the interior of the temple. Th e originals that survive include 524
feet of frieze, 92 panels, and 17 statues. While experts disagree
about the meaning of the frieze, many believe that it depicts the
procession that was held every four years in connection with
the Panathenaic Games, which in turn were held in connection
with a larger religious festival, the Panathenaia.
Classical Greek statuary is famous for its extraordinarily
high degree of precision and technical perfection. During the
Archaic Period, the kouroi and kourai were rigid and styl-
ized. Th e sculptors seemed to have worked from a pattern so
that many of the statues are similar in appearance. None of
the fi gures were in natural poses, and none of the sculptures
seem to have captured either motion or emotion.
Th e classical Greek sculptors took the art form to new
heights. Th ey came to celebrate the human form for its aes-
thetic beauty. Even when they were depicting the gods and
goddesses, they gave to the fi gures perfectly proportioned hu-
man forms, right down to the details of the fi ngers and hands.
Th e poses of their fi gures were more natural, and the subjects’
poses in general had more variety. Th e statues are more fl uid
and realistic, and many of the fi gures seem to be in motion
rather than held rigidly. While the statues of the Archaic
Period seem almost two-dimensional, those of the Classical
Period are more three-dimensional, bursting with energy
and movement. On the other hand, the fi gures depicted by
most of the Archaic Period sculptures were smiling, if only
faintly. During the Classical Period most of the fi gures have
solemn expressions. Th is feature refl ected the Greek ideal of
emphasizing reason and logic rather than emotion.
Art historians believe that the emphasis on depicting the
human form refl ected in art the same concerns that preoc-
cupied Greek philosophers of the era: studying and observing
the natural world in order to explain it. Historians generally
believe that these developments in philosophy and art refl ect-
ed the emergence of democratic institutions in Greece during
this time period. Th e kouroi were the products of an aristo-
cratic society; the sculptures of the Classical Period were the
products of a society in which people were more equal. For
this reason, many of the sculptures of the Classical Period
depict real people. Historians believe that the statues of the
heroes Aristogeiton and Harmodius in Athens, erected to cel-
ebrate the end of earlier Greek tyranny, may be the fi rst-ever
public statues of real people. Also, many cemetery statues de-
pict the deceased rather than idealized fi gures.
Classical Greek sculptors are the fi rst Greek sculptors that
historians know by name, at least in some cases. One of the
most prominent was Phidias (ca. 493–ca. 430 b.c.e.). Aft er the
general Pericles defeated the Persians and assumed power in
449 b.c.e., he named Phidias superintendent of public works
in Athens and made him responsible for beautifying the city.
Phidias also supervised the design and construction of the
Parthenon. He produced two of the most famous works of the
Classical Period. One was the statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of
the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Th is work, consid-
ered his masterpiece, showed the god Zeus seated on a throne.
His fl esh was carved in ivory, and his tunic was made of gold.
Th e fi gure of Zeus himself was 42 feet high, fi lling the entire
height of the temple. Phidias’s other masterwork was his Athe-
na Parthenos, one of three statues of the goddess Athena on
the Athenian Acropolis. Th is statue, made of gold and ivory,
was 38 feet high. Both of these sculptures are now lost. Th ey
were destroyed by fi re aft er they were taken to Constantinople
(modern-day Istanbul), though copies and descriptions exist.
Another prominent classical sculptor was Praxiteles (ca.
400–ca. 330 b.c.e.), best known for his female nudes, espe-
cially the now-lost Aphrodite of Knidos. His model for these
nudes was probably a courtesan named Phryne, with whom
he may have had a romantic relationship. His sculptures are
famous because they were carved and polished in a way that
makes the light bounce off them, giving them a shimmering,
almost lifelike appearance. He was also one of the fi rst sculp-
tors to give his fi gures curly hair. Praxiteles created what art-
ists and art historians call the “Praxitelean curve.” Th is term
refers to a sensuous, almost erotic posing of the model to
create the illusion of a living, seductive fi gure. Later artists
copied the curve, which can be seen in Hermes with the In-
fant Dionysus (housed at the Olympia Museum in Greece).THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD
Th e Hellenistic Period of Greek art began roughly with the
death of Alexander the Great in 323 b.c.e. and ended in the
fi rst century b.c.e. Alexander’s death marked a key turning
point, for during the years 336 to 323 b.c.e. he extended the
Greek Empire through conquest. Most of these conquests
were eastward, so Greek infl uence extended to such places as
Persia; Egypt; the kingdoms that occupied modern-day Af-
ghanistan, including most prominently the kingdom of Bac-
tria; and India. Th e infl uence fl owed in the other direction as
well: Greek art was infl uenced by forms of artistic expression
from these other countries. While formerly Greece had been
a collection of relatively isolated city-states, aft er Alexander
the entire Mediterranean region was alive with commerce,
travel, and cultural exchange.
Hellenistic art can be distinguished from classical art by
its greater boldness and sense of experimentation. While art-
ists did not entirely abandon the rules from the Classical Pe-
riod, they created their own conventions through art that was
more dramatic and that portrayed a wider range of human
emotion; a good example is the bronze Boy Jockey (now in
the National Archaeological Museum of Athens), recovered
from a shipwreck off the Greek coast. Th e statue—of a nearly
life-size boy riding a horse—captures in new ways a sense of
tension, energy, and movement. One of the world’s most fa-
mous sculptures, housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris, is
the Winged Victory at Samothrace, also called the Nike of
Samothrace, an 8-foot-high statue created by Pythocritos of
Rhodes in about 190 b.c.e. (Nike means “victory” and is the
name of a Greek goddess, and Samothrace is a Greek island.)
Unfortunately, the statue is missing its head and arms, but
some observers believe that the damage in a strange way en-112 art: Greece