Four periods of Greek art
Historians group Greek art into four periods (all dates BCE, approximate):
- Geometric (900–700): pottery decorated with zigzags, circles and stick-like people and horses in neat bands.
- Archaic (700–480): large stone statues appear: the kouros (young man) and kore (young woman). They stand stiffly with a fixed smile, called the Archaic smile.
- Classical (480–323): calm, balanced, idealised bodies. Athens builds the Parthenon. Famous sculptors: Myron, Phidias, Polykleitos, Praxiteles.
- Hellenistic (323–31): after Alexander, art spreads over a wide area. It shows movement, twisting bodies, strong emotion and real people: children, old people, the suffering.
Painted pottery
Greeks made pots for real jobs: an amphora stored wine or oil, a krater mixed wine and water, a kylix was a drinking cup, a hydria carried water.
Black-figure (from about 700 BCE, Corinth then Athens): figures painted with a slip that turns black in the kiln; details scratched through to the clay.
Red-figure (from about 530 BCE, Athens): the reverse. The background is painted black and figures are left clay-coloured. Details are drawn with a brush, so muscles, faces and cloth look more natural.
Scenes show myths (Heracles, the Trojan War), gods, athletes, weddings and daily work. Pots are one of our best sources for how Greeks lived.
Sculpture: from stiff to alive
Archaic statues stand facing forward, one foot slightly ahead, arms by the sides, like Egyptian statues.
Around 480 BCE sculptors began contrapposto: the weight rests on one leg, so the hips tilt one way and the shoulders the other. The body looks relaxed and able to move.
Many great statues were cast in bronze; most were melted down later, so we often know them from Roman marble copies. Marble statues were once painted in bright colours; the paint has mostly worn off.
Classical works aim for an ideal, calm beauty. Hellenistic works show feeling and drama: twisting poses, deep folds of cloth, faces in pain or joy, as in the Winged Victory or the Laocoön group.
Architecture, proportion and legacy
A Greek temple was a home for a god's statue. Columns stood all round a central room, under a low triangular roof with a pediment full of sculpture.
- Doric: sturdy, no base, plain cushion-like capital. Example: the Parthenon in Athens (447–432 BCE).
- Ionic: slimmer, with a base and a capital with two scrolls (volutes).
- Corinthian: tallest, capital carved with acanthus leaves; later loved by the Romans.
Proportion: Polykleitos wrote the Canon, a rule that every body part should fit the whole by measure. The Parthenon builders even curved floors and leaned columns slightly so the building would look perfectly straight.
Legacy: Romans copied Greek art; Renaissance artists revived it; Neoclassical buildings worldwide use its columns. Greek styles also mixed with local traditions in Gandhara Buddhist sculpture.
Key formulas and definitions
- Contrapposto = weight on one leg, hips and shoulders tilt in opposite directions
- Black-figure = dark figures on clay background; red-figure = clay figures on dark background
- Doric (plain) → Ionic (scrolls) → Corinthian (leaves)
- Canon of Polykleitos = rule of ideal body proportion
- Kouros / kore = Archaic statue of a young man / young woman
- Pediment = triangular gable at the end of a temple roof
Worked examples
1. A vase shows orange figures with fine brush-drawn muscles on a black background. Which technique and roughly which date?
Red-figure, so after about 530 BCE, most likely from Athens.
2. A marble youth stands straight, both feet flat, arms at his sides, with a small fixed smile. Which period?
Archaic (about 700–480 BCE). It is a kouros.
3. A column has a base and a capital with two spiral scrolls. Name the order.
Ionic.
Common mistakes
- Thinking Greek statues were always plain white. They were painted; the colour has worn away.
- Mixing up black-figure and red-figure. Ask: what colour are the people?
- Calling every column with a fancy top Ionic. Scrolls = Ionic, leaves = Corinthian.
- Treating Roman marble copies as if they were the Greek originals, which were often bronze.