•The Apollo of the Belvedere on the other hand, is only a copy of a bronze original. The principal restorations are the left hand and the right fore-arm and hand. The most natural explanation of the god's attitude is that he held a bow in his left hand and has just let fly an arrow against some foe. His figure is slender, according to the fashion which prevailed from the middle of the fourth century onward, and he moves over the ground with marvelous lightness. His appearance has an effect of almost dandified elegance, and critics to-day cannot feel the reverent raptures which this statue used to evoke. Yet still the Apollo of the Belvedere remains a radiant apparition. An attempt has recently been made to promote the figure, or rather its original, to the middle of the fourth century.

The Farnese Hercules statue has the Nemean lion skin, the one he had slain with his bare hands, under his arm. Furthermore, the Farnese Hercules statue is one of the finest sculptures showing his tremendous strength by the way his muscles are so carefully sculpted on his body. This statue of Hercules was by Lysippos or one of his followers.

Constructed around 100 BC, this mosaic was found in Pompeii, Italy. Most art historians believe it constitutes a fairly accurate copy of a painting made by Philoxenos of Eretria around 310 BC. Using tiny pieces of stone and glass, the mosaic represents the decisive moment during the Battle of Issus (333 BC) when Darius decided to flee the field in his chariot, causing the entire Persian army to panic and retreat.It is one of the greatest tessera mosaics of antiquity and it decorated the floor of a lavishly appointed Roman house at Pompeii. It is notable for the horse which is shown in a 3/4 rear view and the reflection of the face of a terrified man who has fallen off of his horse. It makes very good use of light

Philoxenos of Etria, Battle of Issus, 310 B.C.E., Roman mosaic copy of Greek fresco

The Hellenistic Age

By this time, Alexander the Great had conquered the entire known world. His death, at age 33, marks the beginning of the Hellenistic Age. There were many changes in Greek art because Alexander had unified so many different cultures that there were incredible influences on the artisans on the Greek mainland. Sculptures and other artworks began to show more and more emotion.

The variety of artistic directions makes a general statement about the sculpture of the period rather difficult. There was a tendency toward classicism, but also toward the baroque or distorted; a tendency toward idealization, but also a tendency toward realism. The Hellenistic period was, above all, a period of eclecticism.

Art still served a religious function or to glorify athletes, but sculpture and painting were also used to decorate the homes of the rich. There was an interest in heroic portraits and in colossal groups, but also in humbler subjects. The human being was portrayed in every stage and walk of life; there was even an interest in caricature.

While the interest in deities and heroic themes was still of importance, the emphasis of Hellenistic art shifted from religious and naturalistic themes towards more dramatic human expression, psychological and spiritual preoccupation, and theatrical settings. The sculpture of this period abandons the self-containment of the earlier styles and appears to embrace its physical surroundings with dramatic groupings and creative landscaping of its context. The Nike of Samothrace for instance was posed at a sanctuary built high at the edge of a cliff with a reflective water pool and rocks as part of the landscape.

Nike of Samothrace is a rare example of the mastery over the rigid materials and deep understanding of the world as expressed through aesthetic conventions and techniques. The winged goddess appears to be in a process of suspended animation as her outstretched wings labor gracefully to prevent the force of gravity from anchoring the heavy stone to the ground. The twists and deep undercuts of the drapery conform faithfully to the nude body underneath , and in the process, they reveal the physical human presence they contain as is struggles to resist an invisible external force. This imaginary wind that shapes the drapery becomes a physical presence and an intricate part of the sculpture itself in a playful interdependence of physical and imagined entities. In this process it is the wind that gives form to the figure and breathes life into the human presence of Nike.

