Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Ancient Marble Faces at the British Museum

Farnese Diadumenos
1st century AD
Roman marble copy of an earlier Greek bronze
British Museum
 
Farnese Diadumenos
1st century AD
Roman marble copy of an earlier Greek bronze
British Museum

Farnese Diadumenos
1st century AD
Roman marble copy of an earlier Greek bronze
British Museum

Hermes
ca. 340-320 BC
Greek marble relief on a column drum from temple at Ephesus
British Museum

"As now the ancients had ascended step by step from human to divine beauty, this scale of beauty was preserved. They brought their heroes, that is, the men to whom antiquity attributed the highest worthiness of nature, to the threshold of divinity without crossing it or blurring the very fine distinction."

Aphrodite
ca. 350-150 BC
Hellenistic marble sculpture
British Museum

Apollo
ca. AD 120-140
Roman marble copy of an earlier Greek bronze
British Museum

Colossal female head
ca. 350-325 BC
Greek marble sculpture
British Museum

Winged head
ca. AD 120-150
Roman marble sculpture
British Museum

Figure from the east pediment of the Parthenon
438-432 BC
Greek marble sculpture
British Museum

"Because the proportions and forms of beauty had been so intensely studied by artists in antiquity, and because the contours of the figures had been so fully defined that they could be shifted neither outward nor inward without error, the concept of beauty could not be driven any higher."

Male head carved with roughened band for attachment of helmet
ca. 460-440 BC
Greek marble sculpture
British Museum

Head of a Ptolomaic ruler
1st century BC
Hellenistic marble sculpture
British Museum

Apollo
2nd century AD
Roman marble copy of an earlier Hellenistic original
British Museum

Athena (the 'Treu Head')
ca. AD 140-150
Roman marble copy of an earlier Greek sculpture
British Museum

"On idealized heads, the eyes always lie more deeply than generally is the case in nature, and the orbit thus appears more raised. Deep-seated eyes are certainly not a characteristic of beauty and do not make for a very open air. But here art could not follow nature at all times, and instead it adhered to the concepts of grandeur in the high style. For on large figures, which are more distant from the viewer than smaller ones, the eyes and eyebrows would have been little apparent from a distance  since the eyeball is not marked, as in painting, but completely smooth for the most part  if these were only as prominent as in nature, and if the orbit had not been raised likewise as a result. ... Art, which in this respect raised itself above nature with good reason, made from this appearance an almost universal rule, even for small works: on heads on coins from the best periods, the eyes are likewise deeply set and the orbit more prominent than in later times."

Male head (the 'Aberdeen Head')
ca. 325-280 BC
Greek marble sculpture
British Museum

Dionysos
ca. 300-100 BC
Hellenistic marble sculpture
British Museum

 quotations from History of the Art of Antiquity (1764) by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, translated into English by Harry Francis Mallgrave and published in 2006 by Getty Research Institute.