Plan of Parthenon

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Justin York
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1 Parthenon (Temple of Athena Parthenos;, Acropolis, Athens, Greece, bce

2 Plan of Parthenon

4 Parthenon-frieze

5 Parthenon-frieze

6 The East pediment of the Parthenon

7 Parthenon metopes

8 Despite the ravages of time and humanity, most of the Parthenon s peripteral colonnade is still standing (or has been reerected), and art historians know a great deal about the building and its sculptural program. The architect was Iktinos, assisted, according to some sources, by Kallikrates. The statue of Athena in the cella was the work of Phidias, who was also the overseer of the temple s sculptural decoration. In fact, Plutarch stated that Phidias was in charge of the entire Acropolis project. Just as the contemporaneous Doryphoros may be seen as the culmination of nearly two centuries of searching for the ideal proportions of the various human body parts, so, too, the Parthenon may be viewed as the ideal solution to the Greek architect s quest for perfect proportions in Doric temple design. Its well-spaced columns, with their slender shafts, and the capitals, with their straight-sided conical echinuses, are the ultimate refinement of the bulging and squat Doric columns and compressed capitals of the Archaic Heratemple at Paestum. The Parthenon architects and Polykleitos were kindred spirits in their belief that beautiful proportions resulted from strict adherence to harmonic numerical ratios, whether in a temple more than 200 feet long or a life-size statue of a nude man. This ratio also characterizes the cella s proportion of length to width, the distance between the centers of two adjacent column drums (the interaxial) in proportion to the columns diameter, and so forth. The Parthenon s harmonious design and the mathematical precision of the sizes of its constituent elements tend to obscure the fact that this temple, as actually constructed, is quite irregular in shape. Throughout the building are pronounced deviations from the strictly horizontal and vertical lines assumed to be the basis of all Greek post and-lintel structures. The stylobate, for example, curves upward at the center on the sides and both facades, forming a kind of shallow dome, and this curvature carries up into the entablature. Moreover, the peristyle columns lean inward slightly. Those at the corners have a diagonal inclination and are also about 2 inches thicker than the rest. If their lines continued, they would meet about 1.5 miles above the temple. These deviations from the norm meant that virtually every Parthenon block and drum had to be carved according to the special set of specifications dictated by its unique place in the structure. This was obviously a daunting task, and the builders must have had a reason for introducing these so-called refinements in the Parthenon. Some modern observers note, for example, how the curving of horizontal lines and the tilting of vertical ones create a dynamic balance in the building a kind of architectural contrapposto and give it a greater sense of life. The oldest recorded explanation, however, may be the most likely. Vitruvius, a Roman architect of the late first century bce who claims to have had access to Iktinos s treatise on the Parthenon, maintained that these adjustments were made to compensate for optical illusions. Vitruvius noted, for example, that if a stylobate is laid out on a level surface, it will appear to sag at the center. He also recommended that the corner columns ofa building should be thicker because they are surrounded by light and would otherwise appear thinner than their neighbors.

9 Fibula with Orientalizing lions, from the Regolini-Galassi Tomb, Sorbo necropolis, Cerveteri, Italy, ca bce. Gold About bce, a wealthy Etruscan family in Cerveteri stocked the Regolini- Galassi Tomb (named for its excavators) with bronze cauldrons and gold jewelry produced in Etruria but of Orientalizing style. The most spectacular of the many luxurious objects in the tomb is a gold fibula (clasp or safety pin) of unique shape used to fasten a woman s gown at the shoulder. The gigantic diskshaped fibula is in the Italic tradition, but the five lions striding across its surface are motifs originating in the Orient. The technique, also emulating Eastern imports, is masterful, combining repoussé and granulation (the fusing of tiny metal balls, or granules, to a metal surface). The Regolini-Galassi fibula equals or exceeds in quality anything that might have served as a model.

