Storia dell'arte
Ancient Greek art: a summary of the periods, orders and sculpture
Ancient Greek art explained: the four periods with dates, the three architectural orders, sculpture from the kouros to the Doryphoros, the Parthenon and vase painting, with 5 solved exercises and 3 FAQs.
Recommended for: Grade 9 · Grade 10
Ancient Greek art falls into four periods — Geometric (9th-8th c. BC), Archaic (7th-6th c. BC), Classical (480-323 BC) and Hellenistic (323-31 BC) — and turns on three things worth learning properly: the three architectural orders, the step-by-step conquest of the human body in sculpture, and painted pottery.
The four periods in brief
In the Geometric period art is almost entirely pottery: vases covered in meanders, key patterns and triangles, with human figures reduced to triangles and sticks.
The Archaic period brings large-scale stone sculpture. Two basic types appear: the kouros, a standing nude youth, and the kore, a draped girl. Both are stiff and frontal, with the characteristic Archaic smile. In the same years the form of the temple is fixed.
The Classical period opens after the victory over the Persians, with Athens at the centre. This is the moment of the Parthenon, of Pheidias, of Polykleitos and his canon, and then of the fourth-century generation of Praxiteles, Skopas and Lysippos.
The Hellenistic period begins with the death of Alexander the Great. Art moves out to the great eastern capitals — Pergamon, Rhodes, Alexandria — and reaches for movement and strong emotion: the Nike of Samothrace, the Dying Gaul, the Laocoön.
The three architectural orders
An order is not just the shape of a column: it is the whole set of rules binding column and entablature together.
| Doric | Ionic | Corinthian | |
|---|---|---|---|
| base | none, the column sits on the stylobate | present, moulded | present |
| shaft | stocky, 20 flutes with sharp edges | slender, 24 flutes separated by fillets | as Ionic |
| capital | cushion echinus + square abacus | two spiral volutes | basket of acanthus leaves |
| frieze | alternating triglyphs and metopes | continuous, in relief | continuous |
Doric is the oldest and the most severe, widespread on the Greek mainland and in southern Italy. Ionic arose on the coast of Asia Minor and is lighter and more ornamented. Corinthian, the latest, took hold in the Hellenistic age and then in Roman architecture; tradition credits its invention to the sculptor Kallimachos.
Sculpture: from rigidity to chiasmus
The whole of Greek sculpture can be read as one problem solved a piece at a time: how to make a stone figure stand so that it looks alive.
The Archaic kouros is frontal and symmetrical, its weight shared by both legs. Around 480 BC the breakthrough comes: the weight shifts onto one leg (contrapposto), the hips tilt, and the shoulders tilt the opposite way to compensate. The result is chiasmus, the crossing of tensed and relaxed limbs, which Polykleitos’ Doryphoros turns into a system together with the canon of proportions.
In the fourth century the search moves to expression: Praxiteles introduces soft bodies and the sinuous Praxitelean curve, Skopas the pathos of the face, Lysippos a slimmer canon with the head at one eighth of the height.
The Parthenon and its optical refinements
The Parthenon (447-432 BC), built by Iktinos and Kallikrates with Pheidias in charge of the sculptural decoration, is a Doric temple that absorbs Ionic elements, notably the continuous frieze running round the cella.
Its most studied feature is the set of optical refinements: a slightly convex stylobate, entasis in the columns, columns leaning inwards, corner columns thicker and more closely spaced. None of these is a mistake. They compensate for the way the eye works, because a geometrically perfect building does not, at a distance, look perfect.
Painted pottery
After the Geometric period and the Orientalising phase, Greek pottery develops two great techniques.
In black-figure (born at Corinth around 700 BC, dominant through the sixth century) the figures are painted in a slip that fires black, and the inner details are incised with a sharp point.
In red-figure (Athens, around 530 BC) the process is reversed: the background is painted and the figures are reserved in the natural colour of the clay, with details drawn in with a brush. A brush allows far freer lines than a graver, and with it come foreshortening, drapery and anatomy that incision could never manage.
The exercises below start from recognising the orders and the chronology, move on to the pottery techniques and the kouros-Doryphoros comparison, and end with the optical refinements of the Parthenon.
Solved exercises
1. Three temples have different capitals. On the first, the capital is a flattened cushion topped by a square block. On the second, the capital has two large spiral scrolls. On the third, the capital looks like a basket covered in leaves. Name the architectural order of each. base
Show solution
- The Doric capital is the plainest: a cushion-shaped echinus with a square abacus on top.
