Masterpieces of Classical Greek Art and Architecture
Classical Greek Masterpieces: Architecture and Art
The Parthenon
Chronology
447-432 BC
Style
Classic Greek style, built by Phidias, Iktinos, and Callicrates (supervisor).
Materials
Pentelic marble and wood.
Building System
Arquitrabe.
The Parthenon’s predecessors include an initial temple that was never finished and was replaced by the current construction. This structure, built on a human scale, predominantly features straight lines, as implied by the arquitrabe construction. Greek architecture took inspiration from Egyptian architecture, which is also characterized by straight lines.
Supporting and Supported Elements
Columns support an entablature. The Parthenon’s entablature consists of a horizontal architrave, a frieze, and a cornice that runs around the perimeter. Along with the interior walls and columns, it supports the sloping gabled roof, which forms pediments on both fronts.
Space Leading to the Exterior and Interior
The Parthenon was constructed following the precepts of the Doric order. It is an octastyle temple because it has eight columns on the main facade, with two hexastyle porticos on both fronts (due to a second row of columns), and peripteral because the building is completely surrounded by columns.
The temple rises on a stylobate and two stereobates, which form the stairway providing access from any side. Doric columns, heavy, direct, and grandiose, rise from these without a base. The shafts are robust, with a low height (between four and six times the diameter), and drums that are visually linked with sharp grooves. A subtle concave molding, the collar, leads to the capital. The capital, with simple shapes, forms an abacus and an echinus. Above it is the entablature, consisting of the architrave (which directly supports the columns, smooth and unornamented), the frieze divided into metopes and triglyphs, and the prominent cornice.
The pediment, forming a triangle with the cornice as its base, was filled with sculptures, some of which are still preserved.
The Parthenon was a rectangular building with an inner cella divided into two unconnected rooms, creating a double temple. This was necessary because two facades provided access through porticos.
The larger room contained the famous 12.8m chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Athena, to whom the temple was dedicated, sculpted by Phidias.
The windows, their location, and the eastern gate were designed to be illuminated by the rising sun.
The smaller opisthodomos housed the temple’s treasury.
Meaning
The temple’s main facade faces east, towards the sunrise, as was customary for all religious buildings of antiquity. This orientation meant that the building’s main entrance would face away from the Acropolis.
Theater of Epidaurus
Author
Polykleitos the Younger.
Type of Work
Building dedicated to theater.
Style
Classical Greek art.
Chronology
c. 330 BC.
Geographic Location
Epidaurus, in Argolis, Peloponnese.
The theater has a horseshoe or semicircular shape. Initially, it had 30 rows of seats, but 20 more were added later, separated by a corridor. It had a capacity of 14,000 spectators. The acoustics of this theater are exceptional: from the farthest row, one can perfectly hear what is said on stage.
The orchestra, a circular gravel area with a diameter of 20.30 meters, was located between the cavea and the stage. The chorus performed plays, songs, and ritual dances there. The altar of Dionysus was also located in the orchestra.
Greek theaters were built taking advantage of the natural terrain, usually on a hillside to form the cavea, whose seats were often carved into the rock itself. This arrangement allowed for perfect visibility of the orchestra from any point in the cavea. In the theater of Epidaurus, the cavea is divided into twelve sections that converge radially towards a central point in the middle of the orchestra. The two outermost sections extend beyond the canonical semicircular shape, moving towards the stage. Later, Roman theaters, heirs to the Greek tradition, would not extend the cavea beyond the semicircle.
Performances are still held in Epidaurus today, and the theater festival held there is the most important in Greece. This is the most beautiful and best-preserved ancient Greek theater.
The Altar of Pergamon
The Altar of Pergamon is a religious monument built during the Hellenistic period on the acropolis of the city of Pergamum, probably at the beginning of the reign of Eumenes II (197-159 BC). Its monumental friezes, depicting the Gigantomachy and the history of Telephus, constitute one of the masterpieces of Greek sculpture and represent the culmination of “Hellenistic Baroque”. The altar was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world.
Doryphoros
It is the representation of a spear-bearer at the peak of his muscular strength, without any other trait that characterizes the figure. It represents a young, athletic male figure in a walking posture, with a spear resting on his left shoulder, his head slightly tilted to the right, and his left arm raised. He has a smile on his face, accompanied by a distant and lost gaze.
