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158-563: Maniera greca ("Greek style/manner") was the Italian term used at the time, and by Vasari and others; it is one of the first post-classical European terms for style in art . Vasari was no admirer, defining the Renaissance as a rejection of "that clumsy Greek style" ("quella greca goffa maniera"); other Renaissance writers were similarly critical. This also covered actual Byzantine icons in Italy; by

316-589: A rinascita (rebirth), author Jules Michelet in his Histoire de France (1835) suggested the adoption of Vasari's concept, using the term Renaissance (rebirth, in French) to distinguish the cultural change. The term was adopted thereafter in historiography and is still in use today. Vasari was born prematurely on 30 July 1511 in Arezzo , Tuscany . Recommended at an early age by his cousin Luca Signorelli , he became

474-540: A Flemish sculptor working in Rome and his pupils such as Rombaut Pauwels . Duquesnoy's Saint Susanna (1633) in Santa Maria di Loreto, Rome is an example. At the time even artists in Rome were able to see very little actual ancient Greek sculpture , and their idea of "Greekness" is rather subtle and hard to reconstruct today; to a large degree it relates to Hellenistic sculpture rather than that of earlier periods, and gives

632-412: A box decorated with varying degrees of complexity, closed by a lid on which are depicted full body portraits of the deceased, alone or in couples, reclining as if at a banquet, or as if asleep. The cinerary urns adopted the same scheme, only in smaller dimensions. Important archaeological finds have been made in Arezzo , Perugia , Cortona , Volterra , Cerveteri and Chiusi , among other cities. From

790-489: A characterization by style rather than a record of the place of origin. Especially for Venetian paintings , modern art history may use local terms such as scuola veneto-bizantina ("Venetian-Byzantine school") or "Byzantine (Greco-Venetian) School", especially in Italian. Maniera greca had a different meaning from the 17th century, when it described a trend in Baroque sculpture especially associated with Francois Duquesnoy ,

948-415: A collection of full body portraits and in busts that in their naturalism approach the style of Roman sculpture in these genres. After Alexandria was founded, the city soon became an important center of Hellenistic culture. The famous Library , which included one of the world's first museums , was built there, and around it flourished an important group of philosophers, literati, and scientists, who made

1106-471: A commercial center suffered a decline, facing competition from the free port of Delos , but at this stage the local patrons seem to have made a special effort to encourage the native artists. For quite some time Rhodes was judged to be a hotbed of innovations in sculpture, associating it with the formulation of the "baroque" style of the Hellenistic period, but recent studies have revised this opinion and placed

1264-575: A considerable fortune. He married Niccolosa Bacci, a member of one of the richest and most prominent families of Arezzo. He was made Knight of the Golden Spur by the Pope. He was elected to the municipal council of his native town and finally, rose to the supreme office of gonfaloniere . He built a fine house in Arezzo in 1547 and decorated its walls and vaults with paintings. It is now a museum in his honour named

1422-601: A continuous frieze and acroteria on the outside, which unfortunately are quite eroded, and inside another large frieze with marine scenes and zoomorphic capitals. At the same site sculptures have been found decorating several other buildings, such as the theater , the stoa of Antigonus Gônatas , the monument to Mithradates VI Eupátor , and the House of the Trident, the latter with an unusual decoration of stucco reliefs. Of uncertain dating, but possibly being another example of this phase

1580-459: A decidedly anti-classical feature. Although this historicism was born from a look to the past, it worked on themes that were still valid, and the resulting eclecticism, although aesthetically ambiguous, created a repertoire of new forms and updated old ones that contributed to a greater artistic richness and variety to the period, formulating a new language that was essentially current and cosmopolitan for them IV. The individualistic nature, from

1738-675: A differentiated tradition began, of statuettes created in series from molds that worked in a naturalistic style a variety of themes and that served various purposes - decoration, ex-voto , funeral offering in a low cost practice that spread quickly throughout the Hellenic world. Tanagra , along with other cities in Boeotia , became known from the late 4th century BC onwards for its vast production of polychrome statuettes depicting mostly women and young girls dressed in sophisticated clothes, wearing fans, mirrors, hats, and other fashionable apparatuses, creating

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1896-544: A few other very old buildings in Venice (the Fondaco dei Turchi for example) and on the small islands of Torcello ( Torcello Cathedral ) and Murano in the lagoon, but is not often used for other buildings (until 19th-century revivals such as Westminster Cathedral and Bristol Byzantine ). Even the rest of Venetian Gothic architecture does not owe much to Byzantium . The people of the parts of southern Italy and Sicily ruled by

2054-619: A late boost in popularity in the decades after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 brought a new influx of Greeks and icons to Italy. Prominent collectors included Pope Paul II (d. 1471), who by 1457 had 23 micromosaic icons and 13 painted or relief ones. Some later passed to Lorenzo de' Medici , who owned 11 mosaic icons at his death in 1492. The Greek Cardinal Bessarion gave several icons to Saint Peter's, Rome , and lent Greek manuscripts to Francesco d'Este to be copied; d'Este many have had some of Paul II's icons. Italian painting up to about 1200

2212-514: A more restrained and less dramatic style of Baroque than that of, say, Bernini . The Italo-Byzantine icon style is usually said to have become common after the Sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the Fourth Crusade . The booty brought back to Europe included many icons, which probably stimulated demand for more, and provided models for local artists. The portable panel painting was not a usual form in

2370-593: A new formal repertoire in the long tradition of ceramic statuary, believed to have been inspired by Menander's comedy . These statues are especially attractive for the variety of gestures and postures and the refined workmanship, but although Tanagra excelled in this type of production and lent its name to this whole genre of statuary - called Tanagra figurines - there is evidence that the typical style began to develop in Athens, spreading from there to other centers. But other terracotta schools also developed, falling outside

2528-588: A new sculptural typology was created, that of sarcophagi with portraits, which will be discussed in the section Sarcophagi and cinerary urns. Another Etruscan contribution to Hellenistic sculpture is the formulation of the type of the seated mother with her child in her lap, known as koine , whose best known specimen is the Mater Matuta from the National Archaeological Museum in Florence . Typical of

2686-482: A profound shake-up and begins to experience a transformation that would make that traditional, communal life a thing of the past. Alexander founded several cities in his campaigns, encouraging important migrations of Greek populations, including thousands of artists, who went to try their luck in an entirely foreign ethnic and cultural environment, building new societies whose dominant note was insecurity and mobility, at all levels. After his death, his successors engaged in

2844-441: A pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia , a skillful painter of stained glass . Sent to Florence at the age of sixteen by Cardinal Silvio Passerini , he joined the circle of Andrea del Sarto and his pupils, Rosso Fiorentino and Jacopo Pontormo , where his humanist education was encouraged. He was befriended by Michelangelo , whose painting style would influence his own. Vasari enjoyed high repute during his lifetime and amassed