At Priene the blocks measured 120 by 160 feet, and the individual houses, initially planned as four to a block, were far more varied. The overall plan, though based on the same principles, could hardly have been more different in its effect. Built about the middle of the fourth century on the steep lower slopes of Mount Micale, it illustrated how ingeniously and attractively orthogonal "gridiron" planning could be applied to a highly improbable site. Many of the cross streets were steep flights of steps, but there was excellent east-to-west communication along the slopes, the principal streets being wider than the rest. The agora occupied a central terraced area, overlooking the gymnasium (for which space was reserved outside the formal layout, just inside the walls), and it was itself overlooked by the splendidly sited Temple of Athena and by the theater. Behind these again the acropolis, towering 1,000 feet above, formed a magnificent backdrop. As at Miletos, the defenses were quite independent of the street plan

The invention of formal city planning was attributed to Hippodamus (or Hippodamos) of Miletus (c. 498- c. 408 BC). Hippodamus helped to design the new harbor town of Piraeus, which served as a commercial port for Athens further inland. Hippodamus' name is frequently associated with other orthogonally planned towns, such as Olynthus, Priene, and Miletus. His direct involvement in these cases remains unproven, but his name remains permanently associated with this type of plan that we call Hippodamian

In the turbulent era following the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC), Pergamum became the capital of a flourishing Hellenistic kingdom and one of the principal centers of Hellenistic civilization.The famous Altar of Zeus in Pergamon is on the south of the theater. Eumenes II (197-159 B.C) constructed it as a memorial of the victory against the Galatians. This Altar has the shape of a horseshoe and its dimensions are 36.44 x 34.20 m. It is composed of four parts and the high relieves on it describe the war between the giants and the gods. The Altar which was taken away from Pergamon in 1871 and carried to Germany by the German engineer Carl Humann, is exhibited at the Museum of Pergamum in Berlin, in a manner conforming to its original. Today Turkish government is trying to get it back from Germany bringing the issue to the international court.

The entire structure once stood forty feet in height atop the acropolis of Pergamos. It had a frieze about 120 meters long and featured a depiction of a battle between the Greek gods and giants. This theme comes from Greek mythology and was used here to celebrate the defeat of the Galatians by the kings of Pergamos. More than 100 figures can be seen in fierce combat.

The altar has also been a source of national pride and inspiration to several German national regimes, and Hitler wanted the grand review stand at the Zeppelin Field in Nuremberg designed to resemble it.

The Alter erected to Zeus on the Pergamene Acropolis (page 213) is one of the most famous Hellenistic sculptural ensembles. It was an elevated platform with a "stoa- like" look. A 400 feet long frieze surrounded it. (picture Athena Battling Alkyoneos) with over 100 over life-size figures. This section called Athena Battling Alkyoneos shows Athena battling the giants (it is the most extensive representation of gigantomachy ever attempted). The subject is a similar metaphor. On the Parthenon’s metetopes the subject represents the battle over the Persians, here over the Gauls.

If we compare the Pergamene altar-frieze with scenes of combat from the best period of Greek art, say with the metopes of the Parthenon or the best preserved frieze of the Mausoleum, we see how much more complicated and confused in composition and how much more violent in spirit is this later work. Yet, though we miss the "noble simplicity" of the great age, we cannot fail to be impressed with the Titanic energy which surges through this stupendous composition

Byzantine conquerors tore down the altar in the eighth century A.D. and used the marble as building material for a wall. The slabs from the magnificent frieze, from many mostly unknown artists (some sources say a work of up to 40 sculptors with 15 signatures found), remained embedded in the wall until thousand years later a German engineer, Carl Humann, discovered the altar. He described how pieces where taken to be destroyed in order to produce material for new buildings in the region. He succeeded to save this important piece of Hellenistic civilization from destruction..

On either the altar or a centerpiece of the Acropolis was a group of bronze statues depicting the victory over the Gaul invaders (believed to be during the rule of Attlalos I, 241-197 BCE). The artist has carefully reproduced the istinctive features of the Gaul invaders, most notably their long bushy hair and mustaches, and the torque’s (neckband) that were worn.

"Gallic Chieftain Killing His Wife and Himself" was the centerpiece of the group of sculptures showing a heroic chieftain defiantly driving a sword into his own chest and preferring suicide to surrender. He has already killed his wife who would have been sold into slavery if captured.

Note: The Pergamene victors were not included in the group, only their foes and their noble and moving response to defeat

•Dying Gaul or Galatian ,once erroneously called the Dying Gladiator.

•Hordes of Gauls had invaded Asia Minor as early as 278 B.C., and, making their headquarters in the interior, in the district afterwards known from them as Galatia, had become the terror and the scourge of the whole region. Attalus I. early in his reign gained an important victory over these fierce tribes, and this victory was commemorated by extensive groups of sculpture both at Pergamum and at Athens. The figure of the Dying Gaul belongs to this series.

