Article: Greece, the sculpture’s classicism

By Sergio Ruiz and Raquel Márquez

Translate by Sonia Matamoros

Greece has been and still is the cradle of the arts and also of the beauty ideal on western thinking. If we think in the different models and archetypes of esthetics and harmony, we can fathom the starting point or classic sculpture being born in the Greek culture. In the development, both intellectual and political of Greece, sculpture have had a decisive role: It not only has been a way to express for the period’s artists, but it also has been a symbol of the development of the city: battles, celebration of the Olympic Games, myths and legends, religion / polytheism…

The Greek esthetic sense marks the trace of the concepts of equilibrium, harmony and beauty in the western thinking: the ideal head, which is a seventh fraction of the body. The harmony when representing the man’s features was essential to reflect the human spirit.

The influence of the classic Greek art on western thinking goes so deep that even a movement was created to recover the essence of said art: the Neoclassicism. Thus we can say that Greece holds the foundation of what is esthetic, beautiful, plastic or harmonic.

Polykleitos (Greece, 480 - 420 BC)

Diadumenos

Greek sculptor and theoretical, he is, along Phidias, the great figure of classic age sculpture. Of Argos, Polykleitos specialized in athletic figures, and he was the inventor of one of the greatest sculpturing artifices: the contrapposto, which consists on giving the sculpture a feeling of movement in the superior part of the torso, in opposition to the inferior one, so it results in unparalleled lines, which gives the sculpture a more dynamic appearance.

Polykleitos also developed a theoretical labor. In his treatise “Kanon”, he presents the principles of his sculpture conception, starting from the presumption that beauty is the relation of some parts to the others. He focuses on the study of proportions, coming to the conclusion that the prototypical perfection of height would be achieved through the precise dimensions: the height would be 7 times the measurement of the head, and so it was established the 1/7 formula, which coherence puts Polykleitos as one of the most amazing sculptors in history.

If we pay attention to the Diadumenos, we can verify how that beauty canon, that ideal of perfection, is found in our culture: commercials, movies, TV shows, etc.

Praxiteles (Athens, 4th century BC)

Hermes bearing the infant Dionysus

His figure is a sign of authority in the 4th century sculpturing in Athens, almost leveling Phidias’s prestige.

Praxiteles set the grounds for the following development of Greek sculpture. He distanced himself from tradition as he preferred marble as the base material, however, he moved along the same lines as his predecessors in choosing the model and he evolved towards a greater humanization of the statues he made.

He had a great prestige because of his work, especially because of the modelling softness and the position of the bodies. His sculpture “Hermes bearing the infant Dionysus” is emblematic in this sense. It was found in 1877 in Olympia, and it’s the only one still conserved, made by such a significant sculptor. Nevertheless, the most famous one during the old age was the Aphrodite of Cnidus, an actual-sized sculpture of the goddess.

Myron (Eleutherae, c. 480 – 440 BC)

Discobolus

He was born in Boeotia and was the main Greek sculptor of his time, he was the exponent of what’s called the severe style, and he also was the precursor of the great masters of classicism. He carried out his activities in Athens, where numerous works are attributed to him, mainly athletic and heroic statues. Nevertheless, just three of them could be attributed to him with certainty: The Discobolus or “Disc Thrower”, the Athena and Marsyas, and also the Anadumenos.

The Discobolus, emblematic to Myron’s style, shows a sense of movement by using the body’s tension, and it constitutes an excellent example of dynamic equilibrium.

Something similar happens in Athena and Marsyas. These two pieces of art made Myron be considered an artist ahead of his own time, an artist who looked for innovation.

Phidias (Athens, c. 480 – 430 BC)

Athena Parthenos

Phidias was the master of the classical world, as he took sculpturing to the highest level of perfection and harmony. He had experience as engraver, painter and also in embossing, and he lived during the Pericles era but there’s little more known about his biography.

The first known work of him is the Lemnian Athena, a statue of the Goddess, destined to be put in the Acropolis in Athens, but nowadays just two partial copies are conserved: The Palagi head at the Archeological Museum of Bologna, Italy, and a reconstruction in the Albertinum. Desdren, Germany.

Fame came to him in the year 438 BC, when he established himself with the Athena Parthenos. The patron saint of Athens is represented in this 9-meter (about 29 ft.) statue as a warrior goddess, with a shield and a helmet, ready to protect the city. The piece of art is known through the copies that were made, as the original is long lost.

Besides the Athena for the Parthenon, Phidias created another one for the sanctuary in Olympia, the Statue of Zeus, which was established as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The statue is about 13 meters (43 ft.) tall.

What gave Phidias his fame were the sculptures in the Parthenon, that’s what makes his name still known over the time. When the construction of the temple was ended, Phidias and his workshop took over to decorate the place with sculptures, which included a baseboard in low relief, two decorated pediments and two metopes in high relief.

Relieves in the Parthenon

From this group, the most known are the Three Moirai and the fragments of the Panathenaic Games, mostly the group of Gods from the Olympus, where it can be observed how the treatment of the fabrics has contributed in a decisive way to the fame of Phidias’s art.

When Pericles, his protector, fell, the sculptor was accused of embezzlement in the work of the Athena, and even though he could prove his innocence, he was incarcerated for having included his own portrait and Pericles’s to the Goddess’ shield. The rest is a mystery, as there are different versions of what happened to him: Some historians say he died in prison, some others say he got to scape and went into exile in Olympia, place where the remainders of his workshop were dug out between the years 1954 and 1958.

Pericles’s Athens experimented the growth of democracy, lived the Platonic philosophy, enjoyed Sophocles… but, above all, the classic Greece will be remembered as the founder of the bases for sculpturing in the Western society. Phidias, Praxiteles, Polykleitos or Myron showed us the path to what the art can be. They showed us how esthetics can be sublime, getting to delight us for being able to create such beautiful figures. “Beauty will save the world”, Dostoyevsky said. Classic Greece is very responsible in it.