3002-419: A remarkable 81% of the households of Venetian labourers possessed artworks of some sort; when icons, these would have mostly have been very small, and perhaps mostly Cretan imports (see below). However, by this period alla greca icons had come to seem old-fashioned, although some lingered until the 18th century. The Cretan icon-industry was already adopting more up to date Western styles, with some success, and

3160-424: A rich resourcefulness in the handling of her clothing, which achieves effects of transparency in its fluttering movement. Possibly from the same period, and richer, is the temple of Athena at Ilion , ancient Troy . The date of the temple has been estimated to be around 300 BC, but that of its sculptural decoration is more problematic. It had 64 metopes, but it is not known how many were carved. Of those that survive,

3318-419: A series of power struggles, causing the collapse of the empire amidst intense turmoil and a widespread loss of the old references and expectations of Greco-Macedonian society. In the opposite direction, Rome began its bellicose and predatory expansion, and self-confidence, idealism and the old social and religious collective values declined, generating a withdrawal and disenchantment in individuals in face of

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3476-532: A simplified treatment and rougher, though expressive, finish. The colors are also diversified, with lighter shades being found. Relatively few finds are connected to sacred contexts, evidencing an essentially profane use of the statuettes. Of the various deities previously found in abundance, only Eros remains a really common type, and the other gods that are occasionally identified show such humanized features that their merely decorative purpose seems well established. The mass production of this phase gains in variety by

3634-886: A simply chronological appreciation tends to be misleading, leading one to believe that the style evolved linearly, when the evidence indicates that the process was rather cumulative, rather than successive. Greece remained a productive region throughout the Hellenistic period. Although Athens lost its ancient primacy, it remained active - and in fact started a neoclassical movement through the Neo-Attic School, of great influence on Roman sculpture - along with Olympia , Argos , Delphi , and Corinth , while several new centers were established for example in Messene , Miletus , Priene , Cyprus , Samothrace , and Magnesia . Worth special attention, however, are Rhodes and Magna Graecia . Tangra also deserves some attention, but will be dealt with in

3792-478: A style whose tenor was narrative and rhetorical . There was even a technical terminology borrowed from literary rhetoric to describe the formal elements favored in Hellenistic sculpture: auxesis (amplification), makrology (expansion), dilogia (repetition), pallilogia (recapitulation), megaloprepeia (grandeur), deinosis (intensity), ekplexis (shock), enargeia (vivacity), anthitesis (contrast), and pathos (emotional drama). III. A tendency toward erudition, manifested in

3950-413: A universal community and individuals as unique agents of their evolution and responsible for their own lives, no longer privileged by birth or nationality, synthesizing a humanism that over time dissolved much of the ancient Greek dislike for the barbarians , opened space for the creation of a liberal, pragmatic, and self-sufficient bourgeoisie - a substantial new market for sculpture - and made possible

4108-559: A very relevant contribution to Hellenistic culture as a whole, but in the field of sculpture, contrary to what had been thought for a long time, recent research indicates that the result was much poorer. Egypt had a long and brilliant sculptural tradition, and the Macedonian pharaohs , finding a culture firmly established, developed a dual artistic practice. For the Hellenistic elite, who lived mainly in Alexandria and had little connection with

4266-481: A view that only a few decades ago began to be dissolved to make room for more positive and comprehensive views of its intrinsic merits, although some still consider, with their reasons, that technical virtuosity may have replaced content, that aesthetic freedom and the privatization of taste have led to a decline in overall quality, and that the works often suffer from triviality and sentimental excesses, which easily descend into melodrama and give rise to an emphasis on

4424-475: Is "one of the nourishments that maintain them". References Sources Copies of Vasari's Lives of the Artists online: Hellenistic sculpture Hellenistic sculpture represents one of the most important expressions of Hellenistic culture, and the final stage in the evolution of Ancient Greek sculpture. The definition of its chronological duration, as well as its characteristics and meaning, have been

4582-453: Is a relatively late piece, probably painted around 1340 in Italy, perhaps in Pisa , by no means entirely in the old Italo-Byzantine style. One Greek scholar describes it as "a work which most likely no Byzantine of the period would have recognized as a Greek icon". It is especially significant because by the time a canon of Cambrai Cathedral bought it for the cathedral in 1450 it was believed to be

4740-710: Is a significant legacy are Taranto, one of the best preserved areas in terms of sculpture from the 3rd century BC, and Agrigento . From the origins of Rome, its sculpture was under Greek influence. First through Etruscan art , which was an interpretation of the art of the Archaic Period in Greece, and then with the contact with the Greek colonies in Magna Graecia , in the south of the Italian peninsula . Having started their expansion into

4898-403: Is becoming increasingly clear that the period can no longer be considered merely a confused and unhappy transition between the classical Greek and imperial Roman civilizations, nor analyzed through simplifications and comparisons with other eras, that it deserves specific attention, that its artists showed their importance by preserving alive a venerable tradition while being open to innovations, to

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5056-588: Is incorrect; Andrea died several years before Domenico. In another example, Vasari's biography of Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, whom he calls " Il Sodoma ", published only in the second edition of the Lives (1568) after Bazzi's death, condemns the artist as being immoral, bestial, and vain. Vasari dismisses Bazzi's work as lazy and offensive, despite the artist's having been named a Cavalier of the Supreme Order of Christ by Pope Leo X and having received important commissions for

5214-591: Is much evidence that the Cretan trade declined significantly, as the European demand had been reduced. There were also workshops led by masters with a much better reputation, who produced works of much higher quality. El Greco was trained in this part of the Cretan industry, running his own workshop for a few years before he emigrated to Italy in 1567, at the age of about 26. His very individual later Italian style might fairly be characterized as "Italo-Byzantine", though in fact

5372-551: Is now less popular among scholars. According to John Steer , "down to the thirteenth century ... all Italian local schools [of painting] were provincial variants of the central Byzantine tradition". Most of the artists of Italo-Byzantine paintings are unknown, though we know some facts about later transitional figures such as Coppo di Marcovaldo in Florence (active mid-13th century), and Berlinghiero of Lucca (active c. 1228–42). The gold ground style encouraged strong outlines in

5530-410: Is still questioned by resistant nuclei of the critics and its study is made difficult for a series of technical reasons, it seems that the full rehabilitation of Hellenistic sculpture among scholars is only a matter of time, because for the general public it has already revealed itself to be of great interest, guaranteeing the success of the exhibitions where it is shown. The sculpture of Classicism,

5688-607: Is the Hieron of the Sanctuary of the Great Gods of Samothrace , with several reliefs of centaurs on the portico , and several statues on the north pediment, together with acroterial Nices, but these must be of much later date, possibly mid-2nd century BC Between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC Pergamos emerged as one of the most active centers of sculpture production, due to the generous patronage of its kings Attalus I and Eumenes II . Under

5846-570: The Arsacid Empire , which soon began an expansion and eventually supplanted its mother state. In this period a process of reversion to ancient traditions began, the effect of which spread beyond the borders and determined an anti-Hellenistic reaction also in India , Syria , Arabia , Anatolia and other regions, declining local interest in sculpture. While the Greco-Macedonian presence lasted, there

