Antique art. Antique Art

LECTURE STRUCTURE:

I

II. Ancient period - Aegean culture.

2.1. Cretan culture.

2.2. Mycenaean art.

III. Art of the Homeric period.

IV. Bibliography.

V. List of major artifacts.

I. General characteristics of ancient art.

European civilization has its roots in antiquity. The ancient culture of the Mediterranean is considered the greatest creation of mankind. Limited by space (mainly the coast and islands of the Aegean and Ionian Seas) and time (from the 2nd millennium BC to the first centuries of Christianity), ancient culture expanded the boundaries of historical existence, declaring itself to be the universal significance of architecture and sculpture, epic poetry and dramaturgy, natural science and philosophy. In historical terms, antiquity refers to the period of history covering the Greco-Roman slave society.

The concept of antiquity in culture arose in the Renaissance. So the Italian humanists called the earliest culture known to them. This name has been preserved for her to this day as a familiar synonym for classical antiquity, accurately separating Greco-Roman culture from the cultural worlds of the ancient East.

Antique culture is cosmological and based on the principle of objectivism; in general, it is characterized by a rational (theoretical) approach to understanding the world and at the same time its emotional and aesthetic perception, harmonious logic and individual originality in solving socio-practical and theoretical problems.

Complex and diverse historical material is usually divided into several periods, according to which the history of art is built:

Ancient period - Aegean culture (30 -20 centuries BC)

Homeric period (11 - 8 centuries BC)

Archaic period (7th - 6th centuries BC)

Classical period (5th century - until the last third of the 4th century BC)

Hellenistic period (last third of the 4th century - 1st century BC)

The period of development of the tribes of Italy - Etruscan culture (8 - 2 centuries BC)

Republican period of Ancient Rome (5-1 centuries BC)

Imperial period of ancient Rome (1st - 5th century AD)

The sources of ancient history are relatively scarce and are divided mainly into two groups, material and written. For the most ancient periods of ancient history, monuments of material culture and art are the main, and sometimes the only source. For the later stages of the history of the slave-owning society, the most important role is played by written sources, including official and private documents, letters, memoirs, speeches, as well as historical, artistic, scientific and philosophical literature.

II. Ancient period - Aegean (Cretan-Mycenaean) culture.

Culture reaches a special brilliance in the 30th - 20th centuries. BC, during the Bronze Age, on Crete, on some other islands (Melos, Amorgos, Thera, later Cyprus) and Central and Southern mainland Greece.

Cultural period 30 - 20 centuries. BC. commonly referred to as the Aegean culture. The spread of this culture covers the areas of the Aegean, where excavations show several areas with their original cultural features and at the same time connected, intertwined with each other.

Aegean culture is the first stage of ancient culture. Humanism, optimism, high perfection of art images, harmony and proportionality are inherent in it. The main centers of this culture are the island of Crete and the city of Mycenae in the Peloponnese. Hence the second name of the Aegean culture - Crete-Mycenaean.

Cretan culture (30 - 12 centuries BC).

Before other regions of the Aegean Sea, in the Bronze Age, Crete entered the path of intensive development. Cretan culture is also called Minoan named after the legendary King Minos.

1. early Minoan (30-23/21 centuries BC),

2. Middle Minoan (23/21 - 16 centuries BC)

3. late Minoan (16-12 centuries BC).

The first period of magnificent prosperity of Crete in the Aegean world began at the turn of the 30th - 20th centuries. BC e., about the time when the ancestors of the later Greeks invaded the Balkan Peninsula. But this was already the Middle Minoan period, about which in Crete can be referred to as the period of the "first palaces". The palaces, constantly rebuilt and becoming more magnificent over the course of two and a half centuries, are decorated with colonnades and frescoes.

One of the main discoveries of this period was, found during excavations by archaeologist A. Evans, a palace equal in area to the whole city - the so-called Knossos labyrinth. The greatest architect Daedalus built a labyrinth - with such intricate passages that no one could find a way out of it.

In fact, Evans found entire building complexesgrouped around a large courtyard. They are bizarrely located at different levels, interconnected by stairs and corridors. A wide variety of structures were built around a spacious stone-paved courtyard. The floors of the palace rested on columns and were interconnected by monumental staircases. Hundreds of halls and rooms were intended for ceremonial receptions, served as chambers for the king and his family.

In the decoration of the rooms wall painting plays an important role. The luxury of the furnishings, the bright design of the interior speak of the wealth and significance of Knossos.

The surviving fragments of frescoes reveal to us the nature of Cretan painting in this era.

The image of the human figure and animals is still entirelycorresponds to the artistic principles that developed inprevious centuries, i.e., the movement is accurately transmitted, but some conventions are also preserved: the image of the eye is given in front with the profile position of the face, the figures of men are painted in dark tones (brown), women - in light (white, yellowish) (Fig. 129). The movement of a young man carrying a rhyton, a walking prince (Fig. 130), and acrobats with a bull are expressively characterized. A subtle sense of decorative effect is manifested in the selection of combinations of reddish-brown, bright blue and yellow in the figure of a young man with a rhyton, blue and purple on a lady's dress, nicknamed"Parisian» (Fig. 131). But it's not just the image itself. Look at the contour: what a lively, tremulous and, at the same time, precise line, confident in its laconic expressiveness, and what playfulness, what full-sounding elegance in the color scheme, born of the immediacy of a fleeting vision. The murals tell about the court life of the Knossos Palace, confirm the greatness of the lord, his wealth, power.

WallsKnossos palace covered with numerous frescoes, with a constantly occurring image of a bull. A huge bull in a furious gallop. His deliberately elongated figure fills almost the entire fresco with its powerful mass. And in front of him, behind him and on him are slender acrobats doing the most dangerous exercises. And everything in this composition is so alive, so impulsive and, at the same time, so at ease that again you perceive her light and pleasant fleeting vision. What did the artist show? A game, just a game, graceful, cheerful, despite the danger

In the late Minoan period, a throne room was decorated in the western part of the palace with a throne chair made of stone (alabaster), benches for elders. The walls of the hall are painted in the form of a wide frieze: on the sides of the throne and on the side walls, two griffins are depicted symmetrically lying on the river bank, as if guarding the lord. The figures of these fantastic monsters and stylized flowers on the shore are interpreted decoratively.

A sculpture of a small size reaches a particularly bright flowering.. Image of a human figure different correctproportional construction, expressiveness of movement. Figurines of goddesses (or priestesses) with snakes in their hands, found in the cache of the Palace of Knossos, are full of grace and femininity (Fig. 132). Their faces, although pretty, are not very expressive. The craftsmen achieved a special vitality in the reliefs on the vessels from Agia Triada, made of steatite. Scenes of fisticuffs and games with a bull on a vase in the shape of a horn (rhyton) are dynamic, the figures are set in bold angles. The interpretation of the faces on the reliefs is conditional: for example, on the steatite vase with the procession of threshers (Fig. 133), the faces of all are the same and turned only in profile, and the eye is shown in front. But this did not prevent the master from portraying the four singers accompanying the procession with subtle humor and with anatomical accuracy. Cretans achieve great truthfulnessmasters in depicting animals and plants: for example, frescoes from Agia Triada; faience reliefs - a goat with kids (Fig. 134), a cow with a calf, a vase with lilies from Knossos.

The creation of works of art is more and more in the hands of specially engaged masters. During this period, experienced skilled professional masters of vase painting, having an inexhaustible supply of patterns, ornamental combinations and techniques for decorating vessels(Fig. 135). Scenes on frescoes and vases from the life of the sea receive special development. A very striking example "marine" style is a painting on a vase depicting an octopus (Fig. 136). In the late Minoan period, the nature of vase painting changes. The new methods are called palace style. Its essence is that each part of the drawing, as it were, emphasizes the exquisite architectonics of the vessel.

The end of the late Minoan period (14th - 12th centuries BC) is the time of the decomposition of the Cretan culture. The late Minoan period simultaneously corresponds to the flourishing of a number of settlements on mainland Greece, which become the leading cultural centers in the Aegean basin. Between the 22nd and 20th centuries BC e. there was a great advance of the Greek tribes from the north of the Balkan Peninsula, one of them, the Achaeans, settled in the Peloponnese, where the settlements of Mycenae and Tiryns became the strongest and richest.

The end of the late Minoan period (14-12 centuries BC) is the time of the decomposition of the Cretan culture. The palaces of Crete may have been destroyed as a result of hostilities. The art of Crete, Thera, Melos is the art of the palace, which developed and flourished mainly within the framework of the palace culture. With the destruction of the palace centers, the palace workshops of ceramists, painters, sculptors, who had created a strong artistic tradition there for centuries, also perished. In art, the realistic tendency to convey the living world is disappearing. Now in Crete, schematization is clearly manifested in the depiction of people, animals and the plant world; some plots and motifs are still preserved in artistic images as a relic of previous periods, for example, a cow with a calf (a sarcophagus from Gurnia), women in dresses of former styles with wide skirts and open breasts. The interpretation of nature shows us a completely different approach - it seems that the master observed nature little, professional skill is completely lost here. Paintings disappear, only small plastic and ceramics remain. Among the vases of this period, vessels of the so-called Mycenaean type predominate, with a schematic representation of the plant and marine world.

1. The Art of Ancient Greece: Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Periods. Art of the Aegean world. Crete. Mycenae. Troy. Etruscan art.
2. The archaeological discovery of Pompeii and its significance for the study of Roman art.
3. Early Christian Art.

The Art of Ancient Greece: Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic Periods.

Without a doubt, the art of ancient Greece had the greatest influence on subsequent generations. Its calm and majestic beauty, harmony and clarity served as a model and source for the later eras of cultural history.

Greek antiquity is called antiquity, ancient Rome is also referred to antiquity.

It took several centuries before the Dorian tribes, who came from the north in the 12th century BC, by the 6th century BC. created a highly developed art. This was followed by three periods in the history of Greek art:

1) archaic, or ancient period,- from about 600 to 480 BC, when the Greeks repelled the Persian invasion and, having freed their land from the threat of conquest, they again got the opportunity to create freely and calmly;

2) classic, or heyday,- from 480 to 323 BC - the year of the death of Alexander the Great, who conquered vast areas, very dissimilar in their cultures; this diversity of cultures was one of the reasons for the decline of classical Greek art;

3)Hellenism, or late period; it ended in 30 BC when the Romans conquered Greek-influenced Egypt.

Greek culture spread far beyond its homeland - to Asia Minor and Italy, to Sicily and other islands of the Mediterranean, to North Africa and other places where the Greeks founded their settlements. Greek cities were even on the northern coast of the Black Sea.

