All Greek to me

On May 22 we met with our curator for Ancient Art to discuss the Walters' Greek and Roman collection.  I'm going to split today's lessons into two posts because there was just so much to take in.

Dr. Marden N started by telling us that the Walters has the 3d best collection of Greek and Roman art in the United States, behind the Metropolitan in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  We have this wonderful collection because Henry Walters had an encyclopedic vision when collecting.  He probably collected with the aim of establishing a museum much like the one we have today.  The collection of ancient Greek and Roman art began in 1889 with Henry's purchase of a group of bronzes at auction.    The collection was considerably enlarged in 1902, when Henry Walters acquired the Massarenti collection.  The collection included more than 1700 objects, including Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities.  Henry had limited time and ability to inspect the collection, but agreed to acquire it and arranged to ship 275 crates  to the United States.  He was roundly criticized at the time for spending a relative fortune to buy a collection full of fakes.  In fact, while many of the items were incorrectly attributed and might have been less valuable than the sellers suggested, they were not "fakes."  The Massarenti collection included the seven marble Roman sarcophagi now on display.  

Historical and scientific research has led to significant changes in the appearance of many pieces since they entered the collection.  For example, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was common practice to add missing parts like heads, arms and legs to fragmentary statues.  Today, many of these restorations have been removed.

(Although this item did not come from the Massarenti collection, Dr. Nichols pointed to the statue of Diana with the head of Aphrodite as an example of this 19th century zeal to put together "complete" statues.  She commented that no one in the 19th century thought twice about putting the head of the goddess of sex on the body of the goddess of chastity, as long as it looked better that way.)

In general, the Walters' Greek and Roman collection is assembled in galleries that are chronologically arranged, although there are themes within the cases.  Thus, just by walking through, you can give visitors a spatial idea of traveling through approximately 3000 years of art history.

Arts of the Ancient Aegean

The first gallery contains the "pre-Classical" Greek items, including those from the Bronze Age cultures of the Aegean.   Several Bronze Age cultures flourished almost simultaneously in the Aegean:  Cylcadic culture on the small islands called the Cyclades, Minoan and Mycenaean culture on the island of Crete and other islands in the eastern Mediterranean, and Mycenaean culture in mainland Greece.   Most of what we know about these cultures we have learned from archaeology, including marine archaeology, as only 1 of the 3 known languages has been decoded. Apparently, it is a very thorny problem to accurately date items from these cultures, but generally the Bronze Age cultures lasted from about 3000 BC to 1100 BC.

First stop, our old friend the Cycladic woman.  She is typical of marble sculptures of the abstract human female found almost exclusively in graves on the Cyclades islands.  The lovely Cycladic figure is beautiful, mysterious, and accessible.  Her lines are all about proportion - she was designed, liked other such figures, to fit within three evenly-spaced and same size circles.  
See Hendrix, Elizabeth. "Painted Ladies of the Early Bronze Age."Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 55 (Winter 1997–98), pp. 4–15. 

She would have been brightly painted with large wide-open eyes.  Her paint has disappeared and we are left with the human form.  In fact, most art in this time period concerned people and what people do, a concept Marden referred to as "anthropomorphism."  This piece is mysterious in many ways.  Was it meant to commemorate someone?  Invoke a god, for protection or in thanksgiving?  Was the figure meant to represent a goddess, or the concept of femininity?

Cycladic art has a very modern feel, and this is not an accident.  In fact, more modern artists like Brancusi and Picasso rejected Classical art and turned to these pre-Classical items for inspiration.

Brancusi, Portrait of Mlle. Pogany, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Trade in Cycladic figures was robust in the middle of the 20th century, leading to looting of the Cyclades Islands and flooding the market with false finds.  Thus, many of the Cycladic pieces have no adequate provenance.  See Material and Intellectual Consequences of Esteem for Cycladic Figures.  On the subject of looting, Marden noted that the Walters has had "the gift of poverty" and was therefore not purchasing during the time of this looting.

We next moved on to the visually arresting "snake goddess." 