6004-550: The Buddhist religion, namely, the image of Buddha itself, when until then its representation was taboo . In it they largely preserved the Hindu artistic canons, but in other genres, less loaded with symbolism, the Western traits in statuary are more evident. This School flourished until the 5th century A.D. The temples and public buildings of the Hellenistic period generally do not continue

6162-536: The Casa Vasari , whilst his residence in Florence is also preserved. In 1563, he helped found the Florentine Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno , with Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici and Michelangelo as capi of the institution. Thirty-six artists were chosen as members. He died on 27 June 1574 in Florence , Grand Duchy of Tuscany , aged 62. In 1529, he visited Rome where he studied

6320-521: The Holy Face of Lucca (originally 11th-century or earlier), and the 12th-century Catalan Batlló Majesty . The painted crucifixes typically included many smaller figures in sections at the four extremities of the cross, and built out to the sides below the horizontal arms, level with Christ's torso and legs, as in the cross in Sarzana Cathedral , dated 1138, the earliest dated Tuscan painting. Of

6478-524: The Peloponnese in 196, Syria and Anatolia in 187, Corinth in 146, Athens in 86, and Sicily in 73-71, seizures so large that they sometimes caused indignation among the Roman senators themselves. The result, however, was to cover Rome with Hellenistic art, and to attract to the new power several craftsmen, such as Polycles , Sosicles , and Pasitles , who began to create a local school of sculpture, which

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6636-955: The Vasari Sacristy ), Arezzo, and other places. Many of his paintings still exist, the most important being on the wall and ceiling of the Sala di Cosimo I in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, where he and his assistants worked from 1555. Vasari also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo , now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio. In Rome, he painted frescos in the Sala Regia . Among his better-known pupils or followers are Sebastiano Flori , Bartolomeo Carducci , Mirabello Cavalori (Salincorno), Stefano Veltroni (of Monte San Savino ), and Alessandro Fortori (of Arezzo). His last major commission

6794-639: The Victory of Samothrace , is a production of Rhodes, but there is no conclusive evidence. Syracuse was, before it was devastated by the Romans, one of the richest cities in Magna Grecia, with a flourishing sculptural activity. After the Roman passage, which deprived it of its entire collection, the city regained some artistic prestige through the production of terracotta statuary from local traditions. Other cities where there

6952-590: The Villa Farnese and other sites. Vasari's biographies are interspersed with amusing gossip. Many of his anecdotes seem plausible, while others are assumed fictions, such as the tale of young Giotto painting a fly on the surface of a painting by Cimabue that supposedly, the older master repeatedly tried to brush away (a genre tale that echoes anecdotes told of the Greek painter Apelles ). He did carry out research archives for exact dates, as modern art historians do, and his biographies are considered more reliable in

7110-545: The history of art from those times to the present day. The philosophy of the Hellenistic period carried forward the debate on aesthetics that had been inaugurated by Socrates and Plato in previous years. Plato's ethics preached that art at best was only an imperfect simulacrum of abstract truths, and therefore lacked deep value and credibility, and should in all cases serve a moral and pedagogical cause. Socrates before him had suggested that art could express individual pathos , and Aristotle , taking this motto and opposing

7268-433: The pathological side of reality. But it seems that as the years go by, Hellenistic sculpture, along with the other cultural expressions of the period, is heading for a full rehabilitation. As early as 1896, Frank Bigelow Tarbell wrote that the general public was more comfortable with the immediacy, spontaneity, variety, and popular emotional appeal of the Hellenistic style than with the "more severe and sublime creations of

7426-512: The Byzantines during the High Middle Ages often continued to speak Greek until about the 16th century and had Greek Orthodox religious habits. They and things relating to them may be called Italo-Byzantine, or alternatively "Italo-Greek" or "Italo-Albanian". The Eastern Catholic Italo-Byzantine or Italo-Albanian Catholic Church was set up to enable them to keep Orthodox traditions within

7584-573: The Catholic Church; it now has some 70,000 members, not all in Italy. Variants of maniera greca in contemporary sources such as inventories included alla greca , more greco , grechescha and pittura greca , as well as ones using "Cretan" or "Candia", the Venetian name for Heraklion , then as now the main city on Crete . These included quadro a la candiota and quadro candiota piccolo ("a small Candia picture"); they are probably best regarded as

7742-463: The East came a marked tendency toward naturalism in the figurative scenes and a taste for abstract decoration or that used phyto- and zoomorphic motifs profusely, some very typical such as the palm leaf, elephants, and lion hunting. In Lebanon , in the royal cemetery of Sidon , several examples of fine workmanship were found, among them the famous Alexander Sarcophagus, so called because it shows scenes from

7900-414: The East, which gave the production an eclectic and historicist character. At the same time the sculptors rivaled in demonstrations of technical virtuosity in the extreme refinement of the stone carving, visible in many specimens. The classical heritage remained the original reference standard, the language common to all, upon which innovations could be better identified and appreciated, even when they took on

8058-645: The Etruscan tradition is the preference for the use of terracotta in the production of ex-votos , sophisticated decorative pieces, vases - some in the shape of a human head - and in architectural decoration, with high quality specimens in several temples in Luni , Tarquinia and elsewhere, which exhibit traces of the Eastern Hellenistic influence. Finally, the Etruscans also proved to be expert craftsmen in bronze, creating

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8216-536: The Greek polis, and within a few decades the Persian elite became Hellenized, and every aspirant to an important social position now needed to know Greek and be versed in Hellenic culture. But the impact of Hellenization, if it reached various cultural forms, did not prevail among the mass of the people and, throughout local history, proved fleeting. In the mid 3rd century BC the Seleucid Empire fragmented, giving rise to

8374-409: The Greek tradition of sculpture were the development of new techniques, the refinement of the representation of human anatomy and emotional expression, and a change in the goals and approaches to art, abandoning the generic for the specific. This translated into the abandonment of the classical idealism of an ethical and pedagogical character in exchange for an emphasis on everyday human aspects and

8532-537: The High Classicism that preceded it, although on the ground of style itself their classical origin remains evident. They begin the process of abandoning idealization in order to bring representation down to the human level, even when it comes to the image of deities. Not without a hint of irony Jerome Pollitt comments on a work attributed to Praxitheles, the Apollo Sauroctonos , and sees in it a burlesque image of

8690-477: The Italo-Byzantine style, but also developing it in new directions in terms of representing solidity and depth, and loosening up the age-old Byzantine poses. This approach, and its further development by Giotto , was slowly taken up by the main workshops in other cities, but many lesser figures in smaller or more remote cities and towns continued the old style for a considerable time. The Cambrai Madonna

8848-518: The Mediterranean, in their military campaigns the Romans sacked several cities where there were large collections of Hellenistic sculpture, among them the prosperous Syracuse, dominated in 212 BC . According to accounts, the war booty was fantastic, and, taken to Rome, it began to adorn the capital, immediately displacing in public favor sculpture of Greco-Etruscan tradition. This plunder was followed by several others, Tarentum in 209, Eretria in 198,