•That the man represented is not a Greek is evident from the large hands and feet, the coarse skin, the un-Greek character of the head. That he is a Gaul is proved by several points of agreement with what is known from literary sources of the Gallic peculiarities—the moustache worn with shaven cheeks and chin, the stiff, pomaded hair growing low in the neck, the twisted collar or torque. He has been mortally wounded in battle—the wound is on the right side—and sinks with drooping head upon his shield and broken battle-horn. His death-struggle, though clearly marked, is not made violent or repulsive.

With the thrill of victory, there also comes the agony of defeat.........another major theme in Hellenistic sculpture. To the left, we see the Dying Gaul (sometimes referred to as the "Dying Trumpeter" or "Celt") a Roman copy of an original created about 230 BCE. The agony is apparent, as is the dignity of this suffering barbarian.

The history of mosaic goes back some 4,000 years or more, with the use of terracotta cones pushed point-first into a background to give decoration. By the eighth century BC, there were pebble pavements, using different coloured stones to create patterns, although these tended to be unstructured decoration. It was the Greeks, in the four centuries BC, who raised the pebble technique to an art form, with precise geometric patterns and detailed scenes of people and animals.

By 200 BC, specially manufactured pieces ("tesserae") were being used to give extra detail and range of colour to the work. Using small tesserae, sometimes only a few millimetres in size, meant that mosaics could imitate paintings. Many of the mosaics preserved at, for example, Pompeii were the work of Greek artists.

Gnosis, Stag Hunt, pebble mosaic

Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Melos) is still admired today as the personification of Beauty itself with its ideal proportions, the high waste, the sharp twist of the leg, and the seductive Praxitelean "S" curve of the torso.

The Venus de Milo is the most famous sculpture and, after the Mona Lisa, the most famous work of art in the world. The hordes of visitors who jam into her alcove in the Louvre museum in Paris every day are one proof of her popularity, but more telling is the way the statue has permeated our culture in art both high and low. Her image is reproduced in advertisements, on covers of CDs, as saltshakers, even as little rubber toys that squeak. But she has also inspired artists such as Cézanne, Dali, Magritte, Clive Barker and Jim Dine, whose two large Venuses stand on Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. In 1964, when France sent the statue on loan to Japan, more than 100,000 people came to greet the ship carrying her, and one and a half million people, on a moving sidewalk, were carried past her display.

Venus de Milo130-120 BC

h 2.02 m (6.5 ft)Parian marble, found at Milo

Musée du Louvre, Paris

The Hellenistic period introduced the accurate characterization of age, and young children enjoyed great favor, whether in mythological form, as baby Herakles or Eros, or in genre scenes, playing with each other or with pets. This child, with his plump body and relaxed pose, is clearly based on firsthand observation. Eros, god of love, has been brought down to earth and disarmed, a conception considerably different from that of the powerful, often cruel, and capricious being so often addressed in Archaic poetry. One of the few bronze statues to have survived from antiquity, this figure gives a sense of the immediacy and naturalistic detail that the medium of bronze made possible. The support on which the god rests is a modern addition, but the work originally had a separate base, most likely of stone

•Portraiture, of course, did not confine itself to men of refinement and intellect. As an extreme example of what was possible in the opposite direction nothing could be better than the original bronze statue shown here. It was found in Rome in 1885, and is essentially complete, except for the missing eyeballs; the seat is new. The statue represents a naked boxer of herculean frame, his hands armed with the aestus or boxing-gloves made of leather. The man is evidently a professional "bruiser" of the lowest type. He is just resting after an encounter, and no detail is spared to bring out the nature of his occupation. Swollen ears were the conventional mark of the boxer at all periods, but here the effect is still further enhanced by scratches and drops of blood. Moreover, the nose and cheeks bear evidence of having been badly "punished," and the moustache is clotted with blood. From top to toe the statue exhibits the highest grade of technical skill. One would like very much to know what was the original purpose of the work. It may have been a votive statue, dedicated by a victorious boxer at Olympia or elsewhere. Or it may be that this boxer is not an actual person at all, and that the statue belongs to the domain of genre. In either case it testifies to the coarse taste of the age