This work, despite being considered Classical, still preserves a certain archaic trait with a certain roughness in its carving. The chest muscles are flat, with hardly any relief, and the lines of the hips and waist are perfectly defined. The figure’s movement is perfectly measured, with the advanced leg straight and slightly ahead, and the delayed leg reminiscent of the Kouros of the previous period.
The beauty of Doryphoros primarily resides in its proportions and balance. The right leg firmly supports the weight of the body, resting on the ground and compressing the hip. The left leg does not bear any weight and is delayed, touching the ground only with the toes. In the upper part, the functional scheme of the limbs is clear: the right arm is relaxed along the body, while the left arm is bent, originally holding the spear. The torso has a slight bend towards the right side, and the head rotates, tilting slightly in the same direction. This posture, called Contrapposto, was created to be seen from the front. The vertical axis is clearly marked, but Polykleitos broke with the traditional concept of symmetry by contrasting the parts of the body with respect to the axis, subjecting them to the service of the whole.
It is the most famous work sculpted by Polykleitos because in it the Greek artist established the Canon of Beauty of 7 heads, considered the model of human body proportions and the practical application of the system he devised. The head is precisely measured (one-seventh of the total height), the waist and chest are very marked, and it presents a certain rigidity and unnatural exaggeration in the chest (beginning of the diarthrosis). In this work, as in most Greek works, only later marble copies of a bronze original have survived. The best-preserved copy is in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
Diadumenos
The figure is standing in Contrapposto, with its weight on one leg. The example of the statue preserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens has a fractured knee. It shows that most of them were porous once water filtered through, which fractured the limestone, requiring various reconstructions. His head is slightly tilted to the right, with a content expression, seemingly lost in divine life.
The Diadumenos, along with Doryphoros, are the most famous sculptures by Polykleitos, forming three basic models for the sculpture of Ancient Greece. They represent three idealized youths in a convincingly naturalistic manner. The statue illustrates the principles enunciated by Polykleitos in his Canon: the total height is equivalent to seven times the height of the head, which is the length of the supporting leg.
The work is emblematic of genuine Classicism; the sculpture combines balance and dynamism, thanks to a clever combination of torsion in the back and hips.
Tassel House
Tassel House was built from 1892 to 1893 by Victor Horta in Brussels, Belgium.
It is one of the first Art Nouveau buildings (his second residential building, to be precise) and the first global synthesis of Art Nouveau architecture. It remains a landmark work since it was the first to break entirely with the classical distribution of rooms in Brussels residences. In these, the entrance was always on the side of the facade and extended inland through a long hallway. The latter then provided access to the three main rooms, which were separated from each other: the living room facing the street, the dining room in the middle, and the covered patio next to the garden. Consequently, the dining room often ended up being very dark. The staircase was generally located in the hallway.
Victor Horta placed the entrance in the middle of the facade, logically placing the central corridor of the house in the center and installing a skylight. It is also the first application of his principle of “transparency” (see Victor Horta).
Mr. Tassel was a professor at the ULB. Horta built a “reception hall” located at the entrance. The latter also served as an office or cloakroom. Mr. Tassel was also passionate about photography and cinematography. When he had guests, he liked to show them movies. The architect built an interior “terrace” on the first floor that overlooked the skylight. He could place the projector there to project onto a screen located below.
In 2000, it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, along with three other later constructions.
Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss
The sculpture was crafted in 1787 but was not completed until 1793. It is considered the best work of the Neoclassical sculptor, Antonio Canova (Possagno, Italy, November 1, 1757 – Venice, October 13, 1822), commissioned by the English Colonel John Campbell (Lord Cawdor) in 1787, although it ended up being acquired by the Dutch collector and dealer Henry Hoppe in 1800 and then ended up in the hands of the King of Naples and Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, being acquired for display in his castle.
It is one of the six versions of the Legend of Cupid and Psyche, immortalized by Apuleius in his Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) that Antonio Canova created.
Currently, the piece is exhibited at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France.
Style
Neoclassical
Height
1.55 meters
Length
1.68 meters
Width
1.01 meters
Material
Marble
Technique
Sculpted
The Thinker
The Thinker (French: Le Penseur) is one of the most famous bronze sculptures by Auguste Rodin.
