III.

Archaic Period

During the Archaic period, as Greek society expanded geographically and economically, greater wealth and foreign contacts led to the development of formal architecture and monumental sculpture. Both were made from the marble and limestone with which Greece was plentifully endowed. Temples housed images of the gods and were decorated with sculpture and paintings. Painting also flourished on vases, which were important articles of trade.

A.

Sculpture

Inspired by the monumental stone sculpture of Egypt and Mesopotamia, the Greeks began to carve in stone. Free-standing figures share the solidity and frontal stance characteristic of Eastern models, but their forms are more dynamic than those of Egyptian sculpture, as for example the Lady of Auxerre and Torso of Hera (Early Archaic period, c. 660-580 bc, both in the Louvre, Paris). After about 575 bc, figures, such as these, both male and female, wear the so-called archaic smile. This expression, which has no specific appropriateness to the person or situation depicted, may have been a device to give the figures a distinctive human characteristic.

Three types of figures prevailed—the standing nude youth (kouros), the standing draped girl (kore), and the seated woman. All emphasize and generalize the essential features of the human figure and show an increasingly accurate comprehension of human anatomy. The youths were either sepulchral or votive statues. Examples are Apollo (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), an early work; the Strangford Apollo from Límnos (British Museum, London), a much later work; and the Anavyssos Kouros (National Archaeological Museum, Athens). More of the musculature and skeletal structure is visible in this statue than in earlier works. The standing, draped girls have a wide range of expression, as in the sculptures in the Acropolis Museum, Athens. Their drapery is carved and painted with the delicacy and meticulousness common in the details of sculpture of this period.

Relief sculpture, which developed somewhat later than free-standing sculpture, showed figures in action. Noteworthy examples from the Middle Archaic period (c. 580-535 bc) are friezes from the Treasury of the Siphnians in the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi (Archaeological Museum, Delphi), depicting a battle in the Trojan War. Also notable is the fragmentary pediment, representing a struggle between gods and Titans, from the old Temple of Athena on the Acropolis in Athens (Acropolis Museum). Examples from the Late Archaic period (c. 535-475 bc) include sculptures (now in the Glyptothek, Munich) from the pediments of the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina (Aiyina). The artistic merit of Archaic sculpture was first recognized in the late 19th century. The figures of the east pediment seem as full of life as the athletes described by the poet Pindar.

Archaic sculptors continued casting bronze statuettes. Examples from the 6th century bc have muscular limbs, a narrow arch for the lower boundary of the thorax, and horizontal markings. Sphinxes and other forms sculptured in stone served as finials, or headpieces, on gravestones.

B.

Architecture

Aware of Egyptian temples in stone, the Greeks began to build their own stone temples in a distinctive style in the 7th century. They used limestone in Italy and Sicily, marble in the Greek islands and Asia Minor, and limestone covered with marble on the Greek mainland. Later they built chiefly in marble. The temples were rectangular and stood on a low, stepped terrace in an enclosure where rituals were performed. Small temples had a two-columned front porch, sometimes with a portico before it. Larger temples, with front and back porches, might have a six-columned portico before each porch or be entirely surrounded by a peristyle. The colonnade supported an entablature, or lintel, under the gabled, tiled roof.

Two orders of architecture, or styles of columns, the Doric and the Ionic, developed. Doric columns, which had no base and whose capitals consisted of a square slab over a round cushion-like element, were heavy and closely spaced to support the weight of the masonry. Their heaviness was relieved by their tapered and fluted shaft. On the entablature, vertical triglyphs were carved over every column, leaving between them oblong—later square—metopes, which were at first painted and later filled with painted reliefs. The Doric style originated on the Greek mainland and became widespread. The Doric temples at Syracuse, Paestum, Selinus, Acragus, Pompeii, Tarentum (Taranto), Metapontum, and Corcyra (modern Corfu) still exist. Especially notable is the Temple of Poseidon at Paestum (450 bc).

Ionic columns, which were first used in Ionia (Asia Minor) and the Greek islands, are more slender, more narrowly fluted, and spaced further apart than Doric columns. Each rests on a horizontally fluted round base and terminates in a capital shaped like a flat cushion rolled into volutes at the sides. The entablature, lighter than in the Doric style, might have a frieze. Examples of Ionic temples can be seen at Ephesus, near modern İzmir, Turkey; in the form of the Erechtheum, Athens; and (some traces) in Naucratis, Egypt.

C.

Vase Painting

About 675 bc vase painters in Corinth began to decorate their wares with black figures in silhouette, usually of running animals with rounded forms, arranged in one or more small friezes. This is called the proto-Corinthian style. In the fully developed Corinthian style, which flourished until 550 bc and of which numerous examples survive, the vases are crowded with figures set against backgrounds of floral ornament. The vases often depict fabulous monsters such as the fire-breathing Chimaera, a creature with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail. Similar Oriental motifs appear on vases found in Laconia, Boeotia, Khalkis, Rhodes, and Sardis.

By the Middle Archaic period, Athens was saturating the market for vases. Athenian vases have been found in the Aegean Islands, North Africa, Asia Minor, Italy, and Sicily, and even in France, Spain, and the Crimea. The popularity of Athenian pottery was based on its practical excellence and its beautiful proportions, its velvety, jet-black finish, and the lively narrative scenes with which it was decorated.

Athenian vase decoration was in the black-figure style, which had been brought from Corinth to Athens about 625 bc and blended with the more linear and larger-scale Athenian style. The decoration was painted in black slip on the red ground of the clay. Details were incised and were sometimes emphasized and given three-dimensionality by the use of red and white highlights.

From this period on, scenes depicted on the vases and the artists who painted them are often identified by inscriptions. About 30 vase painters signed their names on the vases, and about 100 are identified by their style. Modern names have been assigned to the latter painters on the basis of the present-day location of a good example of their work, for example, the Berlin Painter; the subject of a prominent work, for example, the Pig Painter; a collection containing their works, for example, the St Audries Painter; or the name of the potter for whom the painter worked, for example, the Amasis Painter. Among masterpieces are the François Vase made in 560 bc by Ergotinus and painted by Clitias (Museo Archeologico, Florence), the Dionysus Cup by Exekias (Glyptothek), and works by two of the most distinguished painters in the black-figure style, Lydos and the Amasis Painter (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

Vases decorated in the red-figure style, believed to have been introduced by the Andocides Painter, were first produced about 530 bc. The decoration was produced by negative painting; the background was painted black, leaving the red of the clay in the shapes of the figures. Instead of being incised in the clay, details were drawn in black slip in a stiff, wiry line that often stands out in slight relief. An additional colour, a new golden brown, obtained by diluting black slip, was also used.

About 540 bc Athenian vase painters developed still another style, exemplified in a cup known as the Antaius Krater by the potter Euphronius. Besides taking an intense interest in the anatomy of the human body, these innovators developed a new conception of space, which they expressed through foreshortening and the use of a brown wash for shading. Thus was initiated a type of painting in which three-dimensionality is indicated both by shading and by contrasting areas of colour.

Although the black-figure style continued to dominate throughout the Archaic period, production of the red-figure style gradually increased. Among important Late Archaic vase painters were Duris, the Brygus Painter, the Berlin Painter, and the Cleophrades Painter.