Temples were the greatest achievement of Greek building art. The oldest ruins of temples date back to the archaic era, when instead of wood, yellowish limestone and white marble began to be used as a building material. It is believed that the ancient dwelling of the Greeks served as a prototype for the temple - a rectangular structure with two columns in front of the entrance. From this simple building, various types of temples, more complex in their layout, grew over time. Usually the temple stood on a stepped base. It consisted of a room without windows, where there was a statue of a deity, the building was surrounded in one or two rows of columns. They supported the floor beams and the gable roof. In the semi-dark interior, only priests could visit the statue of God, while the people saw the temple only from the outside. Obviously, therefore, the ancient Greeks paid the main attention to the beauty and harmony of the external appearance of the temple.

The construction of the temple was subject to certain rules. Dimensions, ratios of parts and the number of columns were precisely established.

Three styles dominated Greek architecture: Doric, Ionic, Corinthian. The oldest of them was the Doric style, which had already developed in the archaic era. He was courageous, simple and powerful. It got its name from the Doric tribes that created it. The Doric column is heavy, slightly thickened just below the middle - it seemed to be slightly resounding under the weight of the ceiling. The upper part of the column - the capital - is formed by two stone slabs; the bottom plate is round and the top one is square. The aspiration of the column upwards is emphasized by vertical grooves. The ceiling, supported by columns, is surrounded in its upper part along the entire perimeter of the temple by a strip of decorations - a frieze. It consists of alternating plates: one has two vertical depressions, the other usually has reliefs. Protruding cornices run along the edge of the roof: triangles are formed under the roof on both narrow sides of the temple - pediments, which were decorated with sculptures. Today, the surviving parts of the temples are white: the paint that covered them crumbled over time. Once their friezes and cornices were painted red and blue.

The Ionic style originated in the Ionian region of Asia Minor. From here he penetrated into the Greek regions proper. Compared to the Doric, the Ionic columns are more ornate and slender. Each column has its own base - the base. The middle part of the capital resembles a pillow with corners twisted into a spiral, the so-called. volutes.

In the Hellenistic era, when architecture began to strive for greater splendor, Corinthian capitals began to be used most often. They are richly decorated with floral motifs, among which images of acanthus leaves predominate.

It so happened that time spared the oldest Doric temples, mainly outside of Greece. Several such temples have been preserved on the island of Sicily and in southern Italy. The most famous of these is the temple of the god of the sea Poseidon at Paestum, near Naples, which looks somewhat ponderous and squat. Of the early Doric temples in Greece itself, the most interesting is the now ruined temple of the supreme god Zeus in Olympia, the sacred city of the Greeks, from where the Olympic Games originated.

The heyday of Greek architecture began in the 5th century BC. This classical era is inextricably linked with the name of the famous statesman Pericles. During his reign, grandiose construction work began in Athens, the largest cultural and artistic center of Greece. The main construction was carried out on the ancient fortified hill of the Acropolis. Even from the ruins one can imagine how beautiful the Acropolis was in its time. A wide marble staircase led up the hill. To the right of it, on a dais, like a precious box, there is a small graceful temple to Nike, the goddess of victory. Through the gate with columns, the visitor got to the square, in the center of which stood the statue of the patroness of the city, the goddess of wisdom, Athena; further on was the Erechtheion, a peculiar and complex temple. Its distinguishing feature is a portico protruding from the side, where the ceilings were supported not by columns, but by marble sculptures in the form of a female figure, the so-called. caryatids.

The main building of the Acropolis is the Parthenon temple dedicated to Athena. This temple - the most perfect building in the Doric style - was completed almost two and a half thousand years ago, but we know the names of its creators: their names were Iktin and Kallikrates. In the temple stood a statue of Athena, sculpted by the great sculptor Phidias; one of the two marble friezes, girdling the temple with a 160-meter ribbon, represented the festive procession of the Athenians. Phidias also took part in the creation of this magnificent relief, which depicted about three hundred human figures and two hundred horses. The Parthenon has been in ruins for about 300 years - ever since in the 17th century, during the siege of Athens by the Venetians, the Turks who ruled there set up a powder warehouse in the temple. Most of the reliefs that survived the explosion were taken to London, to the British Museum, at the beginning of the 19th century by the Englishman Lord Elgin.

As a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great in the second half of the 4th century BC. the influence of Greek culture and art spread over vast territories. New cities sprang up; the largest centers were formed, however, outside of Greece. Such, for example, are Alexandria in Egypt and Pergamon in Asia Minor, where construction activity has gained the greatest scope. In these areas, the Ionic style was preferred; an interesting example of it was a huge tombstone of the Asia Minor king Mausolus, ranked among the seven wonders of the world. It was a burial chamber on a high rectangular base, surrounded by a colonnade; a stone stepped pyramid towered above it, topped with a sculptural image of a quadriga, which was controlled by Mausolus himself. After this structure, later they began to call mausoleums and other large solemn funeral structures.

In the Hellenistic era, less attention was paid to temples, and squares surrounded by colonnades for promenades, open-air amphitheatres, libraries, various public buildings, palaces and sports facilities were built. Residential buildings were improved: they became two - and three-story, with large gardens. Luxury became the goal, and different styles were mixed in architecture.

Greek sculptors have given the world works that have aroused the admiration of many generations. The oldest sculptures known to us arose in the archaic era. They are somewhat primitive: their motionless posture, hands tightly pressed to the body, and forward gaze are dictated by the narrow long stone block from which the statue was carved. One of her legs is usually pushed forward - to maintain balance. Archaeologists have found many such statues depicting naked young men and girls dressed in loose folded outfits. Their faces are often enlivened by a mysterious "archaic" smile.

In the classical era, the main business of sculptors was to create statues of gods and heroes and decorate temples with reliefs; secular images were added to this, for example, statues of statesmen or winners at the Olympic Games.

In the beliefs of the Greeks, the gods are similar to ordinary people both in their appearance and way of life. They were portrayed as people, but strong, well developed physically and with a beautiful face. Often people were depicted naked to show the beauty of a harmoniously developed body. In the 5th century BC. the great sculptors Myron, Phidias and Polykleitos, each in their own way, renewed the art of sculpture and brought it closer to reality. The young naked athletes of Polykleitos, for example, his "Dorifor", rely on only one leg, the other is left freely. In this way, it was possible to unfold the figure and create a sense of movement. But standing marble figures could not be given more expressive gestures or complex poses: the statue could lose balance, and fragile marble could break. These dangers could have been avoided if the figures were cast in bronze. The first master of complex bronze castings was Myron, the creator of the famous "Discobolus".

Many artistic achievements are associated with the glorious name of Phidias: he led the work on decorating the Parthenon with friezes and pediment groups. Magnificent are his bronze statue of Athena on the Acropolis and the 12-meter-high statue of Athena covered with gold and ivory in the Parthenon, which later disappeared without a trace. A similar fate befell the huge statue of Zeus seated on the throne, made from the same materials, for the temple at Olympia - another of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

As much as we admire the sculptures created by the Greeks in their heyday, these days they may seem a little cold. True, there is no coloring that revived them at one time; but their indifferent and similar faces are even more alien to us. Indeed, the Greek sculptors of that time did not try to express any feelings or experiences on the faces of the statues. Their goal was to show perfect bodily beauty. Therefore, we admire even those statues - and there are many of them - that have been badly damaged over the centuries: some even lost their heads.

If in the 5th century BC. lofty and serious images were created, then in the 4th century BC. artists tended to express tenderness and gentleness. Praxiteles gave warmth and awe of life to the smooth marble surface in his statues of naked gods and goddesses. He also found it possible to diversify the poses of the statues, creating balance with the help of appropriate supports. His Hermes, a young messenger of the gods, leans on a tree trunk. Until now, sculptures have been designed to be viewed from the front. Lysippus made his statues so that they could be viewed from all sides - this was another innovation.

In the era of Hellenism in sculpture, the craving for pomp and exaggeration intensifies. In some works, excessive passions are shown, in others, excessive closeness to nature is noticeable. At this time, he began to diligently copy the statues of former times; thanks to copies, today we know many monuments - either irretrievably lost or not yet found. Marble sculptures that conveyed strong feelings were created in the 4th century BC. Scopas. His greatest work known to us is his participation in the decoration of the mausoleum in Halicarnassus with sculptural reliefs. Among the most famous works of the Hellenistic era are the reliefs of the great altar in Pergamon depicting the legendary battle; the statue of the goddess Aphrodite found at the beginning of the last century on the island of Melos, as well as the sculptural group "Laocoon". It depicts a Trojan priest and his sons who were strangled by snakes; physical torment and fear are conveyed by the author with ruthless credibility.

In the works of ancient writers, one can read that painting also flourished in their times, but almost nothing has been preserved from the paintings of temples and residential buildings. We also know that in painting, too, artists strove for sublime beauty. A special place in Greek painting belongs to the paintings on vases. In the oldest vases, silhouettes of people and animals were applied with black varnish on a bare red surface. The outlines of details were scratched on them with a needle - they appeared in the form of a thin red line. But this technique was inconvenient and later they began to leave the figures red, and the gaps between them were painted over with black. So it was more convenient to draw the details - they were made on a red background with black lines.

Plots for vase painting were drawn from the Homeric epic, numerous myths about gods and heroes, festivities and sports were depicted on vases. Paintings on vases, often executed by ceramists with great skill, are also interesting because they tell about the life of the ancient Greeks, their appearance, household items, customs and much more. In this sense, they tell us even more than the sculptures.

Etruscan art.

Etruscans- these are ancient peoples that existed in the first millennium BC on the territory of the Apennine Peninsula, in its northwestern part (modern Tuscany in Italy). The Etruscans are a mysterious people in many respects: neither their origin, nor their linguistic roots, nor their disappearance has been precisely established.

There are two main hypotheses about the origin of the Etruscans. According to one of them, these peoples appeared from the primitive tribes of the Apennines. According to another, the Etruscans came from the Mediterranean or Asia Minor. Writing appeared among the Etruscans in the 7th century BC.

The development of the Etruscan culture took place against the background of the development of ancient Greek civilizations starting from the Homeric period, and the influence of Greek culture turned out to be quite significant. Nevertheless, the art of the Etruscans is so different from the ancient Greek that it gives reason to believe the presence of other, more ancient, roots.

The Etruscans were famous primarily as experienced engineers and farmers. It was they who, for the first time in the history of mankind, managed to organize a large company to change natural areas - draining swamps, organizing artificial irrigation, etc. The Etruscans were also a maritime people who established strong trade ties with the ancient civilizations of antiquity: Egypt, Phoenicia, Carthage, Greece, Sicily .

In the 7th-6th centuries BC, the Etruscans restored almost the entire western Mediterranean to their influence and built cities such as Caere, Tarquinius, and Clusius. These cities were surrounded by massive fortifications, and inside they contained a developed network of bridges, canals and roads.

Etruria of that time was a network of independent city-states ruled by kings. Among the closest circle of the rulers were both priests and wealthy slave owners, who made up the Etruscan aristocracy. In the VI-V centuries, the 12 largest Etruscan cities form an alliance, headed by the temple of Voltumna.

From the VI century BC. through the Greek colonies in southern Italy, Hellenic culture and Greek art are exerting an increasing influence on the civilization of the Etruscans. The Etruscans borrowed the Greek alphabet, theatrical art and mythological representations of Ancient Hellas. According to the Greek model, gold coins began to be minted. The aristocrats of Etruria were fond of black-figure and red-figure vases, and it is not by chance that many magnificent works of Greek ceramics were found in Etruscan tombs.

The flowering of culture and art of Etruria covers the period from the 7th to the beginning of the 5th century BC. e. Since that time, the time has come for the growing decline of the Etruscan cities. The struggle with numerous tribes, constant wars and social strife undermined their political power. In 474 BC. e. the combined fleet of the southern Italian cities defeated the Etruscans and their longtime ally, Carthage. From the 5th century BC e. the role of the strongest maritime power in the western Mediterranean passed to Syracuse, who pressed the Etruscans on the trade routes. From the end of the 5th century BC. e. a new dangerous rival - slave-owning Rome - begins to push the Etruscans, and during the first half of the 4th century BC. e. southern Etruria came under his rule. In the future, the same fate befell the rest of the Etruscan cities.

With the loss of political independence, the originality and originality of the art of the Etruscans largely disappears. While maintaining a high level of technical skill, the artists of Etruria increasingly borrowed the system of proportions and aesthetic ideals of Greek art.

An example is the excellent bronze statue of a young warrior, made in the first half of the 4th century BC. e. With his left hand he leaned on a spear, and with his right he held a libation cup in honor of the gods, his head was crowned with a helmet. On one of the plates of the metal shell, you can read the dedicatory inscription: "Akhal Trutsitis gave." The natural and free posture of the warrior, his athletic figure and beautiful features are reminiscent of images of Greek athletes.

Art of the Aegean world. Crete. Mycenae. Troy.

About 5000 years ago, a distinctive culture began to take shape on the islands and the coast of the Aegean Sea, which is called Aegean by the name of the sea or by the name of the main centers, Crete-Mycenaean. It existed for almost 2000 years until it was supplanted in the 12th century BC by the Greeks who came from the north. This culture left us monuments of amazing beauty and subtlety of taste. When the Englishman Arthur Evans and his assistants began excavations on the island of Crete in 1900, interesting finds awaited him here. They confirmed the authenticity of the stories told in ancient myths and in the poems of the ancient Greek singer Homer. They glorified the splendor of the Cretan palaces and the power of King Minos.

Art of the Cyclades

The people who inhabited the Cyclades between 2600 and 1100 BC. e. left behind nothing but modest stone tombs. These burials are remarkable in only one respect: among the things that were buried with the deceased, we find many very expressive marble idols, most of which depict a standing female figure with arms folded across her chest. Apparently, this is the mother goddess, known to us from the myths of Asia Minor and the Ancient East - a deity of fertility, originating from the Stone Age. The figurines are very unusual: they have a flat wedge-shaped body, a massive cylindrical neck, a slightly upturned oval of a smooth, featureless face with a long, comb-like nose. Within this invariable type, however, a wide variety of both form and size was allowed - the height of the figures ranged from a few inches to human height.

Minoan art

The Minoan civilization is the richest, and at the same time, the strangest civilization of the Aegean world. It seems that the lack of continuity between it and the civilizations of Egypt, the Middle East and classical antiquity cannot be explained only by the paucity of the archaeological data that have come down to us: the roots of this phenomenon lie much deeper. Studying the main achievements of the Minoan art, we do not see in them a trace of development or growth. They arise and then disappear again so unexpectedly that they inevitably begin to look for an explanation for their fate in some external events - volcanic eruptions, or other catastrophes that have befallen the island - about which we really do not know anything. In the Minoan art itself - joyful, dynamic, with elements of the game - there is not even a hint of bad foreboding.

Architecture

Knossos palace
The "new" palaces are the main source of our information about Minoan architecture. One of them, standing in Knossos and called the palace of Minos, was distinguished by its special splendor. It was very vast and had so many rooms that it entered Greek legend as the famous labyrinth of the Minotaur. Now, after careful archaeological excavations, the palace has been partially restored. We can only guess how the building looked like as a whole, although in external grandeur it was undoubtedly inferior to the palaces of the Persian and Assyrian rulers. The creation of a monumental ensemble was not the goal of its builders. Most of the palace rooms are small in size and have rather low ceilings, so even the multi-storey buildings of the palace hardly seemed very high.

On the other hand, numerous porticos, stairs, ventilation ducts certainly gave the inhabitants of the building a pleasant feeling of open air and spaciousness. Some of its rooms, decorated with rich wall paintings, still delight the eye with their cozy elegance. The stonework of the palaces is everywhere very high quality, but the columns are always made of wood. And although none of these columns has been preserved, their characteristic form - a smooth, somewhat tapering stem with a wide, pillow-shaped capital - is well known to us from sculptural and pictorial representations. Neither the origin of this type of column, which in a certain situation could serve as a religious symbol, nor its possible connections with the architecture of Egypt, we know nothing definite.

Painting

Fresco with bullfighter, ca. 1500 BC e.
After the catastrophe that wiped out the early buildings from the face of the earth, and the century it took to recover from this catastrophe, the time came for an economic boom, accompanied by a real explosion of creative activity. And the most remarkable achievement of this brilliant era is, of course, its painting. Unfortunately, only small fragments have come down to us from it, and among them there is almost no composition, not to mention the wall painting, which would have been preserved in its entirety. The main subject of the image were scenes with animals and birds in the midst of luxurious vegetation, as well as various inhabitants of the sea.

Sculpture

The Minoans worshiped many gods, some of which can be traced back to ancient times. The most widely known Minoan deity is the goddess, usually depicted in a frilled skirt, with her arms raised outstretched to the sides, and snakes are often wrapped around her body and arms. Her figurines became a symbol of the Minoan civilization.

Mycenaean art

In the late Helladic era, on the southeastern coast of mainland Greece, there were a number of settlements, in many respects similar to the cities of Minoan Crete. Their center was also the palace. The most significant of these cities was Mycenae, which gave its name to all the people who inhabited them.

The palaces on the mainland were fortresses built on high hills, surrounded by walls of massive stone blocks - a type of construction completely unknown in Crete. The most impressive remnant of these powerful fortifications is the so-called Lion Gate at Mycenae. They inspired such awe in the next generations of the Greeks that they considered them the work of the mythical one-eyed giants - the Cyclopes.

By 1600, Mycenaean burials suddenly take the form of first deep shafts and then cone-shaped stone tombs known as "beehive tombs". This culture reaches its heyday by 1300 BC. e. At this time, impressive buildings are created from concentric layers of carefully hewn stone blocks. Its discoverer, having decided that it was too large for a tomb, called it the Treasury of Atreus, which, of course, is not true.

The Art of Ancient Rome: From Republic to Empire.

Ancient Rome gave humanity a real cultural environment: well-planned, livable cities with paved roads, magnificent bridges, library buildings, archives, nymphaeums (sanctuaries dedicated to nymphs), palaces, villas and just good houses with good-quality beautiful furniture - all that which is characteristic of a civilized society.

The Romans for the first time began to build "model" cities, the prototype of which were the Roman military camps. Two perpendicular streets were laid - cardo and decumanum, at the crossroads of which the city center was erected. The urban planning was subject to a strictly thought-out scheme.

The artists of Ancient Rome for the first time paid close attention to the inner world of a person and reflected it in the portrait genre, creating works that had no equal in antiquity.

Very few names of Roman artists have survived to this day. However, the monuments left by them are included in the treasury of world art.

ART OF THE AGE OF THE REPUBLIC

The history of Rome is divided into two stages. The first - the era of the republic - came at the end of the VI century. BC e., when the Etruscan kings were expelled from Rome, and lasted until the middle of the 1st century. BC e. The second stage - the imperial one - began with the reign of Octavian Augustus, who passed to autocracy, and lasted until the TV century. n. e. From an artistic point of view, these are two extremely different eras. The first is relatively poor in works of art, most of which are known from the II-I centuries. BC e. Probably, the information of ancient authors that the first temples for the Romans were erected by their neighbors, the more civilized Etruscans, is correct. It was the Etruscans who created for the Capitol, the main of the seven hills on which Rome is located, the symbol of the legendary progenitor of the Romans - the statue of the Capitoline she-wolf. From the conquered provinces, talented craftsmen began to flock to Rome in search of work and wonderful works of art. Hellas played a special role in this. In ancient Rome there was a saying: "Captured Greece captured its enemies."
The city of Rome, founded on April 19, 735 BC. e., at first it was a modest village, but over time it gained more and more strength and absorbed the best creative trends coming from outside. The main shrine of Rome was the temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva on the Capitoline Hill. The temple has not been preserved, but scientists suggest that it was laid out according to the Etruscan model: with a deep front portico, a high plinth and a staircase leading to the main entrance.

Eagle with palm branch and wreath. Cameo. 1st century n. e. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

* The Romans invented concrete - the most important building material, with the help of which they fixed the buildings under construction. They discovered a new way of building buildings. The first was created by the ancient Greeks, it is called post-beam. It is represented by buildings with columns and a ceiling lying on them. In ancient Rome, a more reliable method appeared - a monolithic shell. The Romans, when building walls, erected two shells, between which concrete was poured mixed with crushed stone.

Another attraction of Rome is the market square.

Forum Romanum. ReconstructionXIXin. (Currently, historians and art historians offer other options for the reconstruction of the Forum).

For example, the Greeks called it agora and usually, as in Athens, was at the foot of the acropolis. The Romans had forum. All major city events took place here: meetings, councils, important decisions were announced here, children were taught, and trade was made. In the last centuries of the republic, the forum acquired a complete architectural appearance. On one side it adjoined the imposing building of the state archive - the Tabularium, which stood on vaulted underground floors. Temples rose on the square, among them the temple of Vesta, the virgin goddess, in which an unquenchable fire burned, symbolizing the life of the Roman people. Columns towered here, to which rosters were attached - the noses of defeated enemy ships (hence the name - rostral column) and the "sacred road" passed along which there were taberns - shops. Now from the Forum Romanum, as the Romans called it, only the foundations of buildings remain; its original appearance is a reconstruction.

