Online Study Guide

Greek Humanism :: The Geometric And Orientalizing Periods :: The Archaic Period :: The Early And High Classical Periods :: The Late Classical Period :: The Hellenistic Period :: Hellenistic Art Under Roman Patronage

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THE GEOMETRIC AND ORIENTALIZING PERIODS

Out of the Dark Age:

Following the collapse of the Mycenaean (Late Helladic) civilization around 1200 BCE and the ensuing period of cultural decline and minor artistic activity known as the Dark Age, the first sign of a newly emerging Greek (Hellenic) culture was ceramic pottery decorated with geometric patterns in the ninth century.

The destruction of the Mycenaean palaces was accompanied by the disintegration of the Bronze Age social order.

Geometric Art:

In the eighth century, representations of animals begin to appear together with purely geometric patterns on painted ceramic pots. A little later, schematic human figures are seen depicted on very large ceramic vessels designed to serve as grave markers and to function in funerary rites. Small-scale sculptures of human figures, animals, and mythological creatures show the same geometric reduction of form.

Figure painting revived:

Also during the eighth century, the human figure returned to Greek art-not, of course, in monumental statuary, which was exceedingly rare even in Bronze Age Greece, but painted on the surfaces of ceramic pots, which continued to be manufactured after the fall of Mycenae and even throughout the Dark Age.

5-1: Geometric krater, from the Dipylon cemetery, Athens, Greece, ca. 740 BCE. Approx. 3' 4 1/2" high. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Hero versus monster:

Similar schematic figures also appeared in the round at this date, but only on a very small scale.

5-2: Hero and centaur (Herakles and Nessos?), ca. 750-730 BCE. Bronze, approx. 4 1/2" high. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Orientalizing Art:

Increased contact with the East through trade and colonization in the seventh century exposed Greek artists to new ideas and motifs in sculpture and painting. Greek artists also developed a new ceramic technique of decoration called black-figure, and exhibited an interest in showing the anatomy of figures in greater detail. Stone is used for building temples, which are also decorated with carved stone reliefs.

An offering to Apollo:

One of the masterworks of the early seventh century BCE is the Mantiklos Apollo, a small, bronze statuette dedicated to Apollo at Thebes by an otherwise unknown man named Mantiklos.

5-3: Mantiklos Apollo, statuette of a youth dedicated by Mantiklos to Apollo, from Thebes, Greece, ca. 700-680 BCE. Bronze, approx. 8" high. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

The Greeks look eastward:

The Mantiklos Apollo was created when the pace and scope of Greek trade and colonization had accelerated and when Greek artists were exposed more than ever before to Eastern artworks, especially small, portable objects such as Syrian ivory carvings.

5-4: Corinthian black-figure amphora with animal friezes, from Rhodes, Greece, ca. 625-600 BCE. Approx. 1' 2" high. British Museum, London.

Black figure painting:

The appeal of such vases was not due solely to their Orientalizing animal friezes, but also to a new ceramic technique the Corinthians invented, which art historians call black-figure painting.

Greece's first stone temples:

The foundation of the Greek trading colony of Naukratis in Egypt before 630 BCE brought the Greeks into direct contact with the monumental stone architecture of the Egyptians.

5-5: Plan of Temple A, Prinias, Greece, ca. 625 BCE.

5-6: Lintel of Temple A, Prinias, Greece, ca. 625 BCE. Limestone, approx. 2' 9" high; seated goddesses approx. 2' 8" high. Archaeological Museum, Herakleion.

Goddess or woman?:

Somewhat earlier and probably also originally from Crete is a limestone statuette of a goddess or maiden (kore; plural, korai) popularly known as the Lady of Auxerre after the French town that is her oldest recorded provenance.

5-7: Lady of Auxerre, statue of a goddess or kore, ca. 650-625 B.C. Limestone, approx. 2' 11/2" high. Louvre, Paris.