WESTERN

Ancient Greece
ART HISTORY § Hellas – ancient name of Greece
Ancient Art (30,000 BCE – § POLIS – independent city-states;
X single nation
400 AD)
Ancient Greece gave birth to
§ Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic § Humanism – ‘’measure of all
(stone ages) things’’
§ Democracy
Important questions: § Art: influences from Egypt & Near
§ What is my subject? East
§ How shall I represent it? § Women; Slavery
§ Fall of Greece from the empires
Paleolithic of Rome and Macedonia
§ Cave paintings
§ Subject: Animals (bison, horses, § Ancient Greek Art uses Black
mammoths) Figure Technique (Amphora)
§ Representation: profile, drawn on § Master of Black Figure Technique
their sides – Exekias
o Dramatic tension VS
Theories on Paleolithic cave paintings Dramatic action
§ Decoration (but too remote) o Details and composition
§ Magical – good luck; confining
animals to the caves = control § Greek Sculpture
§ Education – would know which o Influence from Egypt
animals to hunt or target practice o Kouri
(animals in areas of the cave § “youth”
paintings were not the staple § Liberated form from
diet) stone block
§ Animal ancestor • Space
between legs
Neolithic • Space
§ Ice recedes between
§ Beginning of agriculture arms and
§ First settled communities torso
§ Monumental stone architectures § Permanence VS
o Hagar Qim – Malta Motion
o Stonehenge – England § Nude
Classical Art (480 BCE – 337 Julius Caesar
§ 44 BCE
CE) § 1st to put his face on a coin
§ Dictator perpetuo – dictator for
Classical Age: defeat of Persian life
invaders by Allied Hellenic City-states § Relief Sculpture
§ Battle of Salamis
§ Triumph of reason and law over § The Flavian Amphitheater –
Asian barbarians Colosseum

High point of Greek Civilization § Vespasian – first undertaking as

§ Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus emperor
§ Herodotus, Socrates § Built on public land Nero had
taken for private pleasure
Sculpture
§ Contrapposto – counterbalance

Late Classical Age: Ideal to real

Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos

§ Female nudity – rare

§ Confined to paintings and vases
designed for household use
§ Women were courtesans or slave
girls, not noblewomen or
goddesses
§ Temple
§ Everyday life

Rise of the Roman Empire

§ Diverse, multicultural
§ Use of art to shape public
opinion – politics
§ Mastery of concrete –
architecture
Medieval Art (5th – 15th § 325 – Council of Nicaea,
Christianity as de facto religion of
Century) Roman Empire
§ Reused Statues and reliefs
Medieval (adj); Middle Ages (n) o Evidence of decline in
creativity and technical
§ Waning power of Roman Empire skill of the pagan Roman
– armed conflict among the Empire
Huns, Vandals, Merovingians, o Associate him with the
Franks, Goths, and other non- good emperors – Hadrian,
Roman people of Europe Marcus Aurelius
§ 1,000 years between the § Construction of churches
adoption of Christianity as the
Roman Empire’s official religion Romanesque architecture
and the Renaissance (rebirth of Roman-like during the Middle Ages
interest in classical antiquity) § Massive
§ Outdated view – crude interval § Round arches
between two great civilizations § Domes
§ Groin vaults
Mosaics – began as an inexpensive but § Large towers
durable flooring, pebble mosaics See:
Santiago de Compostela Cathedral –
3rd Century BCE – new technique; Galicia, Spain (Tomb of St. James)
tesserae (Latin, cube/dice); tiny cut Durham Cathedral – Durham, England
stones or glass with adjustable size, (Groin vault)
shape, and color
Gothic architecture
§ Constantine I – victor among Giorgio Vasari; meant as an insult
rival roman armies
§ 312 – Battle of Milvian Bridge § Light by large stained-glass
(Rome); defeated Maxentius windows
§ Christian god § Pointed arches
§ 324 – unchallenged ruler of the § Ribbed vault
Roman Empire § Flying buttresses
o Founded a New Rome in § spires
Byzantium (Istanbul);
Constantinople (city of § Goths – responsible for downfall
Constantine) of Rome; Greco-Roman art
 § 13th & 14th centuries – opus
modernum, modern work; clergy
and lay
§ Not distortions of the Classical
style but an image of the City of
God, Heavenly Jerusalem
§ Saint-Denis, France – birthplace
of Gothic architecture; Abbot
Suger rebuilt the Carolingian
Basilica to increase the prestige
of the abbey and the monarchy
o Flooded with light – lux
nova, new light
o Gold
o Precious gems
o “transport [him] from this
inferior to that higher
world”
See:
West and North façade of the Abbey
Church of Saint-Denis (before the
dismantling of the spire)
Cathedral of Notre-Dame - Reims,
France
Cathedral Church of Saint Peter –
Cologne, Germany
Milan Cathedral – Milan, Italy
Renaissance Art (14th – 17th Sandro Boticelli
§ Birth of Venus; one of the first
Century) non-biblical female nudes;
Angelo Poliziano’s retelling of the
§ Black plague – 1346-53 Greek Myth, how Venus was
§ Economic prosperity born
§ Patrons of the arts – Medici § Map of Hell; commissioned by
family Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de
§ Latin to the Italian vernacular – Medici
Dante Alighieri
§ Gutenberg press – 1450 High Renaissance
§ Revival/rebirth of interest in § Rome – Pope
Classical antiquity § Realism
§ Humanism – individual potential § Classical ideals of structure,
and achievement; civic form, proportion, balance
responsibility; secular stance § Subjects – mix of classical and
religious figures
Early Renaissance
§ Florence – Medici Family
Leonardo da Vinci
§ Emphasis on - human figure,
§ Time that less expensive paper
proper spatial organization of
was discovered – practice
figures against buildings and
drawings; “study of”
landscapes
§ The Last Supper – Fresco
§ Subjects – mythological
painting
figures, portraiture, landscape § Mona Lisa

