the ground and one on his spears. The fourth figure clasping his leg is in a sitting
position even though he does not appear to have a seat.
The figure with the fine three-quarters face is perhaps the most ambitious and
also the least successful. To create a relaxed naturalistic pose the painter has experi-
mented with the length of the limbs, but the front leg and the far arm seem too long,
and the near shoulder seems bent. In the representation of the human form, painting
has now freed itself from the conventions of archaic art, whereby the chest tapers
to a thin waist and the ovular thighs are unduly developed, and has adopted instead
the new anatomical structure of recent sculpture where the centre of the body is
filled out (see p. 230). The lines of the muscular thorax of the standing nude are
perhaps a little schematic, but the more fluid lines of the reclining figure impart grace
and ease without diminishing the warrior’s strength. The reclining figure successfully
combines the formality of the standing nude with the relaxed naturalism of the sitting
figure.
This beautiful red-figure vase does not have the perfection achieved in the
black-figure style of Exekias, but the painter is experimenting and working in a new
and freer style. On vases from this time onwards, foreshortening, particularly of
objects like pedestals, shields or buildings, becomes commonplace, but experiments
with spatial effects like that of the Niobid-painter were soon abandoned. Perhaps it
seemed a perverse breach of decorum to attempt a deepening perspective whereby
the painted scene works against the natural contours of the vase by seeming to
penetrate the pot. Painters working on the flat surface of a wall might feel less
inhibited.
High classicism: the architecture of the Parthenon
The finest architectural achievements of the Greeks are embodied in the Parthenon,
the temple housing the statue of Athena Parthenos (meaning ‘maiden’), dramatically
situated on the Athenian Acropolis, the top point of the city. At the outset of his history
of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides speculates as to the effect on posterity of the
public buildings of the two great rival powers of Sparta and Athens:
Suppose, for example, that the city of Sparta were to become deserted and that
only the temples and foundations of buildings remained, I think that future
generations would, as time passed, find it very difficult to believe that this place
had really been as powerful as it was represented to be. Yet the Spartans occupy
two-fifths of the Peloponnese and stand at the head not only of the whole
Peloponnese itself but also of numerous allies beyond its frontiers. Since, however,
the city is not regularly planned and contains no temples or monuments of great
magnificence, but is simply a collection of villages, in the ancient Hellenic way, itsART 237