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ART

Western art 500 B.C.-A.D. 1500 ►From ancient Greece to Early Renaissance

Since prehistoric times, the human form has been a central inspiration for many artists. It was the ancient Greeks who first raised sculpture to a transcendent level. The first marble figures from Greece date from c. 2500-1400 B.C. Their simple, abstract forms are still appealing today. By the 5th century B.C., Greek art had taken on a new sophistication, which was to influence artists into the 15th century and beyond.

Classical Around 480 B.C, Greek sculptors developed a new, realistic way of portraying the human body, keeping true to its form (naturalism). Classical sculptors adhered to strict aesthetic standards - their balanced, well-defined statues epitomize the Greek ideal of beauty and strength. The style first emerges in the Apollo of Piombino (of about 490 B.C.) and a majestic bronze god (probably Zeus) by an unknown sculptor. The male nude was perfected by two sculptors, Polyclitus and Phidias, but only clumsy Roman copies of their works survive. In the 4th century B.C, the softer forms of the female nude were used as a subject. Praxiteles created the first full-sized female nude, the Aphrodite of Cnidus. Rivaling him was Lysippus, who "modeled bronze as if it were wax." The Classical style waned after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C, as art moved into the Hellenistic period.

Hellenistic and Roman In the 3rd century B.C., sculptors of the Hellenistic world mostly copied earlier masters. The Romans collected Greek art, but also developed genres of their own: the accurate portrait bust, the narrative relief sculpture (as in the military campaign recorded on Trajan's Column) and the mosaic. Roman painting is known only from 1st-century B.C. murals found at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which include vivid decorative frescoes depicting landscapes and fake architectural features.

Byzantine and medieval Roman mosaic work was further developed in the Byzantine Empire in the 5th century A.D. The technique added color and splendor to the great religious buildings. Naturalism gave way to simplified or "stylized," images of religious icons and complex decorative patterns. In Western Europe, the main art forms that survived are book illumination and relief sculpture in churches. From the 12th century on, northern European cathedrals were decorated with stained glass, along with carvings of unnaturally tall figures in a new style known as Gothic, which stressed spirituality in its reach toward heaven.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16