Donatello – Donato di Niccolo Bardi Giorgio Vasari

§ Revived the free standing, large § Biography of LDV
scale, nude sculptures of § Lisa di Antonio Maria Gherardini,
classical antiquity the wife of Francesco del
§ Master of mediums – stone, Giococondo, a wealthy Florentine
bronze, wood, stucco, and wax § “Mona (an Italian contraction of
o See: David, Gattamelata ma donna, “my lady”) Lisa”
(Erasmo de Narni,
equestrian sculpture),
Penitent Magdalene
Raphael – Raffaello Santi/Sanzio guarantees of beauty in
§ Madonna in the Meadow proportion
§ Under Leonardo da Vinci’s § Asserts that the artist’s inspired
guidance judgement could identify other
§ Pyramidal composition pleasing proportions
§ Rejected light and shadow, light
tones, and blue skies that LDV § David – Palazzo della Signora; 17
favored ft.
§ Preferred clarity to obscurity, as o Deviation from Classical
he isn’t as fascinated as David (victorious)
Leonardo was with mystery
§ Pieta – made for French cardinal
Michelangelo Buonarroti jean de Bilheres Lagraulas
§ Sculpture § 1498, first masterpiece
§ The artist must proceed by § St. Peter’s Basilica
finding the idea – the image § Marble sculpture
locked in the stone. By removing § Sistine Chapel Ceiling –
the excess stone, the sculptor commissioned by Pope Julius II,
extricates the idea from the Fresco technique
block, bringing forth the living § Story of creation, fall of man,
form redemption of humanity
§ Mistrusted the application of § Creation of Adam
mathematical methods as
Baroque Art 1584 – 1723

§ Counter-Reformation
o Great change for Catholic Church, Martin Luther
o Church changing itself
o Council of Trent 1545
o Role of art
§ Lutherans – art, vanity, worship of idols
o Role of artists
§ Grab peoples’ attention
§ Religious message

§ Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

§ Gian Lorenzo Bernini

§ Baroque sculpture and painting

o Return of religious images
o Emphasizes grandeur, movement, sensuality, realism, complexity,
emotion, drama
o Blurring distinctions between arts
§ Portuguese word barroco
o Irregular, imperfect, misshaped pearl
See:
Altarpiece – church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, Rome
John the Evangelist, Saint Nicodemus
Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mary of Clopas
The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio
Pluto and Proserpina by Bernini
Romantic Art (18th – 19th Century)

§ Fascination with the remote past (Middle Ages)

§ Idealized past
§ Fascination with foreign cultures (orient)
§ Passion, strong belief in something, intensity of feelings – individual
§ Nature as a force
§ Pursued extremes of emotions and sensations
§ Attracted to the supernatural, morbid, melancholy
§ FREEDOM, unfettered imagination and feeling
§ First time – a personal, subjective approach to art
§ Reaction against the severity of Age of Enlightenment and the industrial age

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog – Caspar David Friedrich

§ Quintessential romantic painting / figure

Le Grand Odalisque – Jean-Auguste Ingres

§ Highly idealized form of the female body

The Raft of Medusa – Theodore Gericault

§ Based off survivors of the warship of medusa

The Death of Sardanapalus – Eugene Delacroix

§ Exotic subject, The Last King of Nineveh (Iraq)
§ Lord Byron’s play, Sardanapalus
Realist Art (1840-1880) Impressionism (1862-1892)

§ Grew from the excesses of § Salon des Refusés, 1863

Romanticism o Salon of the Refused –
§ Real and existing things rejected artworks
§ Human rights, working class, o French academy
harsh realities o Hierarchy of Genres
§ Beauty of everyday lives of § History painting
ordinary people § Portraiture
§ Break from religious and § Genre painting
mythological subjects § Landscape
§ Still life
Galloping Horse – Eadweard Muybridge
§ Introduction of photography § Luncheon on the Grass by
§ Horse paintings before this time Edouard Manet
were inaccurate (horse legs) § Impression, Sunrise – Claude
§ Photography could capture Monet
reality o “didn’t look like a finished
painting”
The Gleaners – Jean Francois Millet o Impressionist was meant
§ Artists championed putting as an insult (?)
normal people in his paintings
§ Fascination with light and
Noonday Rest – Jean Francois Millet surfaces
§ Poverty § Nature
§ Light of the painting § No clarity of form
§ Often appears unfinished
First Steps – Jean Francois Millet § Capture a short, moment an
§ Poverty ≠ unhappiness impression
§ Art = outside world
Music at the Tuileries – Edouard Manet
§ Middle class § Woman with a Parasol - Claude
§ Capture gender practices during Monet
this time
§ Haystack Series – Claude Monet
o How light would hit at
different parts of the day

§ Sunset in Venice – Claude Monet