This figurine comes from the Minoan civilization on Crete.  The Minoans were a wealthy sea power with their palace at Knossos.  (Arthur Evans, who excavated the palace at Knossos beginning in 1900, named these people Minoans after King Minos.  See the legend of the minotaur. ) The "new palace" at Knossos (rebuilt after  an earthquake in 1700 BC) was called a "labyrinth" by the Greeks because of its size and complexity.  The palace had many fine wall paintings.

 

The palace seems to have served as an administrative headquarters and, judging from the huge storage areas, as collection and distribution centers for a well-organized system of local agricultural production.  Evidence indicates that women played a dominant role in Minoan religion and perhaps also in Minoan society.  

Surviving Minoan sculpture is small and finely executed.  There are many faience "snake goddess" figurines found at Knossos in museums around the world.  The Walters' figure is a beautiful combination of ivory and gold.  These materials were the finest available in the ancient world.   The figure is chryselephantine, meaning it is made of ivory and gold.  The condition is good, but leaves room for imagination.  How would she have been painted?  What did her face look like?  How has she survived?

The Mycenaeans arrived as conquerors on Crete about 1450 BC.  They adopted many of the local artistic conventions, adding their own touches.  We looked at this lovely beaked jug, decorated with a picture of a swirling sea creature, the nautilus.  Again, the use of the sea creature on an everyday item like this vessel reveals that the Minoan and Mycenaean people had an understanding of and intimate relationship with the sea.  

The Mycenaeans were already dominant on the Greek mainland.  Their culture, the Helladic culture, thrived from about 3000 BC to 1000 BC.  Their metalwork, particularly goldwork, was highly prized.

Art of Ancient Greece

Geometric period

After Mycenaean dominance on the Greek mainland ended, a Greek civilization began to emerge.  The time period from about 900 BC to 700 BC is known as the Geometric Period in Greek art.  Ceramics decorated in the "geometric" style feature repeated linear patterns that "meander" to fill empty space, and human figures composed of highly geometrical shapes.

This vase demonstrates that horror vacui (fear of empty space).   It was created for funerary purposes, and features snake motifs as well as human figures.  The deceased lies on a bier surrounded by mourning female figures in the crude hourglass shape typical of the period.  (This concept of the deceased surrounded by mourning women is an eternal concept in the art of many cultures.)   The cloth shroud in a checkerboard pattern floats above the bier so that the figure and the cloth are emphasized.  Marden introduced the term "skeumorphism" for the concept that decorative patterns travel from one material to another.  In this case, fabric design and weaving was very important to women, and was the way that women expressed themselves.  Patterns developed for cloth show up in painting, in sculpture, and on decorated vessels.

Around the body of the vase, a procession of chariots and warriors moves to the right. The warriors are shown in the "apple-core" shape typical of male warrior figures, looking like shields with legs.  A narrow band of running dogs appears above, and a band of grazing deer below. Clay snakes were modeled separately and applied to the mouth, handles, and shoulder of the vase, emphasizing their funerary role as guardians of tombs.

Orientalizing

As Greek art moved away from the geometric, artists began to use more open compositions and motifs featuring real and imaginary animals, and stylized flower forms called rosettes.  

Corinthian skyphos, Walters Art Museum

Corinthian pottery of the 7th and the early 6th century BC was typically made from light yellow or white clay.  This skyphos is typical of the Orientalizing style of this period.   Marden pointed out that by the 6th century BC Corinth dominated the vase trade, and that as the demand for vases with such rosette decoration increased, the quality decreased.  You can see a rosette on the vase below, from the Met, which is much finer compared to the rosette on the Walters skyphos.  

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This early bronze figurine is typical of the Orientalizing style.  

More fantastic animals and a Gorgon head are shown on this highly-restored black figure plate from an early Athens makers.   Marden discussed the choices that curators and conservators must make in restoring and showing ancient works, and made the comment that the art is "never totally ancient."  

Archaic Period

The Archaic period of Greek art may not deserve that name.  This period was characterized by dramatic advances in architecture.  Most of Archaic Greek art was religious in nature.  The most typical sculptures of the period are the kouroi, Greek for "young men."  This kouros in the Walters collection recalls the rigid frontality and proportions of Egyptian sculpture, but for the nudity, we must "blame the Greeks."  Kouroi  have been variously identified as gods, warriors or athletes.  Marden noted that both athletic and military training were done in the nude, and that during this Archaic period athletic competitions begin to abound.  The Greeks equated physical prowess and mental aptitude, at least until Socrates began to pull apart that connection.  

