Greek Sculpture term paper

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“All relief sculpture may be divided into two large classes, exhibiting great technical differences. The artist may, in the first place, design and carve his figures on a block of stone of which he hews away as much as he likes in order to bring out the contours. He begins on the front plane, beyond which no figure may project, and pays no attention to a uniform depth of background. This kind of relief may be called the carved relief. In the other kind, which originated when the sculptors no longer worked upon the marble itself but made their first designs in clay, the figures are modelled separately and attached to one uniform and unifying background. A profile view reveals the entire absence of a common front plane. Eventually these models may be carved in marble or be cast in bronze, but owing to their origin, and in order to distinguish them from the other kind, they are best called the modelled reliefs. The best known reliefs in this style, which is very common in the present day, are the Ghiberti gates on the baptistery in Florence. The Greeks practiced almost exclusively the carved relief. In describing a Greek relief people are in the habit of speaking of the figures as raised to a certain height from the background. This is obviously inaccurate, because the technique of the carved relief requires their being sunk from the front plane. It is quite possible - and of frequent occurrence on the Parthenon frieze - to have the right side of a figure sunk much deeper than the left side, and the feet deeper than the head. There is then practically no background from which the figures can be said to have been raised. The effect of such a technique is that the figures themselves and not the background - which in pictures often is the prominent part - arrest the attention of the spectator.”
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“Of no other period of Greek art is there such lack of agreement as to its value as of this one. This is largely due to the fact that it is the longest of all and that only very few artists are known to whom it might be possible to assign any of the extant monuments. The customary procedure has been to group in the Hellenistic age everything that is too poor to be of fourth century workmanship and too good to be Roman; Roman sculpture, as people used to think, being the worst of all ancient sculpture. The injustice of such procedure ought to be self-evident.”
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“The most notable example from outside Attica of sculpture in which the same type of heavy drill is used as that seen in the work of Antenor is the group known as Theseus and Antiope, and the torso of Athena from the pediments of the Temple of Apollo Daphnephoros at Eretria. In the Athena the drill is used extensively on the drapery on the left side of the figure, particularly for piercing underneath folds. The mouth of the Gorgon's head on the Gorgoneion is cleared by the drill at the corners and, incidentally, it appears that the drill was used rather clumsily, for the side of the Gorgon's tongue is pierced with a drill-hole. The drapery on the right arm also shows heavy drilling. In the Theseus and Antiope marks of the drill can be seen in the ears and also generally on the drapery. The pedimental archaic figures of the kore type from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi all alike show intensive use of a very large drill. This strengthens the attribution made on other grounds of these works to Antenor or his school. The kore with transverse folds of drapery across the breast has every fold of drapery heavily underdrilled.”
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Greek sculpture term paper

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