The woman wears a thin elegant dress, thong sandals, and a crown of Dionysiac ivy leaves. She may be dressed for a festival and the birds and basket of fruit she carries might be offerings. Her garment has slipped off her shoulder, a detail often seen in representations of old women that hints at the liberation of the elderly from the restrictions imposed on women of childbearing years. As in many such figures, direct observation of reality lends force to deeper religious implications. The piece may be a copy of an older, Hellenistic model or a creation of the Roman period in a tradition that was still alive. It seems to have been deliberately damaged, probably in the late antiquity, when such a pagan image would have provoked hostility.

Statue of an old market woman, 1st century A.D.; Early Imperial, Julio-ClaudianRoman

The statue is a Roman copy that probably goes back to a Greek original attributed to the sculptor Polyeuktos, erected in the Agora in 280 B.C. The face is that of a man 50 to 60 years of age with lean, lined cheeks and short, curly hair and beard. His eyes are deep-set and placed close together, with crow's feet at the outer corners. His forehead is furrowed, and his thin lips are partly covered by a mustache. His expression suggests the determination of his character as described in ancient sources. Demosthenes was one of the great orators of all time and is best remembered for his political speeches in which he urged the Athenians to live up to their democratic ideals of equality and liberty. He was also an advocate in private court cases on such subjects as inheritance, fraud, forgery, and assault. At least fifty marble portraits of Demosthenes survive; most have been found in Italy, attesting to his great popularity in Roman times.

Demosthenes was one of a select number of Greek poets, philosophers, and public figures to appear on Roman gemstones. Among the others were the philosophers Sokrates, Aristotle, Epikouros, and the playwright Menander

According to ancient authors, Laocoon was a Trojan priest of Poseidon . In mythology, Laocoon was the brother of the hero Anchises and son of Capys. One of our best sources for the story of Laocoon is found in Virgil's Aeneid. In this epic tale, the Roman poet Virgil describes the dramatic scene in which the Trojans discover an enormous Wooden Horse standing outside the city of Troy. The prescient priest Laocoon warns against bringing the gigantic Horse into Troy in a famous speech:

"'O my poor people, Men of Troy, what madness has come over you? Can you believe the enemy truly gone?A gift from the Danaans, and no ruse?….. Some crookedness is in this thing. Have no faith in the horse! Whatever it is, even when Greeks bring giftsI fear them, gifts and all.'"(Virgil, The Aeneid, Book II, 59-70)

Immediately after saying these words, Virgil has Laocoon hurl his spear into the flank of the Wooden Horse. However, this gesture was to come back to haunt Laocoon. For soon after this incident, while the priest is sacrificing to his god Poseidon, a pair of giant sea serpents emerge from the sea and envelope both Laocoon and his two sons. In the end, the Horse in brought into Troy, which is a fatal mistake and seals the city's doom.

•. This was found in Rome in 1506, on the site of the palace of Titus. The principal modern parts are: the right arm of Laocoon with the adjacent parts of the snake, the right arm of the younger son with the coil of the snake around it, and the right hand and wrist of the older son. These restorations are bad. The right arm of Laocoon should be bent so as to bring the hand behind the head, and the right hand of the younger son should fall limply backward.

•Laocoon was a Trojan priest who, having committed grievous sin, was visited with a fearful punishment. On a certain occasion when he was engaged with his two sons in performing sacrifice, they were attacked by a pair of huge serpents, miraculously sent, and died a miserable death. The sculptors—for the group, according to Pliny, was the joint work of three Rhodian artists—have put before us the moving spectacle of this doom. Laocoon, his body convulsed and his face distorted by the torture of poison, his mouth open for a groan or a cry, has sunk upon the altar and struggles in the agony of death. The younger son is already past resistance; his left hand lies feebly on the head of the snake that bites him and the last breath escapes his lips. The older son, not yet bitten, but probably not destined to escape, strives to free himself from the coil about his ankle and at the same time looks with sympathetic horror upon his father's sufferings.

Battle, wounds, and death were staple themes of Greek sculpture from first to last; but nowhere else is the representation of physical suffering, pure and simple, so forced upon us.