Ancient Egyptian and Greek Art: Painting and Architecture
Ancient Egyptian Painting
Egyptian reliefs and paintings share common themes and thematic characteristics. Unlike sculpture, Egyptian painting aimed to depict the life of the deceased, showcasing sequences of daily life and reflecting the natural environment. When Egyptians represented reality on a two-dimensional surface, they quartered the object from the same point of view, assembling and designing its most representative parts from the side (face in profile, eye and head-torso, limbs in profile). This resulted in a figure with forced frontality.
Egyptian painting decorates graves, with the earliest records found in mastabas. The painting technique and support materials include papyrus. Relief murals adorn the columns of temples and tombs. In some instances, white is the predominant color, holding funerary significance.
Greek Art and Architecture
Greek art emphasizes autopocentrism, seeking beauty through the study of human form and rational correction. Beauty is achieved through harmony, mathematics, canon, and rationalism.
Architectural Orders
Greek architecture is based on the lintel system, emphasizing vertical and horizontal lines. A key architectural element is the order, a union between a load-bearing and a supported element. The architectural order consists of a column and entablature. There are three main types:
- Doric Order: Associated with early classicism. Columns are archaic, without a base, featuring a shaft with fluting and a thicker central drum (entasis), topped with an abacus and echinus capital. The entablature includes a smooth architrave, frieze with metopes and triglyphs, and a cornice.
- Ionic Order: Related to later classicism. Columns have a base (formed by tori and scotia), a thinner and taller shaft with grooves, and a capital with a small abacus and volutes. The entablature features an architrave with three bands (fasciae), a continuous frieze, and a cornice.
- Corinthian Order: Associated with the Hellenistic period. Columns have a base on a plinth (pedestal), a narrower and higher fluted shaft, and capitals adorned with acanthus leaves and an abacus. The entablature includes an architrave with three bands (fasciae), a continuous frieze, and a cornice.
On the entablature and the roof with two slopes, was the pediment, which is the triangular area at the front and rear of the temple. This inner triangle was decorated in relief and surrounded by a cornice that concealed the drain. At the ends were acroterions (antecedents of gargoyles).
Religious Architecture
Religious architecture is a prime expression of Greek architectural principles. The temple complex typically features a stepped base (crepidoma), with the uppermost step being the stylobate. The internal organization consists of a rectangular nave called the naos, with a pronaos chamber in front and an opisthodomos behind. Roofs are sloped and either flat or gabled, often undecorated. Columns can be arranged in various configurations: distyle (2 columns), tetrastyle (4 columns), octastyle (8 columns). Column placement includes: prostyle (in the front), amphiprostyle (both fronts), peripteros (surrounded by columns), dipteros (surrounded by two rows of columns), and in antis (2 columns between the side walls).
Temples are often built in the highest place, the acropolis, where major buildings are located. The Acropolis of Athens reflects the Greek mindset of eliminating visual deformation through mathematical perfection in temple construction. The Acropolis of Athens was originally polychromatic. Notable structures include the Parthenon, an octastyle peripteral Doric temple; the Temple of Athena Nike, an Ionic temple; and the Erechtheion, a tetrastyle amphiprostyle structure adapted to the terrain with three cellae (for three divinities), two vestibules, a portico above the front, a hexastyle side porch, and the Tribune of the Caryatids, an Ionic feature.
Marble was the common material for temples. Other buildings devoted to public use included stoas (longitudinal porticos), libraries, and gymnasiums. Circular shrines and dramatic structures, including the orchestra, seats, and stage, were also prominent.