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With his Vitruvian man, Da Vinci explored the ideal proportions of the human body. Photoshop is used to create idealised, perfect images in mass-media. Polykleitos, a Greek sculptor (c. 450-440 B.C.E.) also wanted to investigate these ideal proportions with his Doryphoros (Spear Bearer) or Canon.
BIG PICTURE Starting point - 8th century BCE: the poleis of Classical Greece began to take shape; the Greeks broke out of their isolation and once again began to trade with cities both in the east and the west (including Egypt); Homer s epic poems were recorded in written form; the Olympic Games were established.
Archaic period Monumental statuary returns. Not naturalistic, influence of Egypt still noticeable. The Archaic smile indicates life, not humour.
480 BCE Classical period begins Early, High (Late) Monumental statuary is more naturalistic and seeks to find the ideal depiction of motion. Perfection. Proportion. Balance. Counter-balance.
Archaic
New York Kouros, ca. 600 bce. Marble. ca. 6 tall. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Archaic
Votive statue: the Calf bearer or moschophoros (found in fragments on the Athenian Acropolis). Its inscribed base (not visible in the photograph) states that a man named Rhonbos dedicated the statue to Athena, most probably the calf bearer himself. Left foot advanced, but he has a beard (not a young man). The figure wears a thin cloak but is otherwise nude. (The sculptor adhered to the artistic convention of male nudity, attributing to the calf bearer the noble perfection that nudity suggests, while also indicating that this mature gentleman is clothed, as any respectable citizen would be in this context.) Archaic love of pattern is seen in the way man and animal are represented together. The calf s legs and the calf bearer s arms form a definite X that unites the two bodies both physically and formally. The calf bearer s face differs a lot from those of earlier Greek statues (and those of Egypt) in one notable way. The man smiles, or at least seems to. From this time on, Archaic Greek statues always smile, even in the most inappropriate contexts (when dying for example). This so-called Archaic smile seems to be the Archaic sculptor s way of indicating that the person portrayed is alive. By adopting this convention, the Greek artist signaled a very different intention to any Egyptian counterpart.
Calf bearer, dedicated by Rhonbos on the Acropolis, Athens, Greece, ca. 560 BCE. Marble, Acropolis Museum, Athens.
Archaic
The Anavysos Kouros, funerary statue for a young man who died in battle in ca 530 BCE. Archaic smile. Originally, sclupture was painted. Without rejecting the Egyptian stance, the artist has tried to render the human body in a more naturalistic manner: the head is not too large for the body, the face is more rounded, with swelling cheeks replacing the flat planes of the earlier New York Kouros. The hair falls naturally over the back. Rounded hips replace the V-shaped ridges of the New York Kouros.
Anavysos Kouros, ca. 530 BCE. Marble, National Archaeological Museum, Athens
The Archaic smile Dying warrior, from the west pediment of the Temple of Aphaia, Aegina, Greece, ca. 490 BCE. Marble, Glyptothek, Munich. The statues of the west pediment of the early-fifth-century BCE temple at Aegina exhibit Archaic features. This fallen, dying warrior still has an Archaic smile on his face.
Polykleitos, Doryphoros (Spear Bearer). Roman marble copy from Pompeii, Italy, after a bronze original of ca. 450 440 bce, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples.
Polykleitos sought to portray the perfect man and to impose order on human movement. He achieved his goals by employing harmonic proportions and a system of cross balance for all parts of the body.
http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/classical-greek.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded& v=EAR9RAMg9NY&noredirect=1 Watch, listen and then answer the question:
What did perfection mean for the Ancient (Early & High Classical) Greeks?
Mathematical precision in the proportions of the human body; mathematical relationship of each part of the body to each other, and to the whole; harmony through ratio.
The Doryphoros is the culmination of the evolution in Greek statuary from the Archaic kouros to the Kritios Boy to the Riace warrior.
The contrapposto is more pronounced than ever before in a standing statue, but Polykleitos was not content with simply rendering a figure that stood naturally. His aim was to impose order on human movement, to make it beautiful, to perfect it. He achieved this through a system of cross balance. What appears at first to be a casually natural pose is, in fact, the result of an extremely complex and subtle organization of the figures various parts. Note, for instance, how the statues straight-hanging arm echoes the rigid supporting leg, providing the figures right side with the columnar stability needed to anchor the left sides dynamically flexed limbs. If read anatomically, however, the tensed and relaxed limbs may be seen to oppose each other diagonallythe right arm and the left leg are relaxed, and the tensed supporting leg opposes the flexed arm, which held a spear. Similarly, the head turns to the right while the hips twist slightly to the left. And although the Doryphoros seems to take a step forward, the figure does not move. This dynamic asymmetrical balance, this motion while at rest, and the resulting harmony of opposites are the essence of the Polykleitan style.