112 art: Greece the interior of the temple The originals that survive include 524 feet of frieze, 92 panels, and 17 statues While experts disagree about the meaning of the frieze, many believe that it depicts the procession that was held every four years in connection with the Panathenaic Games, which in turn were held in connection with a larger religious festival, the Panathenaia Classical Greek statuary is famous for its extraordinarily high degree of precision and technical perfection During the Archaic Period, the kouroi and kourai were rigid and stylized The sculptors seemed to have worked from a pattern so that many of the statues are similar in appearance None of the figures were in natural poses, and none of the sculptures seem to have captured either motion or emotion The classical Greek sculptors took the art form to new heights They came to celebrate the human form for its aesthetic beauty Even when they were depicting the gods and goddesses, they gave to the figures perfectly proportioned human forms, right down to the details of the fingers and hands The poses of their figures were more natural, and the subjects’ poses in general had more variety The statues are more fluid and realistic, and many of the figures seem to be in motion rather than held rigidly While the statues of the Archaic Period seem almost two-dimensional, those of the Classical Period are more three-dimensional, bursting with energy and movement On the other hand, the figures depicted by most of the Archaic Period sculptures were smiling, if only faintly During the Classical Period most of the figures have solemn expressions This feature reflected the Greek ideal of emphasizing reason and logic rather than emotion Art historians believe that the emphasis on depicting the human form reflected in art the same concerns that preoccupied Greek philosophers of the era: studying and observing the natural world in order to explain it Historians generally believe that these developments in philosophy and art reflected the emergence of democratic institutions in Greece during this time period The kouroi were the products of an aristocratic society; the sculptures of the Classical Period were the products of a society in which people were more equal For this reason, many of the sculptures of the Classical Period depict real people Historians believe that the statues of the heroes Aristogeiton and Harmodius in Athens, erected to celebrate the end of earlier Greek tyranny, may be the first-ever public statues of real people Also, many cemetery statues depict the deceased rather than idealized figures Classical Greek sculptors are the first Greek sculptors that historians know by name, at least in some cases One of the most prominent was Phidias (ca 493–ca 430 b.c.e.) After the general Pericles defeated the Persians and assumed power in 449 b.c.e., he named Phidias superintendent of public works in Athens and made him responsible for beautifying the city Phidias also supervised the design and construction of the Parthenon He produced two of the most famous works of the Classical Period One was the statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World This work, considered his masterpiece, showed the god Zeus seated on a throne His flesh was carved in ivory, and his tunic was made of gold The figure of Zeus himself was 42 feet high, filling the entire height of the temple Phidias’s other masterwork was his Athena Parthenos, one of three statues of the goddess Athena on the Athenian Acropolis This statue, made of gold and ivory, was 38 feet high Both of these sculptures are now lost They were destroyed by fire after they were taken to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), though copies and descriptions exist Another prominent classical sculptor was Praxiteles (ca 400–ca 330 b.c.e.), best known for his female nudes, especially the now-lost Aphrodite of Knidos His model for these nudes was probably a courtesan named Phryne, with whom he may have had a romantic relationship His sculptures are famous because they were carved and polished in a way that makes the light bounce off them, giving them a shimmering, almost lifelike appearance He was also one of the first sculptors to give his figures curly hair Praxiteles created what artists and art historians call the “Praxitelean curve.” This term refers to a sensuous, almost erotic posing of the model to create the illusion of a living, seductive figure Later artists copied the curve, which can be seen in Hermes with the Infant Dionysus (housed at the Olympia Museum in Greece) THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD The Hellenistic Period of Greek art began roughly with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 b.c.e and ended in the first century b.c.e Alexander’s death marked a key turning point, for during the years 336 to 323 b.c.e he extended the Greek Empire through conquest Most of these conquests were eastward, so Greek influence extended to such places as Persia; Egypt; the kingdoms that occupied modern-day Afghanistan, including most prominently the kingdom of Bactria; and India The influence flowed in the other direction as well: Greek art was influenced by forms of artistic expression from these other countries While formerly Greece had been a collection of relatively isolated city-states, after Alexander the entire Mediterranean region was alive with commerce, travel, and cultural exchange Hellenistic art can be distinguished from classical art by its greater boldness and sense of experimentation While artists did not entirely abandon the rules from the Classical Period, they created their own conventions through art that was more dramatic and that portrayed a wider range of human emotion; a good example is the bronze Boy Jockey (now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens), recovered from a shipwreck off the Greek coast The statue—of a nearly life-size boy riding a horse—captures in new ways a sense of tension, energy, and movement One of the world’s most famous sculptures, housed in the Louvre Museum in Paris, is the Winged Victory at Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace, an 8-foot-high statue created by Pythocritos of Rhodes in about 190 b.c.e (Nike means “victory” and is the name of a Greek goddess, and Samothrace is a Greek island.) Unfortunately, the statue is missing its head and arms, but some observers believe that the damage in a strange way en-