9006-454: The Olympian gods, and going beyond the limits of the frieze to place characters advancing into the steps of the monument, subverting the traditional conventions that governed the relationship between statuary and architecture . On the other hand, the frieze of Thelepheus rescued the importance of the background but added unprecedented details of landscape scenes. Another important monument in

9164-561: The Orthodox, to have remained unchanged since the very beginning of Christianity, and in several cases to derive either from miraculous acheiropoieta or "icons not made by human hands", or from supposed portrait paintings of Christ or the Virgin painted from the life, by Saint Luke or others. Some, especially among the clergy, felt that the beauty and greater naturalism of newer Italian styles distracted from devotion. The Greek originals received

9322-451: The Phydian era" (although he made it evident that among expert critics things were different), Arnold Hauser said in 1951 that Hellenistic art, because of its internationalist hybridity, had direct relations with modernity, and Brunilde Ridgway , writing in 2000, stated that the general acceptance is confirmed today, when exhibitions of Hellenistic art have attracted "hordes of visitors." It

9480-467: The Renaissance these were imported on a large scale from Crete , then a Venetian possession. Especially in later periods, the terms also cover paintings done in Italy by Greek or Greek-trained artists; some of these are difficult to distinguish from works of the Cretan School , the main source of Greek imports to Europe. In the mid-20th century, many of these were attributed to Venetian Dalmatia , which

9638-492: The Roman taste becomes predominant as the empire expands, barbarian influences appear, and Hellenistic terracotta production comes to an end at the end of the 1st century BC. Among the Greeks the custom of burial in sarcophagi was rare in the pre-Hellenistic periods. The dead were cremated or buried in discrete receptacles. But from the end of the 4th century, with the greater penetration of Eastern influences, where funeral pomp

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9796-468: The Tangagras was fading. In the transition to the 1st century BC the ancient types have already lost their vitality and the production becomes standardized, possibly even acquiring a tourist souvenir character, since by this time Greece was no more than a Roman province, and as a result of the Roman plundering of the great cities the remaining material is scarce and often badly damaged. As for the other regions,

9954-661: The West before this, though a few Byzantine examples had arrived, and were often highly revered, and a few had been locally produced, like the possibly 7th-century Madonna della Clemenza . The 13th century also saw a great increase in devotions to the Virgin Mary, led by the Franciscan Order , founded five years after the sack. At this point most examples were probably made for churches, or for great households; these tended to be left to churches later. The reasons and forces that led to

10112-498: The abstractions themselves, such as courage, forgiveness, wisdom, combativeness, take on human form and are individually deified. Formally the general characteristics of Hellenistic sculpture derive mainly from the work of three great artists, Scopas , Praxiteles and Lysippos , who lead the transition from Classicism to the Hellenistic tradition in the mid 4th century BC. In terms of expressiveness and narrative character their production has much more to do with Hellenistic than with

10270-522: The addition of individualized details after the piece is removed from the mold and before firing, and no two pieces are found to be identical. The relative scarcity of relics, their less intact general state, and the presence in many sites of retrospective style figures complicate the study of 2nd century BC terracottas, and the frequent mixing of objects from different periods in the same archaeological stratum, perhaps caused by mass discarding, complicating dating work. The number of nude figures decreases and

10428-589: The appearance of the insignia of power, showing a carefully selective adaptation of the Hellenistic style. Following the partition of the Alexandrine empire, the Hellenistic empire of the Seleucids was formed in the Middle East , with several new cities founded by Alexander and his successors. With the gradual dissolution of the old Persian institutions, many other older cities adopted an administrative model similar to

10586-507: The arts had been in the air since the time of Alberti . Vasari's term, applied to the change in artistic styles with the work of Giotto, eventually would become the French term Renaissance (rebirth) widely applied to the era that followed. Vasari was responsible for the modern use of the term Gothic art , as well, although he only used the word Goth in association with the German style that preceded

10744-555: The avid demand for famous classicist compositions by the large Roman consumer market. As a consequence, Hellenistic sculpture became a central influence in the entire history of sculpture in Ancient Rome . Through Hellenized Rome, an invaluable collection of formal models and copies of important pieces by famous Greek authors was preserved for posterity, whose originals eventually disappeared in later times, and without which our knowledge of Ancient Greek sculpture would be much poorer. On

10902-422: The case of his contemporary painters and those of the preceding generation. Modern criticism – with new materials produced by research – has revised many of his dates and facts. Vasari included a short autobiography at the end of the Lives , and added further details about himself and his family in his lives of Lazzaro Vasari and Francesco Salviati . According to the historian Richard Goldthwaite, Vasari

11060-443: The chronology of the style and geographical tracing of its courses and derivations; the distinction between originals and copies can be problematic, and almost the entire 3rd century BC. C. is surprisingly depopulated with relics. Let us add that all the recent progress in criticism had - and still has - to face a strong historical prejudice against Hellenistic sculpture, which sees in it only a tasteless degeneration of Greek Classicism,

11218-581: The church of Santa Croce in Bosco Marengo ( Province of Alessandria , Piedmont ). In 1562, Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia , an important example of High Renaissance architecture. In Rome, Vasari worked with Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and Bartolomeo Ammannati at Pope Julius III 's Villa Giulia . Often called "the first art historian", Vasari invented

11376-430: The closed environments of the tombs and be installed outdoors in necropolis . Such artistic forms would take on great importance in the Hellenistic religious universe, and would continue later, in the Roman world and then throughout Christianity , to be greatly honored. Not only did this typology expand, but it also began to reflect, in the iconography chosen for decoration, changes in Greek conceptions about life beyond

11534-417: The congregation, so with his back to them for much of the time. This encouraged the creation of altarpieces behind and above the altar were a visual devotional focus. Most larger Italo-Byzantine paintings were altarpieces, for which the elaborately-framed polyptych or "composite altarpiece" form soon developed. These were especially common in Venice, where large mural schemes in fresco were rare; mosaic

11692-537: The contribution of philosophers such as Pythagoras , who said that art was an effective power, capable of influencing people for good or evil, according to whether they obeyed or violated certain principles of balance and form. He also said that art should imitate the divine order, which was based on defined numerical relationships, and expressed in the harmony, coherence, and symmetry of natural objects. He had worked his ideas out from his research with mathematics and music , but it wasn't long before they were applied to

11850-472: The decay of status from a virile dragon-killing god to an effeminate effete who can barely scare away a common lizard, in a period when the ancient myths were beginning to lose their divine aura and their real power of inspiration, and were beginning to be discredited in a society that was strongly profane and urban, but which could therefore turn its attention more intensely to the portrait of man, his specific problems and successes, and his inner universe. On

12008-483: The development of Christian iconography . The contact between Greek and Etruscan civilizations is documented since the 8th century BC, and throughout the history of Etruscan art the Greek influence remained strong. At the end of the 4th century BC, when the Etruscan Hellenistic begins, the Roman presence already began to predominate over the region, and its culture went into decline. Even so, in this period

