Ancient Mediterranean

“man is the measure of all things” - Greek City states started up around 900 BC. women are shown with lighter skin and men are shown with darker skin.

Aegean - Greek pre-culture

  • Cycladic Period (3000-2000 BCE)

    • Cycladic Idol/Female Figurine - know female because of female body parts, tomb art, was a fertility figure, emphasized because of the need for children, geometrical/triangular

    • Lyre player - male, meaning is unknown, geometric/abstract, cemeteries and settlements, maybe a nod to apollo (lyre and duck bill/swan),

  • Minoan Period (3000-1400 BCE) - architecture, sculpture, painted vases

    • Beginning - no funerary art, basic things. Middle - places, beauty, earthquake. Late - rebuild everything, make it better. First great western civilization, sea people, marine art,

    • Palace of Knossos - meandering palace, menataur and labrynth are based on this palace, everyone lived around the passage, drainage system with pipes, ceremonial games in the courtyard, post-lintel construction, painted wood columns, composite animals on wall of throne room, dolphin mosaic (would’ve been on the floor)

    • Toreador Fresco - bull-fighting game mural, pale women with curly hair and narrow waist, curvilinear technique, wet fresco, most famous

      • Entasis - swelling of the column

      • Curvilinear - Curvy lines

      • Wet Fresco -

    • The Octopus Vase - arms wrap around the vase, emphasizing the shape, made by wheel, intentional design, dark on light

    • The Snake Goddess 1600 BCE, glazed earthen ware, sculpture in the round, typical minoan dress (tiered), commanding aura, not sure of her meaning, leopard on head

  • Mycenaean Period (1500-1200 BCE) concerned about invasion. back to the greek mainland, rich culture, when old palaces were built, Miceni Greece

    • The Lion Gate (1300-1250 BCE) - giant walls, limestone from the time period, defensive for the mainland people, post-lintel and corbelled construction, cyclopian architecture, missing heads (possible gold or silver), not sure what the heads were, minoan influence (entasis) & dots on lintel), guardian figures

      • Corbelled Construction - offset each stone (like an igloo)

      • Cyclopian Masonry

      • Hercules birth place

    • Funerary Mask - No artist,beaten gold, found in royal shaft grave, first attempt of li, believed to be Agmenmom but dates years before him, wrotten about in the Odyssey by Homer (Mycenaean’s known as rich people)

      • Repoussé - beaten gold

    • Warrior Vase (1200 BCE) - crater (used for mixing wine and water), people/warriors on the vase, shows difference in content, one giant register, twisted perspective

Greek

democracy, art, science, human frailty from gods, nude art to celebrate. nude = body celebrated, naked = body desecrated, refinement, influenced by Egyptian sculpture, city-states, hellenest = Greek people (as a whole), true historical classical art is Greece, all our capital buildings are in neo-classical style

  • Geometric Period (900-700 BCE)- dark age of greece, no kings, loss of reading, writing, masonry, only vases and sculptures, no surviving architecure, Greece broke out of isolation during 8th century, first olympics in 776, vases were grave markers

    • Dipylon Amphora - name of the cemetery, amphora is the type of vessel, grave marker, twisted perspective, people are morning the dead in the top register, shows wealth of the deceased because of the amount of mourners, traditional greek key pattern, bottom of vase had hole (would pour libations in vase like olive oil, wine, etc)

      • Amphora - two handled storage jar

    • Dipylon Krater

    • Hero and Centaur

robot