The so-called Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus (about 100 BC) helps to assess the quality of the plastic works of that era. It was decorated with reliefs on all four sides. Three sides - two narrow and one longitudinal - depicted the "Wedding Train of Neptune and Amphitrite", a cheerful journey of sea gods and nymphs floating on the waters on fantastic animals. The relief is skillfully built by a clearly Greek master. The other long side is framed completely differently. It depicts a qualification - an assessment of the property of Roman citizens to record them in one or another category of citizens. The clerical formalities to which the Romans were so attached are presented on the left side. And on the right it is shown how three sacrificial animals are led to the altar, at which the priest and the Roman god of war Mars stand - a bull, a sheep and a pig. This is an archaic Roman sacrifice (suovetavrilia), the name of which includes the names of all three animals. This relief is inferior to the work of a Greek master; it can be seen that the sculptor overcame great difficulties, depicting the body of an animal in profile and a group of two figures. The relief, of course, belongs to the hand of a prosaic, inexperienced Roman in the arts.

Forum Romanum.

One of the remarkable achievements of Republican Roman art was the portrait. The Romans borrowed a lot from the Etruscans, and, probably, the Etruscan craftsmen themselves worked according to their orders. However, there was one significant difference: the Etruscans creatively processed nature and represented, although a reliable, but poetic image of a person. The Romans of the early times came from wax masks - “persons”, which they removed from the faces of dead ancestors. Masks were kept in every house in the most honorable place, and the more there were, the more noble the family was considered.

The era of the republic is characterized by portraits that are very close to nature. They convey all the smallest features of the human face, additionally endowing it with the features of old age, the end of life. However, this did not mean that they created portraits only of the elderly. And yet, the leading character of the portrait was an elderly strong-willed patrician, who, according to Roman laws, had the “right of life and death” of all his household members. A portrait from the Museo Torlonia in Rome (1st century BC) represents an ugly old man, bald, with protruding ears and a drooping lower lip. The eyebrows are missing, the cheeks are hollow. There is nothing of external beauty. The flesh of the model is so dead that it almost exposes the skeleton underneath. This is precisely the strength of the Roman portrait: it is very constructive, strict and logical. It is enough to compare it with the weak-willed, limp faces in Etruscan portraits. By age, the Roman old man is on the threshold of the grave, but he is strong in spirit and self-confidence.

The softening of authenticity in the portrait was outlined by the second half of the 1st century. BC e. The portrait of Julius Caesar from the same Torlonius Museum is completely different. It is more generalized and expressive. A movement of the soul appears in it: Caesar looks inquiringly, with secret reproach. However, this work is posthumous. Caesar was killed on March 15, 44 BC. e.

Roman statue. Fragment. I in. BC e Vatican Museum, Rome.

Republican architecture is represented by a number of remarkable monuments. Among them are order temples, round and rectangular in plan. round temple - mono'pter - consisted of a cylindrical base surrounded by a colonnade. According to the Etruscan custom, the entrance to the temple was only from one end side.

Temple of Hercules. II in. BC e. Bull forum. Rome.

The round temple of the Sibyl, or Vesta, at Tivoli, near Rome, is surrounded by Corinthian columns. The frieze is decorated with reliefs depicting a traditional Roman motif - bull skulls, "bucranii", from which heavy garlands hang. It was a symbol of sacrifice and remembrance. The order in such temples was distinguished by the rigidity of the pattern and dryness: the columns lost their plasticity inherent in Greece. Rectangular Roman temples also differed from Greek order ones, as the well-preserved temple of Fortuna Virilis at the Bull Forum in Rome shows. He, too, has an entrance from only one side, the Ionic columns end with capitals of a modest design. The pediment is completely "non-Greek", without sculptures inside its tympanum and with rich, strictly drawn profiles.

Tabularium at the Romanum Forum. Rebuilt in later eras.

Magnificent Roman bridges II-I centuries. BC e. Thus, the Mulvio bridge, in addition to its practical merits (it stood for more than two thousand years), is distinguished by its expressive image. The bridge visually, as it were, rests on the water with semicircles of arches, the supports between which are cut by high and narrow openings to lighten the weight. On top of the arches there is a cornice, which gives the bridge a special finish. The bridge seems to be stepping from coast to coast in continuously running arches: it is dynamic and stable at the same time.

Garsky bridge (Roman aqueduct for water supply in Nîmes). I in. BC e. - I in. n. e. France.

The art of ancient Greece played an important role in the development of culture and art of mankind. It was determined by the social and historical development of this country, which is profoundly different from the development of the countries of the Ancient East. In Greece, despite the presence of slavery, the free labor of artisans played a huge role, until the development of slavery had its destructive effect on it. In Greece, within the framework of a slave-owning society, the first principles of democracy in history were formed, which made it possible to develop bold and profound ideas that affirm the beauty and significance of man.

During the transition to a class society, a number of small city-states, the so-called policies, formed in ancient Greece. Despite the presence of numerous economic, political, cultural ties, the policies were independent states and each pursued its own policy.

Stages of development of the art of Ancient Greece:

1. Homeric Greece(12-8 centuries BC) - the time of the collapse of the tribal community and the emergence of slave-owning relations. The appearance of the epic and the first, primitive monuments of fine art.

2. Archaic, or the period of the formation of slave-owning city-states (7-6 centuries BC) - the time of the struggle of ancient democratic artistic culture with the remnants and remnants of old social relations. The addition and development of Greek architecture, sculpture, crafts, the flowering of lyric poetry.

3 Classic, or the heyday of the Greek city-states (5-4 centuries BC) - a period of high flowering of philosophy, natural scientific discoveries, the development of poetry (especially drama), an upsurge in architecture and the complete victory of realism in the visual arts. At the end of this period, the first crisis of the slave-owning society sets in, the development of the policy comes to a decline, which in the second half of the 4th century causes a crisis in the art of the classics.

3. Hellenistic period(late 4th-1st centuries BC) - a period of short-term exit from the crisis through the formation of large empires. However, the inevitable aggravation of all the insoluble contradictions of slavery soon set in. Art is losing the spirit of citizenship and nationality. Later, the Hellenistic states were conquered by Rome and incorporated into its empire.

The policies were constantly at war with each other, however, they united in the event of an attack on Greece by a common enemy (this was the case with Persia and Macedonia). Every citizen had the right to participate in the government of the state. Naturally, among the free citizens there were internal contradictions, often expressed in the struggle of the demos (the people) against the representatives of the aristocracy.

In ancient Greece, physical strength and beauty were especially valued: all-Greek competitions were organized in Olympia (Peloponnesian Peninsula). At the Olympiads, time was kept, and statues were erected to the winners. Of great importance in the development of aesthetic perception were theatrical performances, originally associated with religious holidays, including those in honor of the patrons of policies (for example, the Great Panathenaic festival for the Athenians). The religious beliefs of the Greeks retained their connection with folk mythology, thus religion was intertwined with philosophy and history. A characteristic feature of the mythological background of Greek art is its anthropomorphism, that is, the deep humanization of mythological images.

Monuments of ancient Greek art for the most part have not come down to us in originals, many ancient statues are known to us from ancient Roman marble copies. During the heyday of the Roman Empire (1-2 centuries AD), the Romans sought to decorate their palaces and temples with copies of famous Greek statues and frescoes. Since almost all large Greek bronze statues were melted during the years of the death of ancient society, and the marble ones were mostly destroyed, it is often only by Roman copies, usually also inaccurate, that a number of masterpieces of Greek culture can be judged. Greek painting in the originals is also almost not preserved. Of great importance are the late Hellenistic frescoes, sometimes reproducing earlier examples. Some idea of ​​monumental painting is given by images on Greek vases. Also of great importance are written testimonies, the most famous of them:"Description of Hellas" Pausanias,Pliny's "Natural History""Pictures" of Philostratov, the elder and the younger,"Description of the statues" by Callistratus,"Ten Books on Architecture" by Vitruvius.

Art of Homeric Greece

(12th - 8th centuries BC)

This time is reflected in epic poems -"Iliad" and The Odyssey, written by Homer. In the Homeric period, Greek society as a whole still retained the tribal system. Ordinary members of the tribe and clan were free farmers, partly shepherds. Slavery had an episodic and patriarchal character, slave labor was used (especially at the beginning) mainly in the household of the tribal leader and military leader - the basileus. Basileus was the head of the tribe, and united in his person judicial, military and priestly power. He ruled the community together with the council of elders - bule. On the most important occasions, a popular assembly, the agora, gathered.

The monumental architecture of ancient Greek temples, which originated in the Homeric period, used and in its own way reworked the type of megaron that had developed in Mycenae and Tiryns - a hall with a vestibule and a portico. The expressive ornamental character of the Aegean world was alien to the artistic consciousness of the ancient Greeks.

The earliest pieces of art that have come down to us are vases."geometric style", decorated with an ornament applied with brown paint on a pale yellow background of an earthen vessel. Dipylon vases provide the most complete picture of this style. These are very large vessels, sometimes as tall as a man, and had a funerary or cult purpose. On the dipylon amphoras, the ornamentation is especially abundant: the pattern most often consists of purely geometric motifs, in particular, the meander braid (the meander ornament was preserved throughout the development of Greek art). A schematized plant and animal ornament was also used.

An important feature of the later Dipylon vases is the introduction of primitive plot images with schematized figures of people into the pattern. These plot motifs are very diverse: the ceremony of mourning the deceased, the chariot race, sailing ships, etc.

Sculpture of this period has come down to us onlyko in the form of small plastic, mostly of a cult nature. These are small figurines depicting gods or heroes, made of terracotta, ivory or bronze.

"Horse" and " Hercules and centaur”, Olympia

"Plowman", Boeotia

Apollo, Boeotia

The monumental sculpture of Homeric Greece has not reached our time. Its character can be judged from the descriptions of ancient authors. The main type of such sculpture was the so-called xoans - idols made of wood or stone.

By the 8th century B.C. include the remains of monuments of early Greek architecture.

Temple of Artemis Orthia in Sparta (reconstruction)

The ruins of the temple at Thermos in Aetolia andframe in Dreros, Crete. They used some traditions of Mycenaean architecture, mainly a general plan similar to a megaron: the hearth-altar was placed inside the temple, 2 columns were placed on the facade. The most ancient of these structures had walls made of mud brick and a wooden frame on a stone plinth.

Art of the Greek Archaic

(7th-6th centuries BC)

The power of the head of the tribe - basileus - back in the 8th century. BC. was severely limited by the domination of the tribal aristocracy - the Eupatrides, who concentrated wealth, land, slaves in their hands - and then, in the 7th century. BC, disappeared altogether. The archaic period became a time of fierce class struggle between the tribal nobility and the people. The Eupatrides sought to enslave free community members, which could lead Greek society along the path of eastern slave-owning states. It is no coincidence that some monuments of this time resemble ancient Eastern art. The complete or partial victory of the broad mass of free peasants, artisans and merchants led to the establishment of the ancient version of the slave-owning society.

During the 7th-6th centuries. BC. Greek settlements expanded - colonies were formed along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Of particular importance in the further history of ancient Greek culture were settlements in southern Italy and Sicily - the so-called Great Greece.