12166-400: The development of altarpieces are not generally agreed upon. Placing decorated reliquaries of saints on or behind the altar, as well as the tradition of decorating the front of the altar with sculptures or textiles, preceded the first altarpieces. During the 13th century, liturgical changes (only reversed in the 20th century) placed the priest celebrating mass on the same side of the altar as

12324-417: The directing of production toward purely aesthetic and, occasionally, propagandistic ends. The attention paid to man and his inner life, his emotions, his common problems and longings, resulted in a realist style that tended to reinforce the dramatic, the prosaic, and the moving, and with this appeared the first individualized and verisimilitude portraits in Western art. At the same time, a great expansion of

12482-420: The entire philosophy and religion of the period, also influenced literature, with the appearance of biographies and memoirs of illustrious characters, and sculpture, in the sense that the realistic representation of picturesque types and of the inner world of the characters, expressed through the emotions stamped on their faces and body attitudes, was now sought after. This desire for artistic realism, together with

12640-512: The establishment of several Greco-Oriental kingdoms. The culture of classical Greece, on which Macedonia was dependent, was defined within a relatively limited worldview, circumscribed to the city-state, the polis . Even though the Greeks founded a number of colonies around the Mediterranean and the Black Sea , and maintained contact with several other countries, their cultural reference remained

12798-501: The expanded interest in the geography and history of other countries, in books describing foreign ethnic features and their cultural wonders, in linguistics, with the elaboration of grammars, dictionaries, and compendiums of cultured and difficult words. It was the time when great libraries and museums were founded, such as the one in Alexandria , when planned and systematized art collections were formed, and archaisms were cultivated in

12956-429: The face of the new worldly and corrupt urban landscape, which would be the source of a very long tradition of seeking a return to the simple life, primitive and authentic peasant life, even if this return could never be realized in fact except symbolically, in the periodic classicist revivalisms - the first of which would occur at the end of the Hellenistic period - and within the dreams of poetic pastoralism that populate

13114-431: The fame of his horse Bucephalus produced a tendency to magnify the size of the representations of these animals in relation to previous periods. The description of Hellenistic sculpture, a subject of great complexity which is still the source of much controversy and uncertainty, can only be made, in a summary such as this, generically. The multiplicity of production centers, the great mobility of sculptors among them, and

13272-709: The famous Farnese Bull , now in Naples . Atenodorus , Polydorus and Agesander , three natives of Rhodes, are the authors of one of the most paradigmatic works of the Baroque phase of the Hellenistic period, the Laocoön and His Sons , and of another remarkable set of sculptures found in the cave of the Villa of Tiberius in Sperlonga , depicting scenes from the adventures of Odysseus . Finally, it has been suggested that another work of great fame,

13430-430: The famous Colossus, a gigantic bronze image representing Helios , the local patron god, designed around 304 by Chares of Lindos , a pupil of Lysippus. Pliny still mentions the name of Briaxis as the author of some important pieces, and that of Lysippus as the creator of another colossal Helios, depicted in a quadriga . It is also possibly a copy of an original from Rhodes, produced by Taurisik and Apollonius of Trales ,

13588-563: The first half of the 2nd century is the great temple of Artemis Leucofriene in Magnesia . Among its decorations are a frieze with animals and a long frieze showing Amazonomachy , with 340 carved figures. Its quality is not of the highest, but its interest lies in the great diversity of plastic solutions, which avoid any monotony. In the same city there is an altar of Artemis with significant decoration, with many remaining fragments of human and animal figures. An entire frieze with bucraniums , however,

13746-411: The first, the type of wounded warriors was developed, celebrated in the dying Galatians and Amazons , and under the second, the great Altar of Zeus was built, decorated with friezes and statuary of great expressiveness. The Altar is the richest decorated monument of the entire period and the most important achievement of the "baroque" trend, whose potential Epigonus of Pergamos , the chief sculptor of

13904-493: The function and reading of art and gave prestige to individual creativity. At the same time, it favored the secularization of its character, making room for the use of sculpture as a form of political and personal propaganda. Once primarily devoted to the sacred function and the public commemoration of heroes and athletes , whose rationale was primarily ethical, didactic, and idealistic, the elite now desired works that were primarily personalistically motivated and whose character

14062-412: The general lines of Platonic idealistic thought on aesthetics, approached the issue empirically, trying to discover other uses and meanings for artists' creations. He developed the concept of catharsis , supposing that art could educate the spirit by simulating the human emotional weaknesses themselves, he widened the way for individual emotionalism and visions to be cultivated, and with this he relativized

14220-474: The genre of Tanagras, not always using molds, which feature a much wider variety of types, including slaves, dancers, men, old men, knights, children, deities, theatrical characters, dolls, animals, miniaturized vases, relief plates, and loose heads. Their level of quality, however, is very uneven. Towards the end of the third century there appear the types of seated figures and that of teachers and philosophers, which exhibit serious and contemplative features, with

14378-528: The genre of the encyclopedia of artistic biographies with his Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori ( Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects ). This work was first published in 1550 and dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici . Vasari introduced the term "Rinascita" (rebirth in Italian) in printed works – although an awareness of an ongoing "rebirth" in

14536-476: The goddess who embodied Luck or Fortune - conceived in an interpretation associated with destiny - and in the portraiture of Alexander, a personality who always considered himself protected by Fortune, for even when bad luck seemed to threaten him, he was able to reverse the situation in his favor. Likewise, mirroring this interest was the depiction of events when individual fortunes changed dramatically, as in moments of great success or great failure. II. A sense of

14694-446: The grave, such as the motif of children portrayed as victorious heroes, symbolizing purity and immortality . The funeral tradition of the Etruscans was important in popularizing sarcophagi and cinerary urns during the Hellenistic period. They developed a practice of mortuary art that reached in some cases great refinement, although most pieces are more or less standardized and present an average or inferior quality. The type consists of

14852-472: The ideological foundation of all art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo , although he is now regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born. Vasari was a Mannerist painter who was highly regarded both as a painter and architect in his day, but rather less so in later centuries. He

15010-587: The importance of the Hellenistic legacy in the immense repercussion that Hellenistic works caused when they were rediscovered in the Renaissance , as was the case with Laocoon, which influenced the work of Michelangelo himself and generations after him, and when we realize the enormous popularity of pieces such as the Victory of Samothrace and especially the Venus de Milo, which could become an icon even of popular culture ,

15168-497: The invention of engraving . Venetian art in particular (along with arts from other parts of Europe), is ignored systematically in the first edition. Between his first and second editions, Vasari visited Venice and while the second edition gave more attention to Venetian art (finally including Titian ), it did so without achieving a neutral point of view. Many inaccuracies exist within his Lives . For example, Vasari writes that Andrea del Castagno killed Domenico Veneziano , which

