The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone: Archaic Greek sculpture (from about 650 to 480 BC), Classical (480–323 BC) and Hellenistic thereafter. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
The Greeks decided very early on that the human form was the most important subject for artistic endeavour.Cook, 19 Since they pictured their gods as having human form, there was little distinction between the sacred and the secular in art—the human body was both secular and sacred. A male nude of Apollo or Heracles shows only slight differences in treatment from a sculpture of that year's Olympic boxing champion. The statue (originally single, but by the Hellenistic period often in groups) was the dominant form, although reliefs, often so "high" that they were almost free-standing, were also important.
Bronze was the most prestigious material, but is the least common to survive, as it was always expensive and generally recycled.
Materials
By the Classical period, roughly the 5th and 4th centuries BC, monumental sculpture was composed almost entirely of marble or bronze, with cast bronze becoming the favoured medium for major works by the early 5th century BC. Many pieces of sculpture now known only in marble copies made for the Roman market had been originally made in bronze. The territories of ancient Greece, except for Sicily and southern Italy, contained abundant supplies of fine marble, with Pentelic and Parian marble the most highly prized. The ores for bronze were also relatively easy to obtain.Cook, 74–75 Smaller works were in a great variety of materials, many of them precious, but there was also a very large production of terracotta figurines.
Both marble and bronze are relatively easy to form and very durable. No doubt there were also traditions of sculpture in wood, as in most ancient cultures, but we know very little of them apart from acrolithic sculptures, usually large, in which the head and exposed flesh parts were carved in marble but the clothed parts in wood. Bronze always had a significant scrap value, so that very few original bronzes have survived. But in recent years marine archaeology or trawling have added a few spectacular finds, such as the Artemision Bronze and Riace bronzes, which have significantly extended modern understanding of ancient bronze art. Many copies from the later Roman period are marble versions of works whose originals had been cast in bronze. In the Archaic period ordinary limestone was used for sculpture, but thereafter (except in areas of the Italian Peninsula with no local marble) only for architectural sculpture and decoration. Plaster or stucco was sometimes used, only for the hair.Cook, 74–76
Chryselephantine sculptures, used for temple cult images and luxury works, used gold (most often in leaf form) and ivory for all of the figure or for faces and hands. Probably some included gems and other materials, but these were much less common, and only fragments have survived.
Many statues were given jewellery, as can be seen from the holes for attaching it, and held weapons or other objects in different materials.Cook, 75–76
Painting of sculpture
Ancient Greek sculptures were originally painted in multiple colours; they appear colourless today only because the original pigments have deteriorated. References to painted sculptures are found in classical literature, including in Euripides's Helen, in which the eponymous character laments, "If only I could shed my beauty and assume an uglier aspect / The way you would wipe colour off a statue." Some well-preserved statues still bear traces of pigments and archaeologists can reconstruct what they may have originally looked like.
Development of Greek sculptures
Geometric It is commonly thought that the earliest incarnation of Greek sculpture was in the form of wooden or ivory cult statues, first described by Pausanias as xoana.The term xoanon and the ascriptions are both highly problematic. A.A. Donohue's Xoana and the origins of Greek sculpture, 1988, details how the term had a variety of meanings in the ancient world not necessarily to do with the cult objects No such statues survive, and the descriptions of them are vague, despite the fact that they were probably objects of veneration for hundreds of years. The first piece of Greek statuary to be reassembled is probably the Lefkandi Centaur, a terracotta sculpture found on the island of Euboea, dated . The statue was constructed in parts, before being dismembered and buried in two separate graves. The centaur has an intentional mark on its knee, which has led researchers to postulate that the statue might portray Cheiron, presumably kneeling wounded from Herakles' arrow. If so, it would be the earliest known depiction of myth in the history of Greek sculpture.
The forms from the Geometric period () were chiefly terracotta figurines, bronzes, and ivories. The bronzes are chiefly tripod cauldrons, and freestanding figures or groups. Such bronzes were made using the lost-wax technique probably introduced from Syria, and are almost entirely votive offerings left at the Hellenistic civilization Panhellenic sanctuaries of Olympia, Delos, and Delphi, though these were likely manufactured elsewhere, as a number of local styles may be identified by finds from Athens, Argos, and Sparta. Typical works of the era include the Karditsa warrior (Athens Br. 12831) and the many examples of the equestrian statuette (for example, NY Met. 21.88.24 online). The repertory of this bronze work is not confined to standing men and horses, however, as vase paintings of the time also depict imagery of stags, birds, beetles, hares, griffins and lions.