- The Ionic capital is recognised by the two spiral volutes at its sides.
- The Corinthian capital is shaped like a basket wrapped in acanthus leaves.
- I match each description against the three models and assign the order.
Answer: First temple = Doric ; second = Ionic ; third = Corinthian
2. Put these four periods of Greek art in chronological order and give the century or the dates for each: Classical period, Geometric period, Hellenistic period, Archaic period. base
Show solution
- The earliest is the Geometric period, 9th and 8th centuries BC, known for pottery covered in linear patterns.
- Next comes the Archaic period, 7th and 6th centuries BC, up to the Persian Wars.
- The Classical period runs from 480 BC (the end of the Persian Wars) to 323 BC (the death of Alexander the Great).
- Last is the Hellenistic period, from 323 BC to 31 BC, the year of the battle of Actium.
Answer: Geometric (9th-8th c. BC) → Archaic (7th-6th c. BC) → Classical (480-323 BC) → Hellenistic (323-31 BC)
3. An Athenian vase shows orange-red figures standing out against an even black ground, with the details inside the bodies drawn in thin painted lines. Which technique is this, how did the potter work, and when does it belong? intermedio
Show solution
- The orange-red of the figures is the natural colour of Attic clay: the figures were not painted, they were reserved.
- The potter covered the whole background around the figures with slip; when fired, that background turns black.
- The inner details are lines of slip laid on with a brush, not scratched with a point. That rules out black-figure, where details are incised.
- The red-figure technique appears in Athens around 530 BC and dominates the fifth century.
Answer: Red-figure technique: figures reserved in the colour of the clay, background painted black, details applied with a brush; it begins in Athens around 530 BC (late Archaic) and dominates the Classical period.
4. Compare the pose of an Archaic kouros with that of Polykleitos' Doryphoros and state the three main differences. intermedio
Show solution
- The kouros is strictly frontal and symmetrical: the shoulders are level, both legs carry the weight, and the advanced left leg is only a convention.
- In the Doryphoros the weight rests on one leg (the engaged leg) while the other is bent and free: this is contrapposto.
- As a result the hips tilt and the shoulders tilt the opposite way: straight leg with relaxed arm, bent leg with tensed arm. This cross-wise balance is chiasmus.
- The face changes too: the kouros wears the conventional Archaic smile, while the Doryphoros is impassive and built on numerical ratios, the canon, in which the head is one seventh of the total height.
Answer: 1) From rigid frontality to contrapposto (weight on one leg) ; 2) from symmetry to chiasmus (hips and shoulders tilting in opposite directions) ; 3) from the conventional Archaic smile to the calculated proportions of the canon (head = 1/7 of the height).
5. The Parthenon looks perfectly straight, yet almost none of its lines actually are. List at least three optical refinements used by its architects and explain what they are for. avanzato
Show solution
- The stylobate, the platform the columns stand on, is slightly convex: it rises towards the middle of each side. A truly flat platform would look as if it sagged when seen from a distance.
- The columns have entasis: the shaft swells slightly about a third of the way up. A perfectly straight shaft would look pinched in the middle.
- The columns are not vertical but lean inwards: extended upwards they would meet. Truly vertical columns would seem to splay apart.
- The corner columns are a little thicker and set slightly closer to their neighbours, because seen against the open sky rather than against a wall they would look thinner.
- None of this corrects a building fault. It corrects the eye, so that the temple looks regular.
Answer: A convex curve in the stylobate, entasis in the column shafts, an inward lean of the columns, and thicker, more closely spaced corner columns: together they offset the distortions of vision so that the temple appears perfectly straight.
FAQ
Why are Greek statues white today?
Because the colour is gone. Greek sculpture was painted in bright colours on hair, eyes, lips and drapery, and often finished with metal attachments. Rain, burial and centuries of exposure stripped the paint away and left bare marble. The whiteness is an accident of survival, not an artistic choice.
What is the difference between Greek and Roman art?
The Greeks pursued ideal form and mathematical proportion: their statues show a perfect type rather than a particular person. The Romans inherited that language but turned it towards realistic portraiture and political propaganda, and in architecture they added the arch, the vault and concrete, which allowed far larger buildings and wide interior spaces.
What does canon mean in Greek sculpture?
Canon means rule. It is the system of fixed numerical ratios between the parts of the body that Polykleitos set out in a treatise and applied in the Doryphoros, where the head is one seventh of the total height. About a century later Lysippos proposed a different canon, with the head at one eighth, producing slimmer, taller-looking figures.