Mid-term Study Slides 1

2012

Babylonian Art

Stele of Hammurabi• 300 law codes at bottom• Punishments depend on social standing• Earliest body of laws in existence• Hammurabi standing saluting god Shamash• Hammurabi rules with the permission of the

god• Shamash hands the code to him• Divinely inspired law• Shamash has a coil-shaped crown, an extremely

long beard and flames (wings?) coming from his back

• Cuneiform

Audience Hall at Persepolis (c. 500 BCE)

Note the impression of cylindrical volume (perhaps influenced or done by Ionian Greeks)

from Persepolis

Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut

Queen (Pharoah) Hatsepshut (c. 1495 BCE)

Minoan Bull-Jumping Fresco

Hair Holes left in the marble indicate where the statue had accrouterments, like the fringe of hair framing the forehead and spilling from the helmet. These were originally modelled in lead, malleable enough to capture flowing locks.

Bow and Arrow The bow was originally made of marble and bronze, the arrows of colored bronze and gilded tips. The shape of the missing bow has been reconstructed in part by using images from Greek vases.

Trousers The harlequinlike diamond pattern appears under ultraviolet light. The artist captured the fabric’s elasticity by having the diamonds stretch and compress at points – as on the bent knee – to reflect movement.

Helmet The crested helmet with a floral design immediately marks this archer as foreign. The helmet is of Scythian or persian design, but to Greek artists, less concerned with historical accuracy, it servedto conjure a Trojan warrior from the east

Face Dark Paint marking brows and eyelids gives a lively, alert expression. The Temple of Aphaia was built between Greece’s archaic and classical periods. The archer retains the so-called archaic smile, yet his pose and the modeling’s subtle realism look to the coming age.

Vest Incised lines, visible under rakinglight, served as guides for the lions and griffins. Coloring was determined by traces of pigment but also by variations in the stone’s weathering. Durable vermillion protects stone longer than does fragile yellow ochre, for example.

Crouching Pose Battle scenes were common at he awkward triangular spaces on the temple pediments. The crouching pose filled in the midpoint between apex and corner, while a fallen warrior occupied the narrowest space.

Greek Archaic Sculpture

Kritios Boyc. 480 BCE

Old Market Woman1st century CE

•Disheveled, aged and weary•Wrinkled face, saggy flesh and bent body•Represents a specific moment in her journey•Naturalistic and immediate depiction•Hellenisitic time is more cosmopolitan•More interest in diversity and observations of human experience•Less interest in perfect order and idealization, timeless vision of youth

Ara Pacis c. 13 – 19 BCE

Atrium, House of the Silver Wedding

Ixion Room•Fresco, linear perspective, atmospheric perspective•Foreshortening•Ixion murdered his father-in-law and planned to seduce Hera•Zeus struck him with a thunderbolt and ordered him to be tied to a wheel in hell•Scheme of red and white fields•On bottom painted to resemble marble slabs•On top, architectural vistas that do not align to a single viewpoint•Thin delicate motifs alternate with framed mythological scenes

Flavian Amphitheatre

Flavian Amphitheatre, 80 CE

Basilica of Santa Sabina, Rome, c. 432 C.E.

Arch of Constantine, c. 315 CE

Trier, Basilica of Constantine (audience hall)

Audience Hall of Constantine at Trier, early 4th century

Sarcophagi of Junius Bassus, c. 359 CE

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

The Alhambra, 1338 - 1390