During the archaic period, a system of architectural orders was formed, which formed the basis of all further development of ancient architecture. At the same time, plot vase painting flourished and the path to the image of a beautiful, harmoniously developed person in sculpture was gradually outlined. Also important is the addition of lyric poetry, which means an interest in the world of a person's personal feelings.

The evolution of Greek sculpture

In general, the art of the archaic period is conditional and schematic. Ancient myths and legends become the subject of wide reflection in the visual arts. By the end of the archaic period, themes taken from reality began to penetrate into art more and more often. By the end of the 6th century BC. classical tendencies begin to come into ever greater conflict with the methods and principles of archaic art.

Even in ancient times, the art of Greece created a new type of building, which became a reflection of the ideas of the people - the Greek temple. The main difference from the temples of the Ancient East was that it was the center of the most important events in the public life of citizens. The temple was the repository of the public treasury and artistic treasures, the square in front of it was a place of meetings and festivities. The architectural forms of the Greek temple did not take shape immediately.

Types of Greek temples

The temple, erected to the god, was always facing the main facade to the east, and the temples dedicated to the heroes deified after death turned to the west, towards the kingdom of the dead. The simplest and oldest type of stone archaic temple was temple "in antes". It consisted of one small room - naosa open to the east. On its facade, between antami(i.e. protrusions of the side walls) 2 columns were placed. It was not suitable for the main building of the policy, so it was most often used as a small building, for example, the treasury in Delphi:

A more perfect type of temple was prostyle, on the front facade of which 4 columns were placed. AT amphiprostyle the colonnade adorned both the front and back facade, where there was an entrance to the treasury.The classic type of Greek temple was peripter, i.e. the temple, which had a rectangular shape and surrounded on all 4 sides by a colonnade. The main structural elements of the peripter are simple and deeply folk in origin. In its origins, the design goes back to wooden architecture with adobe walls. From here there is a gable roof and beamed ceilings, columns ascend to wooden pillars. The architects of ancient Greece sought to develop the artistic possibilities hidden in the structure of the building. Thus, a clear and integral artistically meaningful architectural system developed, which later, among the Romans, was called orders, which means order, order.

In the era of the archaic, the Greek order developed in two versions - Doric and Ionic. This corresponded to the two main local schools in art. Doric order embodied the idea of ​​masculinity, and Ionic- femininity. Sometimes in the Ionic order, the columns were replaced by caryatids - statues of dressed women.

The Greek order system was not a stencil, mechanically repeated in every decision. The order was a general system of rules, and the decision was always creative and individual in nature and was consistent not only with the specific tasks of construction, but also with the surrounding nature, and in the classical period - with other buildings of the architectural ensemble.

The Doric temple-peripter was separated from the ground by a stone foundation - stereobatom which consisted of 3 steps. Entrance to naos(a rectangular room of the temple) was placed behind the colonnade from the side of the main facade and was decorated with a pronaos, reminiscent of a portico in design"temple in ante". Sometimes, besides the naos, there was also opisthodome- a room behind the pump, with an exit towards the rear facade. Naos was surrounded on all sides by a colonnade -"pteron"(wing, peripter - winged temple on all sides).

The column was the most important part of the order. The column of the Doric order in the archaic period was squat and powerful - the height is equal to 4-6 lower diameters. The trunk of the column was cut by a series of longitudinal grooves - flute. The columns of the Doric order are not geometrically precise cylinders, in addition to the general narrowing upwards, they had some uniform thickening at a height of one third - entasis.

The column of the Ionic order is taller and thinner in its proportions, its height is equal to 8-10 lower diameters. She had a base from which she seemed to grow. The flutes, which converged at an angle in the Doric column, are separated in the Ionic by flat cuts of the faces - this doubled the number of vertical lines, and due to the fact that the grooves in the Ionic column were cut deeper, the play of light and shadow on it was richer and more picturesque. The capital had an echin, forming 2 graceful curls.

The system of the Doric order in its main features took shape already in the 7th century. BC. (Peloponnese and Great Greece), the Ionic order developed by the end of the 7th century. BC. (Asia Minor and insular Greece). Later, in the era of the classics, the third order was developed - Corinthian - close to Ionic and differing in that the columns in it are more elongated in proportion (up to 12 lower diameters) were crowned with a magnificent basket-shaped capital, composed of a floral ornament - stylized acanthus leaves - and curls (volutes).

Earlier temples often had too heavy capitals or too short shafts of columns, the ratio of the sides of the temple was often disproportionate. Gradually, all the shortcomings disappeared.

Temple of Hera (Heraion) at Olympia, 7th c. BC.

Temple of Apollo in Corinth (Peloponnese), 2nd floor. 6th c. BC.

In archaic architecture, coloring found its place, the main ones were most often combinations of red and blue. The tympanums of the pediments and the backgrounds of the metopes, triglyphs and other parts of the entablature were painted, and the sculpture was also painted.

Temples of Ionia, i.e. cities of the coast of Asia Minor and the islands, were distinguished by their especially large size and luxury decoration. This was the connection with the culture of the East. These temples turned out to be aloof from the main line of development of Greek architecture. The architecture of the classics developed all the best aspects of the Ionic order, but remained alien to lush luxury, this feature was developed only in the Hellenistic era. The most famous example of the archaic temples of Ionia is the temple of Artemis in Ephesus (2nd half of the 6th century BC) - a dipter, more than 100 m in length

Model of the temple in Istanbul in the Miniaturk park

The archaic period was the heyday of artistic crafts, especially ceramics. Usually vases were covered with artistic painting. In the 7th and especially in the 6th c. BC. there was a system of permanent forms of vases that had different purposes. The amphora was intended for oil and wine, the crater was for mixing water with wine during the feast, they drank wine from the kylix, incense was kept in the lekythos for libations on the graves of the dead. During the early archaic period (7th century BC), Greek vase painting was dominated by a style imitating the East, a number of ornaments were borrowed from the East. In the 6th c. BC. came the so-called black-figure vase painting. The patterned ornament was supplanted by a clear silhouette pattern.

The crater of Cletia, made in the workshop of Ergotima (560 BC) or Vase François

The vase painting of another no less famous master Andokidas is known for its realistic motifs, sometimes conflicting with the methods of planar archaic vase painting: an amphora depicting Hercules and Cerberus (The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts).

The murals of late black-figure vases provided for the first time in Greek art examples of a multi-figure composition in which all the characters were in a real relationship. As realism grew in Greek art, there was a tendency in vase painting to overcome flatness. This led around 530g. BC. to a whole revolution in the technique of vase painting - to the transition to red-figure vase painting, with light figures on a black background. Fine examples were created in Andokida's workshop, but all the possibilities were revealed to the full extent already in the period of classical art.

Controversial was the development of archaic sculpture. Almost until the very end of the archaic period, strictly frontal and motionless statues of the gods were created. This type of statue includes:

Goddess with Pomegranate, Berlin Museum

The seated figures of the rulers were distinguished by the oriental spirit ( archons) placed along the road to the ancient temple of Apollo (Didimeion) near Miletus (in Ionia). These schematic, geometrically simplified stone statues were made very late - in the middle of the 6th century. BC. The images of the rulers are interpreted as solemn cult images. Such statues were often colossal in size, also imitating the Ancient East in this sense. Especially typical for the archaic period were upright naked statues of heroes, or, later, warriors - kouros. The appearance of the image of a kouros was of great importance for the development of Greek sculpture, the image of a strong, courageous hero or warrior was associated with the development of civic consciousness, new artistic ideals. The general development of the type of kouros went in the direction of ever greater fidelity of proportions, moving away from conditional decorative ornamentality. This required radical shifts in human consciousness that occurred after the reforms of Cleisthenes and the end of the Greco-Persian wars.

Introduction

Antique art (from lat. antiquus - "ancient") - a historical type of art. The term "antique" was first used among humanist writers of the Italian Renaissance to refer to the most ancient culture known at that time, mainly ancient Roman. Antiquity was the ancestor of the ideas that we now live in. "These ideas are not outdated, despite the fact that their content has long belonged to history. Therefore, we call the highest achievements of ancient culture classical (from Latin classicus -" first-class, exemplary ") It is significant that this definition was introduced into use by the Roman writer Aulus Gellius already in the 2nd century AD Hence the artistic direction - Classicism, focused on the achievements of the art of Ancient Greece and Rome.

antique art

The universality and classicism of antiquity justifies the traditional Eurocentrism in the study of art history. In the historical development of ancient art, the following stages can be conventionally distinguished: the nature of ancient art

1. Proto-antique art (from the Greek protos - "first"), or Minoan art, the original pictorial style of which developed gradually in three periods:

early Minoan (3000-2200 BC);

Middle Minoan (2200-1600 BC);

late Minoan (1600-1100 BC).

2. Formative stage of the geometric style:

proto-geometric style of the 11th century. BC e.;

geometric style X-VIII centuries. BC e.;

the period of Proto-Corinthian, Proto-Attic and Orientalizing styles (ca. 750-680 BC);

Daedalic style (ca. 680-610 BC).

• 3. Archaic stage (c. 610-480 BC).
• 4. The era of the classics:

the period of "strict style" (c. 480-450 BC);

the classical period of the Age of Pericles (c. 450-400 BC);

late classic period (c. 400-325 BC).

5. Hellenistic era:

early Hellenism (c. 325-230 BC);

middle Hellenism of the Rhodes, Pergamon, Alexandrian schools (c. 230-170 BC);

late Hellenism (ancient classicism, neo-Attic school, c. 170-30 BC).

6. Ancient Roman Art:

the period of the republic (the end of the 6th century - 27 BC);

the period of August classicism (27 BC - 14 AD);

the period of the reign of the Julio-Claudians and the Flavians (14-96);

the period of the late Roman Empire (96--476);

the period of the Gallian Renaissance (259-268).

