Identifying artists, works, or schools of Ancient Grecian and Roman sculpture - AP Art History

The Dying Gaul is a statue from the third century BCE and is among the most famous pieces of Roman artwork. The statue is remarkable for its tension and lines in the prone figure, who is slouching into repose from his wounds. Additionally, the face conveys an astonishing amount of pathos and misery, while also showing a perfect form in the figure's body.

The Dying Gaul is a statue most likely originally cast around 200 BCE by a Greek king to commemorate his victory over the Galatians, a Celtic tribe living in modern day Turkey. The sculpture is remarkable for showing the bravery and humanity of the subject, who is marked as Galatian thanks to his haircut and necklace. The Dying Gaul that has survived is a Roman copy of the Greek original that is currently held in the Capitoline Museums in Rome.

Black-figure vases such as this one by Exekias depicting Ajax and Achilles playing dice are emblematic of Athenian ceramic production during the Greek Archaic period (c. 600–480 BCE).

Image: Ajax and Achilles Playing a Game, by Exekias (potter and painter), c. 540-530 BCE. Black-figure painting on a ceramic amphora.

Exekias \[Public domain, CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)\], via Wikimedia Commons.

The Siren Vase is a type of vessel known as stamnos and is decorated with red and black images. One of the most famous examples of ancient Greek pottery, the Siren Vase (c. 475 BCE) depicts the hero Odysseus battling sirens, enchanting female creatures who lured sailors to their deaths with hypnotic songs. This hero appears in the Homeric epics The Odyssey and The Iliad; none of the other authors were ancient Greek writers.

One of the most famous examples of ancient Greek pottery, the Siren Vase (c. 475 BCE) is a major example of Attic red-figure pottery. This type of work became common in the mid-500s BCE and is characterized by red figures on a black background (as opposed to black-figure pottery, which depicts black figures on a red or yellow background). Terracotta pottery is similarly red-colored but typically unpainted.

This famous mask is named after the legendary ancient Greek King Agamemnon (see Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’s Oresteia). While Tutankhamen’s burial mask is similarly resplendent, the Egyptian burial mask was stylistically much different from the ancient Greek. King Tut’s in particular featured a long, cylindrical beard, lapis lazuli, and turquoise in addition to the gold. The other three masks are fictional objects (but denote historical figures).

(Image accessed through Wikipedia Image Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg)

The famous mask of Agamemnon (c. 1500s BCE) was discovered in Mycenae in the 1800s. While early discoverers thought the mask belonged to the Greek King Agamemnon (see Homer’s Iliad and Aeschylus’s Oresteia), later scholarship revealed that the mask actually predated the historical Agamemnon by centuries. The Mycenaean civilization predated the Archaic era and was itself predated by the Minoan civilization.

(Image accessed through Wikipedia Image Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg)

Like other ancient Greek masks, the mask of Agamemnon would have been used to cover the face of a ruler during a funeral and interment. It was discovered covering the face of a body in a burial shaft and was accompanied by weapons, jewelry, and other artifacts. Later, in ancient Rome, wax casts and stone would replace gold as the choice for funerary masks and portraiture.

(Image accessed through Wikipedia Image Commons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/MaskOfAgamemnon.jpg)

The Venus de Medici (c. 1st century BCE) is a Hellenistic-era sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. It features a dolphin poised at the foot of the standing nude goddess, who looks off into the distance and who is designed to be viewed from all angles (sculpture in the round). Its existence and that of similar female nudes challenged the earlier Greek conception of the male nude as the model of perfect human beauty.

Like many Hellenistic sculptures, the Venus de Medici (c. 1st century BCE) is made of marble. Brass, ebony, wood, and bronze were all far less common materials in ancient Greek sculpture. The dolphin at the goddess’s feet serves as a support for the extremely heavy medium, and other famous statues of Aphrodite have notoriously broken over the years.

The statue’s subject and pose is an often-copied one, with similar version appearing in famous paintings and sculpture gardens in Europe and beyond for centuries. The statue itself is thought to be based on an earlier Aphrodite sculpture in marble by the ancient Athenian sculptor Praxiteles. However, the direct progenitor of the Venus de Medici was made of the more lightweight bronze.

While the Venus de Milo is missing its arms, the Venus de Medici is an intact sculpture. Both famous Venuses have heads and may have been adorned with jewelry made of precious metals. Neither currently has paint or a cryptic inscription, although they do feature translatable Greek lettering at their bases.

These are the famous Riace Warriors (c 450 BCE). The Terracotta Army is a large group of clay statuary from ancient China, and Alexander the Great is a portrait bust. The Discobolus of Myron is statue of a single discus thrower, while Laocoön and His Sons features a man intertwined in battle with snakes and his two sons.

(Image taken from the public domain: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Reggio\_calabria\_museo\_nazionale\_bronzi\_di\_riace.jpg)

The Riace Warriors, also known as the Riace bronzes, are a pair of life-size nude male warrior statues. They were discovered in the sea in the 1970s, and, while they are primarily made of bronze, they also feature details in other materials: copper lips and ivory eyes, for example. Teak, ivory, and cement were not otherwise common materials for large statues in ancient Greece.

(Image taken from the public domain: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Reggio\_calabria\_museo\_nazionale\_bronzi\_di\_riace.jpg)

The Riace Warriors are an excellent example of Early Classical sculpture. Their use of contrapposto and their slightly idealized forms distinguish them from earlier Archaic work, as do their elaborately worked beards and hair. Their makers are unknown, and the statues are thought to have been buried underwater after a shipwreck of uncertain date.

(Image taken from the public domain: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Reggio\_calabria\_museo\_nazionale\_bronzi\_di\_riace.jpg)

While these statues may well have held weapons once, the term contrapposto denotes a specific technique first used in ancient Greek sculpture. It describes a posture wherein most of a statue’s weight rests on one foot, leading to a more natural, relaxed pose. Contrapposto also usually results in a more lifelike stance for the torso and arms as well.

(Image taken from the public domain: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Reggio\_calabria\_museo\_nazionale\_bronzi\_di\_riace.jpg)

From the Archaic period on, many ancient Greek bronze statues were created using the complex, multi-step lost-wax casting process. In this process, a series of molds are created using wax and clay and molten bronze is poured into the final set of molds. This technique continues to be used today, and it often allows for greater creativity than earlier sculpting methods.

(Image taken from the public domain: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Reggio\_calabria\_museo\_nazionale\_bronzi\_di\_riace.jpg)

Greek sculptures modeled their sculptures after young, Green athletes. The athletes competed in their sports naked, allowing the sculpture to see their strong, muscular, athletic form in motion.

Phidias is one of the most well-known Greek sculptors. Phidias was responsible for the strategy behind the decoration of the Parthenon. One of his masterpieces was the gold statue of Athena inside the Parthenon.