15326-462: The island's output within a more modest profile of originality, having possibly received the influence of another major center, Pergamos . Even so, many workshops flourished there, and ancient writers such as Pliny the Elder say that Rhodes boasted three thousand statues, and about a thousand of them of enormous dimensions, which would have been enough to make the island famous had they not been eclipsed by

15484-434: The life of the common man and to the future, they have attested their erudition in the creative handling of a great formal repertoire inherited from their predecessors, they have proved their competence by developing new techniques and narrative modes, and they have produced, at their best moments, works of extraordinary refinement and powerful plastic effect. The most accurate preconceptions must be set aside when we remember

15642-554: The life of the conqueror in its reliefs, although it was meant to receive the body of a local potentate. This piece is of special interest because it was found in excellent condition, still showing many traces of its original polychrome, which allowed a modern copy to be built with the reconstitution of its primitive colors (illustrated to the right), presented during the Gods in Color exhibition, an international event entirely dedicated to spreading

15800-438: The low intrinsic quality of the sculpture or because of their small quantity, or their present state is so ruinous and depleted that it prevents an accurate evaluation of their value. Some exceptions to this rule, however, are precious and deserve a note. Dating from the early Hellenistic period is the temple of Artemis at Epidaurus . It had winged acroterial Nike , of which four remain, now without their wings. Her style shows

15958-609: The medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce . In both buildings, he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodeled the retro- choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time. In Santa Croce, he produced the painting of The Adoration of the Magi commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and completed in February 1567. It was restored recently, before being exhibited in 2011 in Rome and Naples. Eventually, it will be returned to

16116-473: The metropolis, whose society was based on the experience of defined groups living in the most important cities. According to Jerome Pollitt , "a classical Greek might travel voluntarily to seek adventure, but once the adventure was over his intention was to return to the small, safe, familiar society where his identity had been established. With the Macedonian presence on Greek soil, and with Alexander's imperialistic spirit, this more or less static world suffers

16274-464: The modern West, Hellenistic sculpture was important as a strong influence on Renaissance , Baroque , and Neoclassical production. In the 19th century Hellenistic sculpture fell into disfavor and came to be seen as a mere degeneration of the classical ideal, a prejudice that penetrated into the 20th century and only recently has begun to be put aside, through the multiplication of more comprehensive current research on this subject, and although its value

16432-468: The monument, was among the first to fully understand and exploit. A Gigantomachia and the story of Thelephus , the legendary founder of the city, are depicted there. In technical and thematic terms, the frieze of the Gigantomachia introduced several innovations, minimizing the importance of the background, taking to extremes the preciousness in the description of details, presenting minor deities alongside

16590-444: The moral poverty, political cynicism and violence of the times, aspects that were masked by the search for mere pleasure and formalized artistically through a realism sometimes full of drama. The diverse origins of the colonists and the notorious Greco-Macedonian xenophobia made lasting and reliable social alliances difficult in the conquered lands, and for the artists, patronage was subject to personal whims and frequent oscillations in

16748-547: The most important, and practically intact, is the one showing Helios and his chariot. Others are fragmentary and depict battle scenes, and possibly one of the sets deals with the Gigantomachia . Its eclectic style suggests foreign influences. Also from around 300 BC is the decoration of the House of the Bulls at Delos , an unusual long and narrow building, with colonnades and profuse sculptural ornamentation, divided between metopes,

16906-425: The notion of autarky , a concept that preached individual autonomy and independence as the basis for happiness, and indirectly encouraged the development of a wandering and adaptable spirit, averse to conventionalisms and bound to its unique and essential nature, capable of adapting to any situation, typified by the adventurous mercenary and synthesized in the cult of personality . This individualism, which permeated

17064-437: The number of winged images and individualized details in the serially created pieces increases, lending in many cases the appearance of hand-modeled pieces. This group of pieces has been called "additive" because of these additions, but their finish tends to be coarser. Figure and garment forms tended to lose their spiral organization and give way to more static compositions, at a time when the sophisticated and flowing tradition of

17222-571: The original portrait of the Virgin Mary painted by Saint Luke the Evangelist and was much copied by Early Netherlandish painters . Some copies are clearly Netherlandish in style, though preserving the pose and details of the original, but others previously thought to have been made in Italy may in fact have been made in the Netherlands by local artists. The maniera greca survived being replaced by

17380-531: The other arts, encouraging an eminently ethical use for artistic creation and fostering collective rather than individual values, which Plato 's idealistic philosophy eloquently corroborated. The spirit of Hellenistic culture began to form with the Macedonian conquest of Greece and Alexander's military expeditions to the East , which carried classical Greek culture to the banks of the Indus River and gave rise to

17538-453: The other hand, Alexander the Great himself is attributed an important influence on the introduction of new modes of sculptural representation. In the portrait of rulers, young, athletic, unshaven figures were preferred, when this genre was previously typified by mature, bearded figures. The various portraits of the general also became models for the representation of the gods Apollo and Helios, and of

17696-421: The other hand, Alexander's imperialism towards the East took Greek art to distant regions of Asia , influencing the artistic productions of several Eastern cultures, giving rise to a series of hybrid stylistic derivations and the formulation of new sculptural typologies, among which perhaps the most seminal in the East was the foundation of Buddha iconography , until then forbidden by Buddhist tradition. For

17854-415: The painful, the comic, the terrifying, the sensual, the shapeless, and the grotesque. Accompanying these changes appears for the first time in Western art a definite inclination to read works allegorically . A decline in the credibility of the ancient myths causes moral principles to be personified in other ways, and whereas in earlier art the gods embodied a series of immaterial attributes, now conversely

18012-445: The painted shapes, and "figures are formed out of abstract but expressive shapes designed to identify various body parts or items of clothing while creating beautiful patterns." The term "Italo-Byzantine" is used for sculpture much less often, as the Byzantines did not provide large models to follow for that. It may be used of ivories, mosaics and the like. In architecture it is the almost inevitable term used for San Marco, Venice , and

18170-559: The painted versions the San Damiano cross of about 1100 is one of few early survivals; perhaps it has only remained intact because Francis of Assisi had a revelation in front of it around 1206. There are more survivals from later in the century; some are not entirely flat, but have the face and halo protruding somewhat from the main plane, to help visibility from below. It was to make works such as these that Italian panel painters had presumably been trained, as well as combinations of frescos,

18328-492: The painting of sculpture in both wood and stone, and illuminating manuscripts. The main masters of the new Proto-Renaissance , including Cimabue and Giotto , about whose work we have better information, mostly painted both panels and frescos, and sometimes designed mosaics , such as Giotto's Navicella outside Old Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome, and Berlinghiero's on the facade of the Basilica of San Frediano in Lucca. Duccio

18486-423: The period immediately preceding the Hellenistic period, was built on a powerful ethical framework that had its bases in the archaic tradition of Greek society, where the ruling aristocracy had formulated for itself the ideal of arete , a set of virtues that should be cultivated for the formation of a strong morality and a socially apt, versatile and efficient character. In parallel, the concept of kalokagathia

