all known today in some degree by surviving works. Myron is famous for the boldness with which he stock-still moments of vehement activeness in bronze, as in his famous Discobolus, or Discus Thrower. In that location are fine copies now in Munich and in the Vatican, in Rome. The Doryphorus, or Spear Bearer, of Polyclitus was called by the ancients the Rule, or guide in composition. The Spear Bearer was believed to follow the true proportions of the human being body perfectly.
The Neat Phidias
The greatest name in Greek sculpture is that of Phidias. Under his direction the sculptures decorating the Parthenon were planned and executed. Some of them may have been the work of his own hand. His great masterpieces were the huge gold and ivory statue of Athena which stood within this temple and the like one of Zeus in the temple at Olympia. They have disappeared. Some of his great genius can be seen in the remains of the sculptures of the pediments and frieze of the Parthenon. Many of them are preserved in the British Museum. They are known equally the Elgin Marbles. Lord Elgin brought them from Athens in 1801–12.
The Parthenon Sculptures
These sculptures are the greatest works of Greek art that have come down to modern times. The frieze ran like a decorative band around the pinnacle of the outer walls of the temple. It is 3 anxiety 3 1/2 inches high and 524 feet long. The subject is the ceremonial procession of the Panathenaic Festival. The figures represent gods, priests, and elders; sacrifice bearers and sacrificial cattle; soldiers, nobles, and maidens. They stand up out in low relief from an undetailed groundwork. All are vividly alive and beautifully composed within the narrow band. The horses and their riders are peculiarly graceful. Their bodies seem to printing forward in rhythmical move.
Around the outside of the portico to a higher place the columns were 92 virtually square panels known as the metopes. Each panel depicted two figures in combat.
In the east and west triangular pediments were groups of figures judged to be the earth's greatest examples of awe-inspiring sculpture. The problem of composing figures in the triangular space of a depression pediment was most skillfully solved.
The east pediment represented the contest of Athena and Poseidon over the site of Athens. The west pediment illustrated the miraculous nativity of Athena out of the head of Zeus. The use of colour and of statuary accessories enhanced the beauty of the pediment groups.
Later on Greek Sculptures
The Aphrodite of Melos, commonly known equally the Venus de Milo, is a beautiful marble statue now exhibited in the Louvre, Paris. Naught is known of its sculptor. Experts date it betwixt 200 and 100 bc.
The works of Phidias were followed by those of Praxiteles, Scopas, and Lysippus. What is believed to be an original work of Praxiteles, the statue Hermes with the Babe Dionysus, is preserved in a Greek museum. This is the but statue that can be identified with one of the bully Greek masters. Most of these sculptors are known only through copies of their work by Roman artists. The figure of Hermes—strong, active, and svelte, the face expressive of nobility and sweetness—is nearly cute. The so-called Satyr or Faun of Praxiteles, which suggested Hawthorne's Marble Faun, is probably the work of another sculptor of the aforementioned school. Praxiteles' sculpture is less lofty and dignified than that of Phidias, only it is total of grace and charm. Scopas carried further the tendency to portray dramatic moods, giving his subjects an intense impassioned expression. Lysippus returned to the athletic type of Polyclitus, but his figures are lighter and more slender, combining manly beauty and force. He was at the height of his fame in the time of Alexander the Slap-up, who, it is said, wanted only Lysippus to portray him.
The period post-obit the death of Alexander is known as the Hellenistic. Greek art lost much of its simplicity and ideal perfection of class, its tranquillity and restraint, but it gained in intensity of feeling and became more realistic. Two works of the period are the Dying Gaul, sometimes chosen the Dying Gladiator, and the beautiful Apollo Belvedere. The Laocoön grouping, which depicts a begetter and his sons crushed to death by serpents, illustrates the extremity of concrete suffering every bit represented in sculpture.
A famous late Hellenistic statue is the Nike, or Winged Victory. The dramatic effect of her sweeping draperies and the swift movement of the figure are distinctive. In contrast to previous standing figures, this is an activeness pose, giving a sense of movement and current of air at sea. The date of the statue has been disputed. At present information technology is usually placed betwixt 250 and 180 bc. It was discovered in 1863 on the island of Samothrace and is at present in the Louvre, Paris. Excavations on the aforementioned site in 1950 uncovered the right mitt of the figure. The Greek government gave it to the Louvre in exchange for a frieze that once adorned a temple on the isle.
The Art of the Romans
From early on times the Romans had felt the artistic influence of Greece. In 146 bc, when Greece was conquered by Rome, Greek art became inseparably interwoven with that of Rome. "Hellenic republic, conquered, led her conqueror captive" is the poet'due south way of expressing the triumph of Greek over Roman culture. The Romans, however, were non merely imitators, and Roman fine art was non a decayed course into which Greek fine art had fallen.
To a large extent the art of the Romans was a development of that of their predecessors in Italy, the Etruscans, who, to be sure, had learned much from the Greeks. Nor were the Romans themselves entirely without originality. Though their artistic forms were, for the nigh role, borrowed, they expressed in them, especially in their architecture, their own practical dominating spirit.
In the 2nd century bc the Roman generals began a systematic plunder of the cities of Hellenic republic, bringing dorsum thousands of Greek statues to grace their triumphal processions. Greek artists flocked to Rome to share in the patronage that was then lavishly bestowed, attributable to the rich conquests made as the Roman power was extended. The wealthy Romans congenital villas, filled them with works of art in the manner of our mod plutocrats, and called for Greek artists or Romans inspired by Greek traditions to paint their walls and decorate their courts with sculptures. The ruins excavated at Pompeii and Herculaneum prove united states of america how fond the Romans and their neighbors in Italy were of embellishing not but their houses, but the objects of daily use, such as household utensils, furniture, etc.
But with the Romans fine art was used not so much for the expression of great and noble ideas and emotions as for ornament and ostentation. Equally art became fashionable, it lost much of its spiritual quality. Equally they borrowed many elements of their faith from the Greeks, so the Romans copied the statues of Greek gods and goddesses. The Romans were lacking in neat imagination. Even in one of the few ideal types which they originated, the "Antinoüs," the Greek stamp is unmistakable. In one respect, nonetheless, the Roman sculptors did testify originality; they produced many vigorous realistic portrait statues. Amid those that have come down to us are a cute bust of the young Augustus, a splendid total-length statue of the same emperor, and busts of other famous statesmen. All these have a historic likewise every bit an artistic value. And then, besides, have the reliefs which beautify such structures as the Curvation of Titus and the Column of Trajan, commemorating great events in these emperors' reigns.
In painting—though here, too, they learned from the Greeks—information technology seems probable that the Romans adult more than originality than in sculpture. Unfortunately, as in the case of the Greeks, the cracking masterpieces of ancient painting no longer be; but we tin can learn much from the mural paintings establish in houses at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome. The pleasing coloring, which in many of the paintings still remains fresh and bright, and the freedom and vigor of the drawing, would seem to bespeak that fifty-fifty from these aboriginal days Italy was the home of painters of great talent. Portrait painting especially flourished at Rome, where hack street-corner artists became and then common that one could have his portrait painted for a few cents.
Although the fine art of Rome loses in comparison with that of Greece, withal it commands our adoration, and nosotros owe the Romans a debt of gratitude for helping to transmit to us the art of the Greeks, who were their great masters.
Source: https://kids.britannica.com/students/article/Greek-and-Roman-art/274650
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