10 Detail of the facade of the Colosseum, Rome, Italy, ca ce

12 The Colosseum, like the much earlier Pompeian amphitheater, could not have been built without concrete. A complex system of barrel-vaulted corridors held up the enormous oval seating area. This concrete skeleton is exposed today because in the centuries following the fall of Rome, the Colosseum served as a convenient quarry for ready-made building materials. Almost all its marble seats were hauled away, revealing the network of vaults below. Also visible today but hidden in antiquity are the arena substructures, which in their present form date to the third century ce. They housed waiting rooms for the gladiators, animal cages, and machinery for raising and lowering stage sets as well as animals and humans. Cleverly designed lifting devices brought beasts from their dark dens into the arena s bright light. Above the seats a great velarium, as at Pompeii, once shielded the spectators. The exterior travertine shell is approximately 160 feet high, the height of a modern 16-story building. In antiquity, 76 numbered gateways provided efficient entrance and exit paths leading to and from the cavea, where the spectators sat according to their place in the social hierarchy. The decor of the exterior, however, had nothing to do with function. The architect divided the facade into four bands, with large arched openings piercing the lower three. Ornamental Greek orders frame the arches in the standard Roman sequence for multistoried buildings: from the ground up, Tuscan, Ionic, and then Corinthian. The diverse proportions of the orders formed the basis for this progression, with the Tuscan viewed as capable of supporting the heaviest load. Corinthian pilasters (and between them the brackets for the wooden poles that held up the velarium) circle the uppermost story. The use of engaged columns and a lintel to frame the openings in the Colosseum s facade is a variation of the scheme used on the Etruscan Porta Marzia at Perugia. The Romans commonly used this scheme from Late Republican times on, for example, at Palestrina. Like the pseudoperipteral temple, which combines Greek orders with an Etruscan plan, this mannerof decorating a building s facade mixed Greek orders with an architectural form foreign to Greek post-and-lintel architecture, namely the arch. The Roman practice of framing an arch with an applied Greek order had no structural purpose, but it added variety to the surface. In the Colosseum, it also unified a multistoried facade by casting a net of verticals and horizontals over it.

14 Portrait of Vespasian, ca ce. Marble, 1 4 high.

15 Sculpture The patrons of Republican temples and sanctuaries were in almost all cases men from old and distinguished families. Often they were victorious generals who used the spoils of war to finance public 7-7 Man with portrait busts of his ancestors, from Rome, late first century bce. Marble, 5 5 high. Musei Capitolini Centro Montemartini, Rome. Reflecting the importance patricians placed on genealogy, this toga-clad man proudly displays the portrait busts of his father and grandfather. Both are characteristically realistic likenesses. These aristocratic patricians were fiercely proud of their lineage. They kept likenesses of their ancestors in wooden cupboards in their homes and paraded them at the funerals of prominent relatives. Portraiture was one way the patrician class celebrated its elevated position in society.

16 Verism The subjects of these portraits were almost exclusively men (and to a lesser extent women) of advanced age, for generally only elders held power in the Republic. These patricians did not ask sculptors to make them appear nobler than they were, as Kresilas portrayed Pericles. Instead, they requested brutally realistic images with their distinctive features, in the tradition of the treasured household imagines. One of the most striking of these so-called veristic (superrealistic) portraits is the head of an unidentified patrician from Osimo. The sculptor painstakingly recorded each rise and fall, each bulge and fold, of the facial surface, like a mapmaker who did not want to miss the slightest detail of surface change. Scholars debate whether Republican veristic portraits were truly blunt records of individual features or exaggerated types designed to make a statement about personality: serious, experienced, determined, loyal to family and state the most admired virtues during the Republic.

AP ART HISTORY 2007 SCORING GUIDELINES

AP ART HISTORY 2007 SCORING GUIDELINES Question 2 Left slide: Right slide: Maison Carrée, Nîmes, France. ca. 1 10 CE Blank 2. Analyze how this Roman temple is similar to and different from a Greek temple.