Female kore were depicted clothed.  The faces of kouroi and korai were all similar, with relatively large and wide-open eyes and a conventional close-lipped expression known as the "Archaic smile."  

During the Archaic period, Athens dominated in the manufacture of ceramics and Athenian potters adopted Corinthian black-figure techniques.  Over time, they decreased the bands of decoration until a narrative scene dominated each side.  Marden noted that vases are studied most because so many of them survived.  While there were fine vase painters, they were not considered the best artists.  Because their art survives, however, they give us windows into the culture.  As Marden said, "if this is low culture, what did high culture look like?"  She joked that the useful vases were "not quite tupperware, but close." 

Classical Period

The Classical Period in Greek art began with the repulsion of the Persian invasion of Greece in 480 BC and ends with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC.  During this period, red-figure pottery was being perfected and allowed for much more detail.  Sculptors sought to create more lifelike human figures in large marble statues, and bronze sculpting made complicated gestures and poses technically possible. 

Although we cannot use such small figures on tours, Marden was very enthusiastic about a case of small bronze figurines.  She discussed this figurine showing one of Odysseus' men turning into a pig to illustrate the point that in Greek art, as in life, mythology was everywhere.  While in our modern world cultural references fade very quickly, in ancient Greece the same stories were told for centuries.  

Marden encouraged us to get a working understanding of how Greek vases achieved their coloration.  It is not actually correct to say that they were painted, as in fact the colors were achieved by manipulating the amount of oxygen in a series of firings. The Getty museum has distributed a video to demonstrate the technique. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhPW50r07L8

There are several fine red-figure vases in the collection.  Marden discussed only one, the red-figure amphora with musical scene. On one side, three elaborately dressed women prepare for a music session. A seated woman relaxes while fingering a "barbiton" (a stringed instrument). Above her head hangs a lyre. She faces a woman holding double flutes, and a third woman lifts the lid of a box. The scene evokes the leisured and relatively educated world of affluent Athenian women. On the back, women dressed in the attire of maenads, the female followers of Dionysus, hold pine branches and a torch; these may be the same women, now preparing for their ritual roles in Dionysus' cult.

Marden encouraged us to spend time looking at women's clothing.  She noted again that womens' limited role in society meant that fabric was central to how a woman presented herself.  There were different types of dresses portrayed on vases and in statues, including the chiton and the peplos.  How a woman dressed and comported herself had much to do with the calendar.  On this vase, the depiction of women on a feast day indicates that on that day, a woman could dress, act, and socialize differently than on an ordinary day.  



Several of the statues at the west end of the Greek gallery are actually Roman copies of Greek originals.   It was in the Classical period that Greek sculptors sought the ideal form for portraying the human figure.  Polykleitos was a theorist who developed one theory, his "canon"of proportions.   He illustrated  his theory in bronze statues which have not survived.  This video shows how he developed the canon for the Doryphoros.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU81g9wmg8Q

We have a Roman copy of the head of a Doryphoros.  The more complete copy pictured below is in the Minneapolis museum.   The Doryphoros exemplified not only ideal male proportions but also the contrapposto pose.  Marden pointed out how the Classical Greek sculptors were creating movement and showing tension, but still trying to show ideal human forms. 

Doryphoros, Minneapolis Museum of Art

When this head came to the Walters, it was attached to the torso of another Polykleitos copy, the Diadoumenos.  The more complete copy, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, shows how the poses are actually different.  The head and torso were separated by the Walters in 1987.

Diadoumenos, Metropolitan Museum, NY

Polykleitos was working in about 450 BC.   By the first century AD, Roman copies of Greek originals were being made.  At some point, the Romans began to have their own unique approach.

This is the right time to "turn the corner" to Roman art.

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Post-script:  For a tour with AP Art History students, I highlighted civic ideals, polytheism and the tradition of storytelling in Ancient Greece, and noted how Greek art was defined by artistic style.   Contrast that with Roman art, which was defined by the form of government in place at the time.