The nature of ancient art developed rapidly, the successes of the Hellenes were amazingly fast. If in Ancient Egypt for several millennia we observe an essentially unchanged way of life and thinking of a person, then in Greece only about two centuries separate the archaic period and the art of perfect plastic harmony, which we call classical. Several reasons can be found to explain this fact. Chief among them is the diversity of ethnic sources of Hellenic culture. Ancient art consisted of three main and very different traditions. The first is the peculiar art of the inhabitants of the islands of the eastern Mediterranean, the ancient Minoan (named after the legendary king Minos), or Aegean, culture, the building experience of the inhabitants of the island. Crete, the pictorial style of wall paintings and ceramic art they created, sculpture of the Cyclades. Aegean art experienced dual influences: on the one hand, the influence of the much earlier art of Egypt and Mesopotamia (this is very close to Crete), on the other, the art of the continental "proto-Hellenes" with centers in Tiryns and Mycenae in the Peloponnese. The second ethnic tradition is the primitive but powerful art of the Dorians, the Aryan tribes who invaded in the 13th-12th centuries. BC e. to the Peloponnese from the north. The third component is the art of the Ionians. Like the Achaeans, they were ancient inhabitants of mainland Greece, who probably came from the East, but under pressure from the Dorians crossed over to the islands and coast of Asia Minor. Already in the archaic period, the Hellenes developed two artistic movements (in the strict sense of the word, which had not yet reached the integrity of the artistic style): the stern and courageous Dorian and the soft, feminine, which developed under the influence of the Minoan and Asia Minor cultures, the art of the Ionians. "The duality of Doric and Ionic cultures persisted in Greece for a long time and was reflected in its history, in particular in the history and theory of ancient Greek art. The search for firm rules of art, unchanging laws of beauty found support in the Doric tradition, and the Greeks' penchant for living reality and sensual clarity - in the Ionic tradition. Another reason for the unusually intensive development of ancient art is the unique geographical conditions. Mainland Greece is a series of valleys separated by low mountain ranges, each of which has its own natural conditions and unique landscape. This contributed to the preservation of individual and still weak centers of art from the wars of extermination and the devastating migration of peoples, from which the ancient civilizations of the steppe regions of Asia suffered. The climate of Greece is moderately mild, and nature is fruitful just enough so that the energy of a person is not wasted entirely on the struggle for existence and that forces remain for intellectual activity, but not so much as to completely deprive the Hellenes of the need to work. The third essential factor in the intensive development of ancient art is the powerful rationalism of Hellenic thinking. Hegel in his "Philosophy of History" noted that "the Greek spirit is generally free from superstition, since it transforms the sensible into the meaningful." Everything that at first causes surprise is mastered not mystically, but logically, it must certainly be rationally explained. All, even the most obvious, things were subject to mathematical proof among the ancient Hellenes.

Measure, regularity is also one of the main ideas of ancient art. The ancient Hellenes, by virtue of rationalism and the concreteness of their thinking, were masters of precise formulations in rhetoric and dialectics, and in architecture and sculpture - clarity of design and purity of form: line, silhouette, mass relations and proportions. Another property of Hellenic thinking is defined by the word "eidos" (Greek eidos - "view, appearance, beauty, property, idea, contemplation"). It reflects the visibility, tangibility, corporality of ancient fine art. Hellenic art, to a much greater extent than, for example, Egyptian, is characterized by personalization, agonalism - competitiveness (Greek agonia - "struggle, competition"). The Hellenes with all their hearts despised the slavery adopted among the Eastern peoples, and were proud of their personal freedom, the dignity of a thinking person. But along with this came some difficulty in relation to the fine arts. A free Greek could sincerely admire the creations of famous sculptors and painters, who for the first time in history dared to put signatures on their masterpieces, but if he himself was offered to pick up a hammer, chisel or brush, he would become indignant: a free citizen should not engage in physical labor , this is the lot of slaves. The other side of ancient aesthetics also placed fine arts below other types of activity, since it was interpreted as "imitation" - mimesis (Greek mimesis - "reproduction, likeness, imprint"). Art included mathematics, medicine, construction, and weaving. Somewhat later, only two types of art emerged: expressive and constructive. Expressive art included dance, music and poetry; to the constructive - architecture, sculpture, painting. Expressive arts were associated with the concept of catharsis (Greek katharsis - "purification") - emotional release, "purification of the soul" from sensuality, corporality. Later, at the beginning of the 20th century, F. Nietzsche would call this art "Dionysian", since it grew out of the ancient mystical cult of Dionysus; the other, respectively, is "Apollo's". However, the god of sunlight Apollo and the Muses led by him (daughters of Zeus and the goddess of memory Mnemosyne) initially patronized music, dance, poetry, history, astronomy, comedy, tragedy. Architecture and sculpture, associated with despised physical labor, were considered inferior, "mechanical". They were patronized by Athena and Hephaestus. Only later, in the era of Classicism and Academicism, Apollo became a symbol of harmony and beauty and the personification of the "fine arts": architecture, painting, sculpture (see also "Seven Liberal Arts"). The idea of ​​rationality and regularity of ancient art was most clearly manifested in architecture; symmetry and balance of forms - in sculpture. If we talk about the ideal harmony of Greek art and the "absolute vision" of the Hellenes, then we must remember this limitation, the perception of form, volume outside of space and time. Even the dynamic, pictorial composition of the Athenian Acropolis - the highest achievement of Hellenic art - is not built on a holistic organization of space, but on the alternation of individual paintings, fixed points of view, visual projections on the "picture plane". This is a typically sculptural, tactile method. This also explains the fact that the Greek builders were unaware of the concept of scale. Unlike the Egyptian mystics, who used irrational numbers and complex methods of proportioning, the Hellenes limited their method to simple ratios of multiples expressed in whole numbers. In the architecture of temples, the Greeks recognize only rhythm. Their architectural works, at least related to the last period, are, as it were, an abstract idea ... they do not evoke any idea of ​​​​absolute values, but only a sense of correlation and an impression of harmony. The "symmetry" (harmony) of such architecture was expressed in the visual similarity of forms: the ratio of the sides of the facade was exactly repeated in its articulations and details. We can judge about ancient Greek architecture mainly by the ruins of temples. The ancient Greek temple - the original creation of the Hellenic genius - is, in essence, paradoxical. It arose from a residential building - a megaron of the Cretan-Mycenaean era - as a "dwelling of a deity". The Greek word "naos" (naos) means both "temple" and "dwelling". The statue of the god demanded a home and, on the contrary, the "home of the god" must be consecrated by his presence. But in the architecture of the ancient temple, the interior space was not comprehended. Massive walls, as a rule, had no windows. Sometimes there are small holes in the roof. Only early in the morning, through the open doors of the temple, facing the east, the rays of the rising sun penetrated inside and illuminated the huge statue, whose size was not consistent with the space of the interior. If the temples of Ancient Egypt were adapted for a ritual procession, then in Greece everything happened outside, in front of the temple, where the altar, the altar, was installed. Only priests could enter the sanctuary, and even then at a strictly defined time. The famous Greek "transparent" colonnades are also non-spatial. In the original wooden structure of the residential building, these were just pillars supporting the roofing to protect the mudbrick walls from the weather. The supporting structure has always been a wall, therefore, in its developed form, the ancient colonnade is just a decoration, beautifully framing the view that opens up to people who have taken refuge in the shade of the porticos from the rays of the scorching sun. Different types of colonnades have given the name to different types of temples, the design of which, in essence, is unchanged. At the same time, the ancient Greeks managed to create a new artistic image of the column. In contrast to the massive structures of the East - ziggurats, pyramids, as well as a continuous forest of papyrus-shaped pillars of Egyptian multi-column temples - the Greek column stands freely. This is where its tectonicity comes from (from the Greek tektonike - "structure") - the visual division of the support vertically into separate parts. This is a purely Hellenic anthropomorphic idea. Such a column does not really (constructively), but visually (figuratively) expresses the action of the forces of the building structure, associated with the strength of a free-standing person. That is why in ancient art the appearance of supports in the form of human figures - Atlanteans and Caryatids - is natural. Only the ancient Hellenes managed to gradually create the image of a female figure - a caryatid, which simply and naturally entered the architectural structure and animated it. All subsequent incarnations of this theme evoke a contradiction between form and function, a feeling of inconsistency between the fragile, plastic support and the severity of the ceiling. The pattern of dismemberment and connection of load-bearing and carried parts in ancient architecture was theoretically substantiated by the ancient Roman architect Mark Vitruvius Pollio. The theory of the order in the era of the Italian Renaissance was canonized by G. B. da Vignola, it was developed by S. Serlio, A. Palladio, F. Delorme. Historically, two orders developed in Greece: Doric and Ionic, as well as Corinthian as a variety of Ionic. Vignola, taking as a basis Italian, ancient Roman samples (with pedestals), canonized the proportions of five orders: Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and composite (complex). His system was the foundation of the academic tradition. The ancient Hellenes, however, freely combined different orders (without having developed this concept yet) and varied their relationships. Also indicative is the evolution from the powerful Doric order to the Ionic (more elegant, but having imperfection in the one-sidedness of the Ionic capital), and then to the Corinthian, the magnificent capital of which is the most decorative, convenient in that it looks the same from all sides and creates a smooth, plastic transition from the vertical. supports to the horizontal floor. The Corinthian capital is the most dynamic, but also the most destructive. Its appearance well illustrates the tendency of the constant transformation of the building structure into images of tension, stretching, compression, binding, foundation, completion. Columns and architraves, as a rule, were not painted, while capitals and friezes were colored with blue, red, green, black and gilding. In the Doric order, blue triglyphs stood out next to red metopes, in the Ionic order, gilded reliefs against the dark blue background of the frieze. The principle of frontality, visual integrity of the foreground remains unchanged. "The flat silhouette was filled with volume, and the statues of the pediment compositions organically connected not with the real, but with the visual depth of the pictorial space.