18644-419: The practice of lavish decoration on their facades as in previous phases, with large sculptural groups on the pediments , metopes , acroteria and friezes in relief. Apparently in this period the work concentrated more on the maintenance and restoration of old buildings than on the erection of new ones. There are several decorated Hellenistic buildings, but most of them are of little interest, either because of

18802-454: The practice of the entire Hellenistic world was the fact that all this sculpture was vividly colored. Among the richest examples of this application are the pediments of a temple at Talamone , from the 2nd century BC, showing various scenes from the story of the Seven against Thebes . Terracotta statuettes were part of Greek daily life since the prehistoric periods, but in the Hellenistic period

18960-498: The praise of personality, gave rise to the first realistic portraits in Western art, which represent in Jerome Pollitt's view the most important achievement of all Hellenistic art. V. A cosmopolitan vision, the corollary of the characteristics invoked above and the mark of an expanded and perpetually changing world, subject to a multiplicity of forces, where different nations were seen by the philosophers as fraternal participants in

19118-503: The prevailing stylistic freedom have created a multifaceted and multifocal panorama, where various tendencies coexist and intersect, but the mentality of the Hellenists, and its repercussions on the art of sculpture, can be more or less defined through five dominant lines: I. An obsessive preoccupation with fate and its unpredictable and changeable character, visible in the proliferation of philosophical writings and iconography on Tyche ,

19276-476: The production of works where even physical decay, vice, and poverty could be empathetically and comprehensively represented. One of the first important studies on the subject of Hellenistic sculpture, Stilphasen der hellenistischen Plastik (1924), by Gerhard Krahmer, divided it into three phases, which greatly influenced the subsequent methodology of analysis: Later studies have proposed alternative divisions, but modern research, however, tends to consider that

19434-432: The reality of the rest of the country, a Hellenistic art was produced, and for the people an art that followed the ancient pharaonic traditions, and little interchange could be made between them. Even in the field of official portraiture, duplicity was maintained, although in rare cases a significant mixture of these two contrasting styles is observed, with changes in the traditional features of hairstyles and costumes, and in

19592-428: The rebirth, which he identified as "barbaric". The Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was partly rewritten and extended in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists (some conjectural). The work shows a consistent and notorious bias in favour of Florentines and tends to attribute to them all the developments in Renaissance art – for example,

19750-418: The river deities, including his gaze turned upwards and his dense, long, and loose hair, typical traits of those portraits. With a centralizing personality, Alexander's charisma promoted a reorganization in the scenes of battles and hunts, starting to highlight the figure of a leader, when before it was usual to treat all the characters with the same visual importance in compositions without a main focus. Finally,

19908-662: The riverside environment. In Florence, Vasari also designed the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, which connects the Uffizi with the Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the river. The corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio , and winds around the exterior of several buildings. It was once the location of the Mercado de Vecchio. He renovated

20066-468: The section on Terracottas, and Pergamos , even though it developed the typology of wounded warriors and Amazons, much appreciated and with specimens of the highest level, will appear in the section on Architectural Sculpture because of the major importance of its Altar of Zeus. The island of Rhodes was for most of the Hellenistic period a fairly active center of sculpture production, attracting masters from various backgrounds. After 167 BC its importance as

20224-531: The slow loss of Crete to the Ottomans from 1645 to 1669 seriously interrupted supplies. As the gap in style between contemporary Italian painting and Italo-Byzantine (or Greek post-Byzantine ) icons grew wider, there is evidence that at least some Italians regarded the maniera greca as superior from a devotional point of view. This was partly because of the perceived authenticity of the compositions or poses of Byzantine icons, which were believed, and proclaimed by

20382-496: The subject matter occurred, with the inclusion of depictions of old age and childhood, of minor non- Olympian deities and secondary characters from Greek mythology , and of figures of the people in their activities. The taste for historicism and erudition that characterized the Hellenistic period was reflected in sculpture in such a way as to encourage the production of new works of a deliberately retrospective nature, and also of literal copies of ancient works, especially in view of

20540-510: The subject of much discussion among art historians, and it seems that a consensus is far from being reached. The Hellenistic period is usually considered to comprise the interval between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, and the conquest of Egypt by the Romans in 30 BC. Its generic characteristics are defined by eclecticism , secularism , and historicism , building on the heritage of classical Greek sculpture and assimilating Eastern influences. Among his original contributions to

20698-417: The taste of the ruling elite as the political leanings changed. No wonder then that Pliny , a classicist, said that the 3rd century BC was a time when the arts disappeared. For some, these times may have had an exciting appeal, but the philosophers of the time point to an acute awareness that the phase was one of great instability, with even a veiled sense of guilt for the collapse of the old moral values in

20856-430: The term is not often used of it. Vasari Giorgio Vasari ( / v ə ˈ s ɑːr i / , US also /- ˈ z ɑːr -, v ɑː ˈ z ɑːr i / ; Italian: [ˈdʒordʒo vaˈzaːri] ; 30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter , architect, art historian and biographer, who is best known for his work Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects , considered

21014-401: The theatricality of life, reflected in the taste for the spectacular, for the great public manifestations of regal pomp, for the dramatic and vehement pronouncements of orators, for profane and religious festivals sumptuous and stimulating to the senses, and for sculptures where the sense of drama, of exaltation, of movement, of tumult, of rapture, of the extraordinary was intentionally sought in

21172-429: The theme of the pictorial treatment of ancient sculpture, which is so little known to the general public, but which was a widespread practice. In Ptolemaic Egypt a style of its own developed, where the major sculptural interest was in the stylized figure of the dead man lying on the covering lid, adapting the pharaonic tradition for the lower social classes. Although it has been almost two hundred years since Hellenistic

21330-469: The time its interpretation takes place among endless polemics and disputes, overturning one after another apparently established concepts, thus arousing lively opposition from other critical sectors and throwing more confusion into a study that, according to François Chamoux, is far from defining even its starting point. Understanding and just appreciation of Hellenistic sculpture is made difficult by several factors. The dating and attribution of authorship of

21488-452: The top Italian painters, indeed became more common, as increasing prosperity and cheap Cretan imports spread the possibility of owning an icon for the home down the economic scale. By the 16th century, as revealed by inventories, ownership of alla greca icons was highly common in noble households, and those of the senior clergy, and was spreading to the homes of the middle classes, and later the working classes. By 1615, one study showed that

21646-465: The trade of artistic icons between Venice and Crete, which by the end of the 15th century had become one of mass production. There is documentation of a specific order in 1499, of 700 icons of the Virgin Mary , 500 in a Western style, and 200 in Byzantine style. The order was placed with three artists by two dealers, one Venetian and one from mainland Greece , and the time between contract date and delivery

21804-548: The two styles of small and cheap devotional paintings by workshops of the Cretan School which were mass-produced in Crete (then ruled by Venice ) for export to the West. The alternative style was alla latina ("Latin style"), mostly a conservative Romanesque or Gothic style, where the Greek-style works followed traditional Byzantine style as far as their cheap price allowed. The Venetian archives preserve considerable documentation on

