Chapter 5 - Greece - Quiz
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- Of all the influences on the Greek culture, the two closest and most powerful were:
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1. Minoans (Crete)
2. Mycenaeans - The 2 most significant contributions left by Minoan Crete were:
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1. Minoan Pottery (example: jar painted with stylized octopus)
2. Minoan Architecture: The Palace of King Minos at Knossos with its free and open circulation pattern and its throne room and stately staircase. - The Mycenaean culture, centered on the city of Mycenae influenced future architecture (by the later Greek house ande, after it, by the Roman house)through
- its circulation pattern within its palaces, where the megaron (great room) is always isolated. Unlike the linked rooms of the Minoan p;alace, its principal rooms open onto corridors or courtyards that provide the rooms' only access.
- In what ways were the Greeks influenced by the Egyptians?
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1. Egyptian art, seen in their continued use of the column and lintel form of construction. The Greeks made it more slender and faced it with concave grooves called flutings.
2. Egyptian influence is also seen in Greek sculpture, particularly in the use of Egyptian relief carvings as early models for the Greeks. - The Doric order is named after
- the Dorian people, originally barbarians from the northwestern mountains. Between 100 and 950 B.C., they swept down into the Greek mainland, possibly bringing iron tools with them, and settled largely in Crete and Sparta.
- The Ionic order is named after
- a group of people who fled Crete when the Dorians penetrated the area. Some settled in Ionia, a strip of land along the coast of what is now Turkey, which became part of the Greek world and others settled on some of the islands in the Aegean. It is for them that the Ionic order is named; it is the more delicate of the two main Greek orders.
- The dramatic geography of Greece and her islands influenced Greek religion. Special gods and goddesses were thought to embody the spirits of places. The greatest of the 3 gods were:
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1. Zeus, the supreme god associated with heaven and earth and responsible for storms and darkness - Olympia and Dedona
2. Athena, queen of the air, was especially linked with the city of Athens.
3. Apollo, the sun god, had his favorite sites Delos and Delphi. - The isolation of one Greek city-state from another brought independence but also a regrettable amount of warfare. Throughout Greek history, one city-state quarreled with another. The most famous and prolonged quarrel was that between:
- Athens and Sparta, the city-state settled by Dorians and nestled in a mountain-ringed valley. The Spartans were courageous, self-disciplined and warlike, but lacked philosophers, historians, or artists. It is Athenian idealism and its cultural results that have proved to be immortal.
- Three formative periods that were followed by great periods of artistic maturity in Greek art and architecture are:
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1. The Geometric Period (1000-700 B.C.)
2. The Orientalizing Period (700-600 B.C.)
3. The Archaic Period (600-480 B.C.) - Major characteristics of geometric period in Greece:
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1. Its decoration was highly abstract and angular, more akin to the style of Mycenae.
2. The Olympic Games were initiated near the end of this period, in 776 B.C., which continued every 4 years in honor of Olympian Zeus, the supreme god. Greeks consider this date the true beginning of their civilization. - Characteristics of the Archaic Period (600-480 B.C.):
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1. The time of the Persian Wars, during which Greek sculpture became a major form of artistic expression. Greek young men, sometimes shown carrying sacrifices to the gods. Kouroi - statues of young nude men, usually striding in their simplicity recalling Egyptian forerunners.
2. Vase painting flourished.
3. Architecture, was becoming a recognizable art form. One of the earliest temples in the Doric style is at Thermum, built c. 640 B.C. More advanced is the Temple of Apollo at Corinth and the temple of Zeus at Selinus, in Sicily. - Three Mature Periods in Greek Art:
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1. The Classical Period (480-404 B.C.).
2. The Fourth Century (404-323 B.C.)
3. The Hellenistic Period (323-146 B.C.) - Characteristics of the Classical Period in Greek art:
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1. The greatest period of artistic achievement in ancient Greece, and one of the greatest of all history, came between Greece's victory in the Persian Wars and with the Battle of Marathon in 480 B.C. and Athen's defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War in 404 B.C. This time is variously called the Classical period, the Golden Age, or the Age of Pericles (Athenian statesman who led the country to a democratic form of government).
2. Age of the Greek dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Artistophanes, the poet Pindar, the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and the master of philosophers, Socrates.
3. The harmonic proportions of the Doric and Ionic orders were perfected in this period with a number of great Doric monuments being built in Athens, including the Hephaestum, the Parthenon, and the Propylaea temples. Ionic order also employed for the Erechtheum on the Athenian Acropolis and for the interior of the nearby Propylaea. - Characteristics of The Fourth Century in Greek art (Three Mature Periods)
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1. The period from the defeat of Athens to the death of Alexander the Great at Babylon is loosely called the 4th century, although the term Late Classical is also sometimes used.
2. Although Greek city-state declined from their previous power, Greek civilization continued to expand and the Fourth Century was the time of the orator Demosthenes, the philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and the "father of medicine", Hippocrates.
3. The ideal forms of the Classical period were replaced by more emotional forms in Greek art. The most gifted sculptor of the period being Praxiteles.
4. In architecture, the Corinthian order began to be used. - Characteristics of the Hellenistic Period (323-146 B.C.)
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1. The effects of Alexander's conquests spread Greek culture over the Near East and far into Asia, with important new centers at Pergamom, Rhodes, and Alexandria.
2. Advances were made in mathematics and science, but compared to their finest achievements, Greek literature became relatively ponderous.
3. Greek architecture relatively complicated, and Greek art relatively sentimental.
4. Greek masterpieces from Hellenistic times such as the Venus de Milo, the great alter at Pergamon and its friezes, and sculptures such as the Victory of Samothrace and the original version of the Laocoon sculpture group. - cornice
- The trusses extend beyond the architrave and frieze and create an overhang called the cornice.
- entablature
- The architrave, frieze, and cornice together form a combination of the three details known as the entablature.
- pediment and pediment frieze
- The row of roof trusses extends forward and backward to the front and rear of the building. The triangular shape of the roof forms a pediment (like a gable) at the front and rear. The pediment holds a triangular panel of sculpture called the pediment frieze.
- Doric order characteristics:
- Simplest and oldest order is the Doric. The shafts of Doric columns are fluted and have no bases resting directly on the stylobate. The Doric capital consists of a square abacus (plate) at the top and a simple curved echinus (dish) below. The Doric entablature has a plain architrave and a frieze divided into triglyphs and metophes. Triglyps are blocks divided by vertical channels and metrophes are panels placed between the triglyphs, often decorated with sculpture in how relief.
- Ionic order characteristics
- Related to earlier Egyptian and Near Eastern prototypes. It consists of a capital with two front-facing scroll volutes, whose design may have been derived from animal horns or shells. Below is a molding of egg and dart with a second lower molding of bead and reel or anthemion relief designs. The column itself is thinner than the Doric and is fluted with separated semicircular grooves and finished at the bottom with a molded base that rests on the stylobate. The Ionic entablature is narrower than the Doric and features an architrave that rises in three distinct planes. It has an undecorated frieze or one decorated in a continuous band of sculpture and a cornice that projects less than the Doric.
- Corinthian order characteristics
- Not as widely used by the Greeks but was adopted by the Romans. The Corinthian capital is shaped like an inverted bell and embellished with two rows of acanthus leaves. The bell shape is topped with four small volutes that support each corner of a square abacus. The Corinthian cornice may also be enriched with square dentil ornament.