The life time of prominent people, including artists, was calculated not by the years of birth and death, but by their "acme" - the heyday of an adult man at the age of about 40 years. This was reflected in the development of art: the evolution of style was rapid, but the main qualities remained unchanged. The earliest sculptural compositions of the pediments of the temple of Athena, western (512-500 BC) and eastern (480-470 BC), now stored in the Munich Glyptothek, clearly demonstrate how figures depicting the battle of the Greeks with the Trojans, gaining more and more freedom of movement and losing their connection with tectonics - the colonnade of the portico. Only fifteen years later, in the pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia (470-456 BC), this freedom is even more noticeable. It is complemented by a variety of turns, movements of figures in depth. This frontality has different properties, but is inherent in all Greek sculpture, both archaic and classical. The foundations of the future European academicism are also connected with ancient art. Based on the geometric style of the archaic period, the Greeks developed an abstract ideal of "corporality" and "tangibility" of form. According to the rule of Polycletus, in a perfectly folded figure, the head size is one-eighth of the height, the entire height of the figure is divided according to the main anatomical points into two, four and eight equal parts (metric division), and the torso, together with the head, also refers to the pelvis and legs, as legs to the torso or the shoulder part of the arm to the forearm and hand (rhythmic relationship). The figure, therefore, is divided in all its relations into three, five, eight parts, which is consistent with the principle of the golden ratio, studied by Pythagoras and his students, but formulated as an artistic credo only in the Italian Renaissance by the efforts of Leonardo da Vinci and L. Pacioli . Polikleitos embodied his ideal in the statues of Doryphoros (440 BC) and Diadumen (430 BC), which have come down to us in later repetitions. Antique statues from the classical period are perfect. It is often written that they reflect that happy state of mind when people felt that their gods were next to them. Geometry is especially noticeable in the interpretation of details: heads, arms, legs of ancient statues. Their faces are absolutely symmetrical. The shape of the hairstyle is geometrized, the front part, regardless of the character and type of the hero, is divided into three equal parts in height, the cut of the mouth fits exactly into the distance between the wings of the nose and the inner corners of the eyes. The forms of the pectoral, oblique and abdominal muscles are equally geometrized - a characteristic "Greek bracket", the forms of the knee and elbow joints, the fingers and toes are always interpreted in the same way. It is in this geometrism that one should look for the reason for the external impassibility of ancient figures, even if they depict a person in motion, in a state of physical or emotional stress. In such cases, only the scenario, its posture, but not the tension of the muscles or facial expression tells about the effort of the figure. It is characteristic that in antiquity the art of sculpture was not divided into themes and genres, but consisted of two separate “species”, in which “bronze sculptors” and “marble sculptors” worked completely independently of each other. The highest achievements in the art of sculpture of the era of Greek classics personify two very different masters: Polykleitos and Phidias. The first worked exclusively in bronze, the second - in different materials. If Poliklet developed the formal theme of contrapposto - dynamic balance, plastic movement in a state of physical rest, then Phidias was looking for peace in physical movement. Polykleitos covered his statues with spiral lines, Phidias enclosed them in vertical contours, which gave them a genuine monumentality. Poliklet depicted the ideal male body of an athlete, and only once, in the statue of a wounded Amazon - female, but just as masculine; the folds of the tunic on the athletic body of the warrior in the work of Polykleitos seem to be an architectonic ornament. Phidias worked more picturesquely, alternating the shimmering white areas of the naked body with the light-and-shadow play of the folds of the robes and the texture of the hairstyle, from a distance giving the impression of dark spots. Phidias knew how to achieve relative freedom of the plasticity of the body and the movements of draperies, but at the same time he remained within the boundaries of frontality and always used tectonic framing techniques. This is how the classical ideal of ancient Greek art was formed, but, despite the different ways of shaping, techniques and materials, the individual manners of individual masters, method and style form an indivisible whole. The statue is so devoid of individual features that a conviction arises involuntarily: the image of emotions could only spoil, violate the beauty of the ideal form. The individualization of images, as well as the art of portraiture in general, was alien to the ancient classics. The only exceptions are the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Marble sculptures were painted with wax paints that mimic the color of the body. This technique was called ganosis (Greek ganoseos - "shine, polishing"). Bronze statues were inlaid: eyes - with glass and semi-precious stones; lips, hair - copper and gold. Antique, like any ancient and oriental, art, apparently, was very colorful, elegant, cheerful and sensual. It often pursued very simple-minded, illusory and mischievous goals. The statues of the gods were dressed in expensive fabrics and cleaned with flowers, they were fed, smeared with incense, and gifts were brought to them. In a relatively late, Hellenistic period, a tendency towards naturalism and megalomania is clearly revealed. The sculptures of the Mausoleum in Halicarnassus, of the Pergamon or Rhodes schools, violate all the norms of the classics. "Farnese Bull", "Laocoön with his sons", "Odysseus's Ship" (made of marble in full size), the Colossus of Rhodes 32 meters high are examples of discord, discrepancy between content and form, a crisis of style. Similar trends are also manifested in the development of other types of ancient art. Historians note that the change from Dorian to Ionian in ancient architecture is an artistic parallel. social change , the transition from the dictatorship of Sparta to the hegemony of democratic Athens. The Spartans were the embodiment of the ancient Dorian spirit of Hellas, the Athenians were more subject to Ionian influence. The architecture of the Doric order, with its powerful and heavy cone-shaped columns, triglyphs and metopes, "dismembers the form vigorously", and "the Ionic style seeks soft transitions and decorative grace". In the Ionic colonnade, any sense of resistance to gravity disappears; the columns stand in orderly rows, free from visible effort. The combination in one composition, for example in the Parthenon, of different orders is also characteristic: a powerful outer colonnade of the Doric order, an Ionic frieze and Ionic columns inside. In the Erechtheion of the Athenian Acropolis, the desire to make the column as light as possible, weightless in general, led to its replacement by a female figure in the famous caryatid portico. In the Erechtheion, the Athenians used multi-colored marble, complementing it with painting and gilding. Parts of some sculptures "hang" over the frame - the gables of the pediment. The god Helios, rising from the Ocean in his chariot drawn by four horses, is shown "emerging from the eaves" - only the heads of the horses, his head and arms outstretched forward are visible. The tectonic principle here is clearly replaced by a picturesque one. The "painterly vibration" of the surface is also manifested in the reliefs of the Parthenon frieze. The ceilings of the interiors were covered with terracotta slabs, painted blue, as in ancient Egypt, and painted with golden stars. Doorways were hung with expensive fabrics and covered with gilded forged bars. In ancient art, there was no separation of the functions of the art of architecture, sculpture, and painting. Therefore, the tasks of expressing aesthetic ideas by means of color continued to be solved by architecture and sculpture, while ancient Greek and Roman painting, in essence, was functionally decorative painting (see "Motley standing"; pinaka). One of the first ancient painters was the Ionian Polygnotus, who worked in Athens in the first half of the 5th century. BC e. His works have not survived, but according to the historian Pliny the Elder, this artist painted with "simple colors" using the encaustic (wax painting) technique, using only four colors: white, yellow, red and black (the so-called tetrachromatism). Blue paint (lapis lazuli) and green were used only for painting the details of the architectural order. This is also seen as a confirmation of the principle of "corporality" of ancient painting, because the blue color is a feeling of air, sky and space, and it is not for nothing that it is absent in ancient "painting". The introduction of perspective and chiaroscuro is attributed to Apollodorus of Athens, who worked in the second half of the 5th century BC. BC e. He was nicknamed "Skiagraph" (Greek skeuagraphe - "painter of shadows"). The achievements of Apollodorus were developed by Apelles and Zeuxis. They painted pictures on wooden boards in tempera or directly on the wall as a fresco and amazed contemporaries with their illusory nature. These artists probably added "lights" and highlights to the "shadows" of Apollodorus. As a result, the word "skia" began to mean not just "shadow", but gradations of tone and mixing of colors. But even in the later mosaic "The Battle of Alexander the Great with Darius", created in the Hellenistic time according to the painting of the 4th century. BC e. and preserved to this day (see "Alexander's mosaic"), in essence, there is no pictorial space, just as there are no cold, blue tones. There is only a shallow "layer" of the foreground, in which all the figures are "on top of each other" (see also "The Aldobrandine Wedding"; aspective; scenography). Hence the system of reverse perspective that was formed somewhat later, in which distant objects are placed not behind the near ones, but higher along the “picture plane” and made somewhat larger, and those that are closer are lower and smaller. The system of reverse perspective is traditional for the art of the East; it received a complete expression in the art of Byzantium and ancient Russian icon painting (see spatial image systems). In the famous Pompeian paintings (1st century BC - 1st century AD) there is also no pictorial space, and even in the illusory "perspective" compositions there are no "settings of forms", overlapping plans. The figures are depicted separately on a conditional background, locally painted over in one color. They have only short "shadows" that very conditionally "attach" them to the plane on which they supposedly stand. The modeling of the figures themselves is also a "sculpture" painted in one color on a plane. It is also characteristic that the Pompeian murals were made not with encaustic, as previously thought, but with egg tempera, and only their surface is covered with the thinnest layer of wax (ganosis). Tempera, in contrast to encaustic, is more suited to the tasks of planar decoration than volumetric modeling of form. In antiquity, in the city of Alexandria, the so-called "Alexandrian mosaic" was born - wall cladding with multi-colored marble, carved along the contours of the picture. This technique is the forerunner of the "inlay style" and the Florentine mosaic of the Italian Renaissance. The original art form was "microtechnics" (from the Greek. mikros - "small" and techne - "skill, art") - a miniature sculpture made of marble, ivory, steatite. True, ancient writers spoke of this art form disparagingly, as a "waste of time" (see also Tanagra coroplasty). Microtechnology was called stone carving (see gems) and jewelry art of gold and silver, which reached the highest level in Greece and Rome (see toreutics). The art of ancient vase painting remains unique in history. It traces the same development trends as in architecture, sculpture, and decorative reliefs. In the forms and compositions of the painting of antique ceramic vessels, expediency, constructiveness, and tectonicity were gradually replaced by decorative splendor, plasticity, and atectonicity. This explains the transition from the geometric style to the black-figure, and then to the red-figure and "luxurious style" of the late 5th - early 4th century. BC e. The forms became more pretentious, and the graphic silhouette of the red and black painting was replaced by polychromy in combination with relief and gilding (see "Kuma hydria"; Phanagorian vessels). If at first the painting emphasized the compositional divisions of the vessel, then later it was located contrary to the form, freely flowing from one part to another. For example, in ceramic bowls for wine - kylix - the leg and container are clearly separated. Inside, at the bottom of the bowl, the place where the leg is attached to the outside was outlined in a small circle. Gradually, in the process of replacing the black-figure style of painting with the red-figure style, this circle began to lose its tectonic function, increased in size, turning into a frame for complex narrative images. The comparison of the archaic "François vase" (a painted crater of the 6th century BC) and Apulian craters of the 4th century can serve as illustrations of the same trend. BC e. with lush polychrome painting (see also lekythos; gnatian vases; kamares). Such a transition from a tectonically connected form to a plastically free, pictorial form is the main pattern of the historical development of ancient art. It is no coincidence that in late antiquity the dynamic motif of acanthus leaves and the magnificent Corinthian capital decorated with acanthus leaves are the most popular. The famous Monument of Lysicrates in Athens (334 BC), a building of the Hellenistic period, is a characteristic example of a non-functional and, from a constructive point of view, false work, calculated only on an external impression. Its walls bear nothing, the columns are set up for beauty, and their Corinthian capitals are bouquets of leaves on which nothing can be leaned. Even more destructive is the monument of Hellenistic Syria - the "Round Temple" of Venus in Baalbek (see vol. 2, fig. 2). His Corinthian columns with a concave, star-shaped entablature generally lose their meaning. Outstanding architecture was created by the ancient Romans. There is a simplified view, according to which the Romans did not invent anything of their own in art, having adopted everything from the Greeks. Rome really looks like a philanthropist14, with the awareness of its wealth, power and influence, buying Greece. The Romans - harsh, cruel warriors, wise rulers, pragmatists - adapted art to their practical needs. They erected powerful fortifications, watchtowers (see donjon; Romanesque art), built bridges, roads, aqueducts, circuses, baths and triumphal arches. Rome is utility incarnate. With wise practicality and calculation, the Romans adopted the cultural achievements of the countries they conquered. They accepted into their pantheon all gods, heroes, artists, all styles and forms of art. But, at the same time, the Romans, as O. Choisy noted, “already in the days of the republic had a completely original and great architecture. the Athenians, when they called an architect from Rome to build a temple in honor of Olympian Zeus ... Roman architecture is a mixed art, - Choisy wrote further, - its elements are of twofold origin: they are associated both with Etruria15 and with Greece .. Etruria gave the Romans an arch, Greece gave orders... Long before the capture of Corinth, truly Roman art was born in Rome, sharply differing in its masculine forms from contemporary Greek art, and this art did not disappear... The myth of the sudden conquest of Rome by Greek art reminiscent of the illusions of the French architects of the Renaissance, who considered themselves Italians because of their passion for Italian art." In general, the architecture of Rome differs from the Greek in an essential feature of the creative method. If the Hellenes did not share the building structure and decor, carving out of marble blocks the capital with all its decorations, abacus and echinus, sometimes together with the upper drum of the column shaft (see stereotomy; shaping), then the Romans acted differently, more rationally and economically. They erected walls of brick or "Roman concrete" (filling of gravel and crushed stone with cement), and then with the help of metal brackets and wooden wedges they hung slabs of marble facing (in multi-colored interiors), attached columns and profiles. The well-known words of Suetonius that the emperor Augustus “took Rome brick and left it marble” should probably be understood in this sense, although Choisy emphasizes that the merit of Augustus and the builders of his time lies precisely in the development of brickwork on cement. The Roman building method was progressive, but it contributed to the gradual degeneration of architecture, turning it into the art of decorating facades with little or no connection with the interior of the building. It was this trend that was later developed in the architecture of the Italian Renaissance and European Classicism.