21962-403: The various arts, including sculpture, which evidenced the knowledge of renowned authors and the possession of an illustrated spirit. Thus, styles from previous phases were imitated in literal copies of old works, or their principles were assimilated to compose new pieces, often juxtaposing traces of different schools and periods in the same work, or integrating exotic stylistic elements brought from

22120-582: The vista at the far end of its long narrow courtyard. It is a unique piece of urban planning that functions as a public piazza, and which, if considered as a short street, is unique as a Renaissance street with a unified architectural treatment. The view of the Loggia from the Arno reveals that, with the Vasari Corridor , it is one of the very few structures lining the river that is open to the river and appears to embrace

22278-483: The works are full of doubts and inconsistencies; their provenance, function and thematic identification are often merely hypothetical; most of the originals have disappeared and are only known through Roman copies whose fidelity to the original is always an uncertainty; the primary literary sources are poor and contradictory; the known names of sculptors are few, there are no major school heads with outstanding stylistic personalities who could establish definite parameters for

22436-596: The works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance . Vasari's own Mannerist paintings were more admired in his lifetime than afterwards. In 1547, he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni . He was regularly employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome. He also worked in Naples (for example on

22594-620: Was a vast The Last Judgement fresco on the ceiling of the cupola of the Florence Cathedral that he began in 1572 with the assistance of the Bolognese painter Lorenzo Sabatini . Unfinished at the time of Vasari's death, it was completed by Federico Zuccari . Aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was successful as an architect. His loggia of the Palazzo degli Uffizi by the Arno opens up

22752-453: Was able to influence the culture of distant countries such as India and Afghanistan , which by the time of Alexander's conquests already possessed an ancient artistic tradition. By founding Hellenistic colonies in the Punjab and Bactria , they gave rise to the so-called Ghandara School. The Hellenists were responsible for the inauguration of a new sculptural typology, of immense importance for

22910-530: Was an exception here, mainly just painting panels. Venetian Crete had a busy painting industry, with Cretan, Italian, and (especially after 1453) mainland Greek artists at work. There are examples both of artists from different backgrounds setting up workshops together, and of both Italian and Cretan patrons commissioning works from a painter of a different background. At least by the late 15th century, Italian importers also used maniera greca (or in forma greca , alla greca ) in their contracts to describe one of

23068-442: Was appreciated, along with the Etruscan example, coffins for whole bodies and urns destined to receive the ashes of the cremated, in stone and terracotta, multiplied, often with sumptuous work in relief and large dimensions, bearing architectural elements such as colonnades and roof-shaped lids with acroteria, repeating the model of the temple, which gave them the character of an autonomous monument, and in these cases they could leave

23226-562: Was born already in the Archaic period, but continued throughout its history. Unlike the other Hellenistic cultures, which favored stone, the Etruscans preferred terracotta, and applied it for the decoration of the whole series of architectural elements - pediments , metopes , acroteria , capitals , friezes , etc. The compositions are characterized by a relative formal independence from the structure that holds them, and show motifs that blend Greek and local imagery. In one point where they agree with

23384-457: Was effectively what would now be called the minister of culture to the Medici court in Florence , and the Lives promoted, with enduring success, the idea of Florentine superiority in the visual arts . Vasari designed the Tomb of Michelangelo , his hero, in the Basilica of Santa Croce , Florence that was completed in 1578. Based on Vasari's text in print about Giotto 's new manner of painting as

23542-456: Was formulated, which affirmed the identity between Virtue and Beauty . Expressing these concepts in plastic forms, a new formal canon was born, developed by Polychaetus and the Phidias group, which sought the creation of human forms that were both naturalistic and ideal, through whose perfect and balanced beauty the virtues of the spirit could be perceived. These ideas had been reinforced by

23700-401: Was founded on the principles of Hellenistic art and was responsible for transmitting to posterity, through copies, a huge amount of celebrated Greek works and formal prototypes whose originals would later end up being lost, while formulating new typically Roman typologies. Later, Roman Hellenistic-Classical sculpture would be the transitional link to Byzantine art and would provide the basis for

23858-688: Was greatly preferred, but too expensive for most churches. Paolo Veneziano (active roughly from 1321 to 1360) led the development, with a style that is "still Byzantine", but increasingly influenced by the Gothic art developing north of the Alps, and personal elements. However, influence from Giotto is "almost entirely absent". In the later part of the 13th century the two leading painters in north Italy, Cimabue in Florence (active c. 1270–1303) and Duccio in Siena (active c. 1268–1311) were both trained and highly skilled in

24016-433: Was identified in its modern sense and the term received wider dissemination, and almost one hundred since analyses of its art on more scientific lines began, it can be said that up to now only the foundations for an understanding of this theme have been laid, and they are still extremely precarious. In the last decades, research has intensified enormously, but even though it brings a lot of new and important information, most of

24174-516: Was lost during World War II . A little later is the Altar of Dionysus in Kos , where most of a large frieze showing a Dionysian procession and battle scenes survives. Already mentioned before, the practice of Etruscan architectural decoration deserves some additional lines because it is one of the most typical achievements of their art and because of its unique character in the Hellenistic panorama. This tradition

24332-476: Was one of the earliest authors to use the term "competition" (or "concorrenza" in Italian) in its economic sense. He used it repeatedly, and stressed the concept in his introduction to the life of Pietro Perugino , in explaining the reasons for Florentine artistic preeminence. In Vasari's view, Florentine artists excelled because they were hungry, and they were hungry because their fierce competition amongst themselves for commissions kept them so. Competition, he said,

24490-400: Was primarily decorative. Even statues of gods came to be seen more as "works of art" than as symbolic instruments of communication with the invisible worlds. With this, private taste - which was not always the most refined and cultured - began to prevail over collective conventions, favoring a purely aesthetic practice that widely opened its thematic range to include the picturesque, the trivial,

24648-427: Was set at only forty-five days. Probably the quality of many such commissioned icons was fairly low, and the dismissive term Madonneri was devised to describe such bulk painters, who later practised in Italy also, often using a quasi-Byzantine style, and apparently often Greek or Dalmatian individuals. Production of icons at these levels seems to have led to a glut in the market, and in the following two decades there

24806-565: Was significant interchange of influences with the indigenous culture, and it seems that even Plato absorbed elements of Zoroastrian religion into his philosophy. In sculpture there survive from various sites high quality relics from the Seleucid period, especially in bronze, images of regal figures and diverse gods and statues, and from the Arsacid phase there are reliefs engraved on rocks, of great interest and distinctly hybrid style. Hellenistic art

24964-474: Was used for illuminated manuscripts , frescos , and on wood, large painted crucifixes for rood crosses in churches, as well as assorted pieces of furniture and so on. The life-size crucifixes were not a Byzantine form, and were probably regarded in Italy as a cheaper version of the crosses with a sculpted corpus or body. Famous versions of the sculpted type include the Gero Cross ( Cologne , 10th-century),

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