There are no inscriptions on early-to-middle geometric sculpture, until the appearance of the Mantiklos "Apollo" (Boston 03.997) of the early 7th century BC found in Thebes. The figure is that of a standing man with a pseudo-daedalic form, underneath which lies the hexameter inscription reading "Mantiklos offered me as a tithe to Apollo of the silver bow; do you, Phoibos [Apollo], give some pleasing favour in return".Μαντικλος μ' ανεθεκε ϝεκαβολοι αργυροτοχσοι τας {δ}δε|κατας· τυ δε Φοιβε διδοι χαριϝετταν αμοιϝ[αν]," transliterated as "Mantiklos m' anetheke wekaboloi argyrotokhsoi tas dekatas; tu de Phoibe didoi khariwettan amoiw[an]" Apart from the novelty of recording its own purpose, this sculpture adapts the formulae of oriental bronzes, as seen in the shorter more triangular face and slightly advancing left leg. This is sometimes seen as anticipating the greater expressive freedom of the 7th century BC and, as such, the Mantiklos figure is referred to in some quarters as proto-Daedalic.
Archaic
Inspired by the monumental stone sculpture of ancient EgyptThe debt of archaic Greek sculpture to Egyptian canons was recognized in Antiquity: see Diodorus Siculus, i.98.5–9. and Mesopotamia, the Greeks began again to carve in stone. Free-standing figures share the solidity and frontal stance characteristic of Eastern models, but their forms are more dynamic than those of Egyptian sculpture, as for example the Lady of Auxerre and Torso of Hera (Early Archaic period, , both in the Louvre, Paris). After about 575 BC, figures such as these, both male and female, began wearing the so-called archaic smile. This expression, which has no specific appropriateness to the person or situation depicted, may have been a device to give the figures a distinctive human characteristic.
Three types of figures prevailed—the standing nude male youth (kouros, plural kouroi), the standing draped girl (kore, plural korai), and the seated woman. All emphasize and generalize the essential features of the human figure and show an increasingly accurate comprehension of human anatomy. The youths were either sepulchral or votive statues. Examples are Apollo (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), an early work; the Strangford Apollo from Anafi (British Museum), a much later work; and the Anavyssos Kouros (National Archaeological Museum of Athens). More of the musculature and skeletal structure is visible in this statue than in earlier works. The standing, draped girls have a wide range of expression, as in the sculptures in the Acropolis Museum of Athens. Their drapery is carved and painted with the delicacy and meticulousness common in the details of sculpture of this period.
The Greeks thus decided very early on that the human form was the most important subject for artistic endeavour. Seeing their gods as having human form, there was no distinction between the sacred and the secular in art—the human body was both secular and sacred. A male nude without any attachments such as a bow or a club, could just as easily be Apollo or Heracles as that year's Olympic boxing champion. In the Archaic Period, the most important sculptural form was the kouros (See for example Biton and Kleobis). The kore was also common; Greek art did not present female nudity (unless the intention was pornographic) until the 4th century BC, although the development of techniques to represent drapery is obviously important.
As with pottery, the Greeks did not produce sculpture merely for artistic display. Statues were commissioned either by aristocratic individuals or by the state, and used for public memorials, as offerings to temples, oracles and sanctuaries (as is frequently shown by inscriptions on the statues), or as markers for graves. Statues in the Archaic period were not all intended to represent specific individuals. They were depictions of an ideal—beauty, piety, honor or sacrifice. These were always depictions of young men, ranging in age from adolescence to early maturity, even when placed on the graves of (presumably) elderly citizens. Kouroi were all stylistically similar. Graduations in the social stature of the person commissioning the statue were indicated by size rather than artistic innovations.
Classical
The Classical period saw a revolution of Greek sculpture, sometimes associated by historians with the popular culture surrounding the introduction of democracy and the end of the aristocratic culture associated with the kouroi. The Classical period saw changes in the style and function of sculpture, along with a dramatic increase in the technical skill of Greek sculptors in depicting realistic human forms. Poses also became more naturalistic, notably during the beginning of the period. This is embodied in works such as the Kritios Boy (480 BC), sculpted with the earliest known use of contrapposto ('counterpose'), and the Charioteer of Delphi (474 BC), which demonstrates a transition to more naturalistic sculpture. From about 500 BC, Greek statues began increasingly to depict real people, as opposed to vague interpretations of myth or entirely fictional votive statues, although the style in which they were represented had not yet developed into a realistic form of portraiture. The statues of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, set up in Athens mark the overthrow of the aristocratic tyranny, and have been said to be the first public monuments to show actual individuals.