Art in Classical Antiquity

Classical Antiquity

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points

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Art in Classical Antiquity

• The art of the Classical Antiquity is the basis on which the history of Western art developed. It imposed, from the start, certain values which defined “beauty.” Values that were maintained through centuries or were lost for certain periods and then “recovered.” Renaissance for example, was the rebirth of the values of the Classical Antiquity. But they will always be a guide.
• Classical Antiquity refers to the time and culture of the Western world dominated by the Greek and Roman civilizations. That is why the term Greco-Roman Antiquity is also found. The dates of the beginning and the end are debatable, there are many. We can take as the beginning the 18th century B.C when the Greek history started to be recorded with the first Olympics and on the other hand the foundation of Rome 753 B.C. Its maximum extension would be until the beginning of the Middle Ages, in the 5th century A.D.
• Although historians do not agree there is something that is unquestionable: we are talking about many centuries of culture and art. Despite all that time of brightness and declination, there is something that is fundamental and it is maintained, the idea of beauty that was born in Philosophy: Plato considered that beauty is much more than something that gives pleasure to the senses, beauty is the manifestation of the good, the virtue, and the truth.
• Man is the measure of all things. And that beauty we observe as a manifestation of that virtue, that perfection, and that ideal evidences harmonically in a perfect equilibrium between the parts and the whole. The harmonic proportions of the human body result in the beauty canon (“canon” is a set of characteristic that define perfection) that dominates the art of the Classical Antiquity. Geometric discoveries of proportions are added later (such as the golden ratio, for example), always with the conviction that beauty resides in harmony.
• Going back to beauty as a reflection of virtue, although the Greeks and the Romans agreed in general, they had a little difference. The Greek did not dress their idealized gods and heroes with perfect bodies so as that perfection was not hidden. It is called Heroic Nude. The Romans, instead, considered the nude as offensive and we find the Heroic Nude less in their culture.

Image: Venus de Milo (c. 130 B.C.). Attributed to Alexandros of Antioch.

Recommended links:

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points: Humanism.

The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli.

The Stanze of Raphael and the High Renaissance.

The Stendhal Syndrome.

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points: The Flemish Primitives.

Artistic Movements, Periods and Styles in 5 Points: When does Modern Art Start?

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