At the beginning of the 20th century, D. S. Merezhkovsky wrote in his travel notes that the remains of Roman buildings, due to the fact that they were made of brick, without facing, lost in subsequent centuries, give the impression of "huge, gloomy skeletons." Taking Greek orders as a basis and interpreting them mainly decoratively, the Romans raised them to a pedestal, which had never been done in Greece. The Romans gave priority to the most magnificent and decorative order - Corinthian. In addition, they invented the capital of the "composite" (or compound, complex) order, combining the Corinthian leaves of the acanthus with the scrolls of the Ionic capital. The Romans introduced the arcade, consisting of a number of Roman architectural cells - an original combination of an arch with two columns attached to it on the sides (usually on pedestals). The columns did not support the arched ceiling, but were only an external decoration. From such Roman cells, placed one on top of the other in several tiers, the theater of Marcellus in Rome and the famous Colosseum were built. The Greeks did not use the arch; their architecture is typically horizontal - architraveal overlap. The Romans, having borrowed the design of the arch and vault, invented in ancient Mesopotamia, in the East, and improved in Hellenistic Syria, learned to build gigantic structures - baths, amphitheaters. They invented the form of single-span and three-span triumphal arches, and the most prestigious buildings - temples, libraries, triumphal and rostral columns - were combined into monumental ensembles - Forums. Each emperor considered it a matter of honor to erect a Forum for the Roman people. A characteristic feature of Roman architecture is its spatiality, the contrasting alternation of supports and openings, the array of walls and arcades. In this respect, Roman architecture is more expressive than Greek. Under the emperor Hadrian in 118-120. n. e. In Rome, Apollodorus from Damascus (Syria) built a temple of all the gods - the Pantheon. The huge, round structure was covered with a dome (its diameter is equal to the total height of the building, 43.2 m). It is characteristic that the dome is "cast" from "Roman concrete", with rows of horizontal rings, but from the inside it is decorated with caissons, square recesses, essentially false forms that have nothing to do with the actual structure. The artistic duality, the discrepancy between the design and decoration of ancient Roman architecture became especially noticeable as the centuries passed. Even the apologist of antiquity, Goethe, was ironic about "marble galleries that lead nowhere" and colonnades "chained" to the walls, because the column is a support and it "must stand freely! "The Romans improved the technology of jewelry made of gold and silver, the processing of precious stones, the carving of gems and seals. The heyday of ancient glassmaking and mosaics is associated with the period of the Roman Empire (see Agrippina colony; Damascus; diatreta; Cologne school). An increased interest in a strong personality , human psychology caused the abstract idealism of Greek sculpture to be gradually supplanted by the art of sculptural portraiture.Portrait busts, invented by the Etruscans and perfected by the Romans, became a tradition of European art (see Antonine period; Roman sculpture, reliefs, sarcophagi).However, after a short return to classical forms in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC (see ancient classicism; Gallienian renaissance), plastic richness was lost in ancient art.Schematization, dryness and rigidity of form, excessive narrative and congestion with details, loss of integrity and clarity expressions.All this foreshadowed the birth of another, wounds non-Christian art, the premises of which matured in antiquity even before the strengthening and spread of Christianity as a state religion. English historian E. Dodds in the book "The Greeks and the irrational" ("The Greeks and the irrational", 1951) put forward the hypothesis that it was rationalism, logic and the "principle of corporeality" that eventually destroyed ancient culture and paved the way for the flourishing of Christian irrational spirituality (see the theory of progressive cyclical development of art).But ancient Greece, and then Rome, primarily in the field of architecture and sculpture, managed to lay the foundations of a common European culture and, in particular, rational artistic thinking - the cornerstone of Classicism in art. this explains the Eurocentrism of the subsequent history of artistic styles and the fact that the European Classicism of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries relied on ancient art.This was not due to a simple imitation of an arbitrarily chosen ideal, but because of the desire for stable criteria - rationality and constructive thinking.The strength of this European tradition was so great that a variety of Phenomena, currents and styles of many centuries - Romanticism, Baroque, Empire, Biedermeier, Neo-Renaissance, Mannerism, Modern Classicism - were somehow connected with the rethinking of classic forms. Summing up his own reflections on this topic, the art historian, a representative of the Vienna school of art criticism M. Dvorak wrote that the entire history of art "in the post-antique period" is the history of "the struggle between spirit and matter", the interaction of rational and irrational principles, naturalism and idealism , the struggle, the beginning of which we find in ancient Greece and Rome.

Virtual antique collection on the website of the Erlangen Institute. High-quality photographs of 1860-1914 predominate. ancient plastics, architecture and epigraphy.

Loads of superb, professional-quality photos from Bill Storage.

Arachne is a huge archive (more than 1 million in 2011) of images of ancient sculpture and architecture, as well as rare books (more than 300 volumes) on ancient art. The project is jointly run by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and the Research Archive for Ancient Sculpture at the University of Cologne (FA). Registration is required for full-fledged work with the database. There are German, English, Italian and Russian interfaces.

Search through the collections of the Capitoline Museums.

Large database of ancient monuments and post-antique documents.

The account gives access to three databases: LIMCicon is a database dedicated to the monuments of Greco-Roman antiquity bearing mythological or cult images. The LIMCbiblio database contains up-to-date bibliographic data supplementing the information published in the LIMC volumes. LIMCabrev provides transcripts of abbreviations used in LIMC in ThesCRA and on this site.

Great virtual tour of Herculaneum. Most of the excavated houses and general panoramic views of the archaeological site are presented. There is a circular view of ongoing excavations and a small three-dimensional museum of art objects found in Herculaneum.

Herculaneum site by PompeiiinPictures creators Jackie and Bob Dunn.

Database of sculpture and signed pedestals created or reworked after 284 CE e. The database was created in May 2012.

The site is dedicated to Ostia, the harbor of ancient Rome. Here you will find information for professional archaeologists and historians, students of Roman archeology and history, and just for everyone who is interested.

The project is dedicated to Pergamon and its famous altar.

Architecture, coins, gems, sculpture, vases, archaeological sites.

The site is based on a collection of over 7,000 photographs, mostly digital, taken mainly in various locations in Italy and Denmark in 1999-2006. Many photographs with descriptions depicted. The core of the collection is the Greek, Etruscan and Roman past of what is today Italy, but there are also many photographs from Copenhagen and elsewhere. NOTE: we do not recommend using rocking chairs - download is being monitored and after that access for your IP to this site will be closed.

A complete photographic plan of all Pompeii as they appear today by Jackie and Bob Dunn, for Pompeii enthusiasts like themselves.

A huge resource from the University of Oxford, the core of which is the catalog of Beasley pottery. Registration is required to complete the search. “In 1979, the Beasley Archives began to create a text database on the central computer of the University of Oxford, adding information about Athenian painted vases from publications available in the Ashmolean Library (Museum and Library of Ancient History, Fine Arts and Archeology at Oxford University, founded in 1683) . It now consists of more than 98,000 articles with fourteen fields, including bibliographic references, find location, form, and iconographic description. In 1992, the Archive joined the European Union (RAMA) project, which connects the collections of seven museums from all over Europe via the Internet. This project allowed the Beasley Archives to begin digitizing their photographs and drawings. Over 120,000 images were linked to text entries. The search can be conducted either from the general database, or from an extended database that requires registration. The site also has large sections devoted to other topics: publications, collections of gems and sculptures, an illustrated dictionary of Greek history and mythology, a bibliographic index.

For more than 150 years, the Parthenon marble has been located away from its native land, in the British Museum. This means that there are continuous negotiations between the Greek government, which insists on their return, and the British government, which, together with representatives of the British Museum, refuses to do so. On these pages you can find out the views on the problem from both the Greek government and the British, as well as the opinions of British politicians and the British Museum. And finally, we explain our position and want to know yours. All it takes is a minute or two to send us an email. We hope that you will read our pages with pleasure and learn a lot of them - for which, in fact, we tried.

The site explores Trajan's Column as a sculptural monument. The basis of the site is a searchable database of more than 500 images located on different sides of the column and being its sculptural decoration. These images (slides and drawings) were also made for the sculptor Peter Rockwell during his study of Roman stone carving techniques. The purpose of the site is to make these images available to the widest possible public, in a manner that encourages and continues the study of the column by specialists, and for the enjoyment and appreciation of the monument by the general public.

A project by Professor Roger Ulrich of Dartmouth College dedicated to Trajan's Column.

The site is entirely dedicated to Antinous, the favorite of Emperor Hadrian, and aims to present all of his numerous portraits kept in museums and private collections around the world.

VIAMUS - Virtuelle Antikenmuseum.
VIAMUS is an online resource of the Archaeological Institute of the University of Göttingen, supported by the Lower Saxony Foundation. The Latin word "viamus" means "we travel around" and this is exactly what VIAMUS offers: a virtual journey into antiquity. The project is based on the rich collections of the Göttingen Archaeological Institute. The core is a collection of plaster casts, founded in 1767. It contains a rich overview of more than 1000 years of the history of Greco-Roman sculpture. VIAMUS appeals to a wide range of users, from interested schoolchildren, teachers and students to specialist scientists. The virtual antique museum is divided into 3 main sections:
The Collection: An interactive journey through the halls of the Göttingen Cast Collection. A rich history of ancient sculpture.
Online Learning: An e-learning program in an important area of ​​ancient sculpture - Greco-Roman portraiture. There is both an option for the university and a special presentation for school classes.
Database: high-quality illustrations and scientific data on almost 2000 plaster casts kept in Göttingen.