Ancient Mediterranean Art Flashcards

Flashcards covering the key vocabulary and concepts from the lecture notes on Ancient Mediterranean art.

Ancient Near East and Dynastic Egypt Art

Artistic traditions focused on representing royal figures and divinities, and on the function of funerary and palatial complexes.

Ancient Near East Art Associations

Successive city-states and cultural powers including Sumerian, Akkadian, Neo-Sumerian and Babylonian, Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Persian.

Dynastic Egypt Art

The art generally includes coverage of predynastic Egypt and Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. The Amarna period (New Kingdom) was also important because of its cultural reform and stylistic revolution.

Artistic Conventions in Ancient Near East

Artists created fully developed, formal types, including sculptures of human figures interacting with gods and stylistic conventions representing the human form with a combined profile and three-quarter view.

Hierarchical Scale in Art

Important figures are set apart using a hierarchical scale or by dividing the compositions into horizontal sections or registers, which provide significant early examples of historical narratives.

Ziggurats

Towering structures that provide monumental settings for the worship of many deities.

Palaces in Ancient Near East

Heavily fortified structures that increased in opulence over the centuries, proclaiming the power and authority of rulers.

Culture of Dynastic Egypt

An elaborate funerary sect whose devotees created numerous ka statues, artifacts, decorations, and furnishings for tombs.

Ka Statues

To house the ka, or spirit, after death.

Pharaoh

A god-king with absolute power, descended directly from the sun god.

Pylon

Massive sloped gateway.

Clerestory

Egyptian architectural construction important for the history of architecture.

Ancient Greece and Rome Art

Art grounded in civic ideals and polytheism.

Etruscan and Roman Artists and Architects

Accumulated and creatively adapted Greek objects and forms to create buildings and artworks that appealed to their tastes for eclecticism and historicism.

Ancient Greek Art

Ancient Greek religious and civic architecture and figural representation are characterized by idealized proportions and spatial relationships, expressing societal values of harmony and order.

Etruscan and Roman Art

Art from the Etruscan and Roman periods is typified by stylistic and iconographical eclecticism and portraiture.

Etruscan and Ancient Roman Art

Express republican and imperial values, power, and preference for conspicuous display.

Etruscan and Roman Architecture

Characterized by investment in public structures.

Roman Architecture

Characterized by borrowing from its immediate predecessors (Greek and Etruscan) and by technical innovation.

Literary Statements About Art

An early written statement about artists and art making that survive from the ancient Greek and Roman worlds.

Uruk (modern Warka, Iraq)

White Temple and ziggurat location.

c. 3000–2920 B.C.E.

Palette of King Narmer is from this Predynastic Egypt.

Square Temple at Eshnunna (modern Tell Asmar, Iraq)

Statues of votive figures location.

Saqqara, Egypt

Seated scribe location.

Royal Tombs at Ur (modern Tell el-Muqayyar, Iraq)

Standard of Ur location.

Giza, Egypt

Great Pyramids and Great Sphinx location.

Babylon (modern Iran)

The Code of Hammurabi location.

Karnak, near Luxor, Egypt

Temple of Amun-Re and Hypostyle Hall location.

Near Luxor, Egypt

Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut location.

New Kingdom (Amarna), 18th Dynasty

Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and three daughters location.

New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty

Tutankhamun’s tomb, innermost coffin location.

New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty

Last judgment of Hu-Nefer location.

Dur Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad, Iraq)

Lamassu from the citadel of Sargon II location.

Archaic through Hellenistic Greek

Athenian agora.

Archaic Greek

Anavysos Kouros.

Acropolis

Peplos Kore location.

Etruscan

Sarcophagus of the Spouses.

Persepolis, Iran

Audience Hall (apadana) of Darius and Xerxes location.

Veii, near Rome, Italy

Temple of Minerva and sculpture of Apollo location.

Tarquinia, Italy

Tomb of the Triclinium location.

Classical Greece

Niobides Krater.

Polykleitos

Doryphoros (Spear Bearer).

Athens, Greece

Acropolis.

Kallimachos

Grave stele of Hegeso.

Hellenistic Greek

Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Asia Minor (present-day Turkey)

Great Altar of Zeus and Athena at Pergamon location.

Pompeii, Italy

House of the Vettii location.

Pompeii

Alexander Mosaic from the House of Faun location.

Hellenistic Greek

Seated boxer.

Republican Roman

Head of a Roman patrician.

Imperial Roman

Augustus of Prima Porta.

Rome, Italy

Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheater) location.

Apollodorus of Damascus

Forum of Trajan.

Imperial Roman

Pantheon.

Late Imperial Roman

Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus.