4th-century styles develop from the 5th-century, still idealized realistic, but bolder in poses and beginning to create interactive groups which lent a further degree of depth to the rendering of subjects such as battles or hunts. Individual realism, rather than generalized, is picked up again after the experiments of Olympia. Real portraiture emerges, at first of the dead only, and interpreting character as much as physiognomy, but soon quite realistic. Emotion is more readily portrayed also, though it takes a long time for women's heads to be shown as more than conventional masks.
As in the 5th century, much of the best work was done in bronze, but for the most part we have to judge style from surviving marbles (usually from architecture) or the many close copies made of earlier works for Roman patrons, which fill most museum galleries today and are well represented in Oxford.
One new use of marble was for the female nude, since, althoguh statues were still all painted, the flesh-like qualities of polished marble were appreciated, and we get the first sensual studies of the female body, a trend started by the sculptor Praxiteles and his famous Aphrodite - lost to us except in poor copies.
© Beazley Archive 1997-2007 |
Last updated:
30 October, 2007
Text © John Boardman