The piece, originally called The Poet, was part of a commission from the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris to create a monumental portal based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. Each of the statues represented one of the main characters in the epic poem. The Thinker, at its origin, was intended to represent Dante in front of The Gates of Hell (as the portal is called), pondering his great poem. The sculpture is a nude, heroic figure in the style that Rodin admired in Michelangelo, intended to represent both thought and poetry.
There are over twenty different versions of the sculpture in museums around the world. Some are enlarged versions of the original; others have different proportions. One of them is in the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City and has been exhibited at the Museo de Arte Italiano.
The Thinker was cast in bronze in 1880 and completed that same year. Auguste Rodin was assisted in making this work by his disciple Henri Lebossé.
Palace of Catalan Music
The Palace of Catalan Music is a concert hall located on Carrer de Sant Pere Més Alt in the Ribera district of Barcelona, Spain. It was designed by the Barcelona architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, one of the leading representatives of Catalan Modernism. The construction was carried out between 1905 and 1908, using advanced structural solutions with the implementation of large glass walls and the integration of all the arts: sculpture, mosaic, stained glass, and wrought iron. The building, headquarters of the “Orfeó Català”, founded in 1891 by Lluís Millet and Amadeo Vives, was supported by enlightened Catalan industrialists, financiers, and music lovers, sixty years after the opera and ballet theater of the Gran Teatre del Liceu had already been funded.
In 1997, UNESCO included the building in its list of World Heritage Sites.
It began with the Orfeó Català commissioning the project to the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, who intended to construct a building to house its social headquarters. This project and its budget were approved by the Assembly on May 31, 1904. Before the end of the year, the purchase of the cloister of the Convent of Sant Francesc was made, with an area of 1350.75 square meters, at a final price of 240,322.60 pesetas, with the intention of allocating the space for the construction of this building. The following year, specifically on April 23, 1905, the laying of the first stone of the works took place, and for its financing, 6,000 bonds of one hundred pesetas each were issued.
Three years later, on February 9, 1908, its inauguration was celebrated. The auditorium was intended for concerts of orchestral and instrumental music, as well as choral recitals and performances by solo singers. But the Palau has also hosted cultural, political, theatrical, and, of course, the most varied musical performances. It continues to fulfill all these functions today, both in the field of classical music and popular music.
The acoustics of the auditorium are unbeatable. The best performers and conductors of the last century (from Richard Strauss to Daniel Barenboim, passing through Igor Stravinsky, Arthur Rubinstein, Pablo Casals, and Federico Mompou) have paraded uninterruptedly through the Palace, a sanctuary of authentic music in Catalonia, a concert hall and a benchmark in the international art scene.
The Palace of Catalan Music was declared a National Monument in 1971. On this occasion, major restoration works were carried out under the direction of the architects Joan Bassegoda and Nonell and Jordi Vilardaga.
But it was in the 1980s when the Orfeó Català decided to undertake a major renovation of the building. In 1983, the Consortium of the Palace of Catalan Music was legally constituted, maintaining the ownership of the Orfeó but with the intervention of the Barcelona City Council, the Generalitat de Catalunya, and the Ministry of Culture. Regarding the works on the building, the project was commissioned to Òscar Tusquets. These works lasted seven years, with Tusquets leading the entire project, which was recognized with the 1989 FAD Award for Architecture, Renovation, and Rehabilitation. Lluís Domènech i Girbau, architect and grandson of the Palace’s first architect, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, wrote about this work, praising it:
The rehabilitation of the hall and the accesses, the construction of a new annex building for services (…) have resulted in a coherent and creative work, ideally up-to-date in terms of security, comfort, and acoustic specifications, within the radical and innovative spirit, loving detail that Lluís Domènech i Montaner would have desired.
In 1990, the Orfeó Català created the Palau de la Música Catalana Foundation for the choir’s centenary celebrations and also to organize activities in the Palau with private resources.
German Pavilion
The German Pavilion designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was the German representation hall at the 1929 International Exposition held in Barcelona. It is an important building in the history of modern architecture, as it embodies all the ideas of the then-emerging Modern Movement with more freedom than in other works. This is because it was built with functions that did not hinder these new ideas, as well as the use of new materials and techniques in its construction.
Within the exhibition site of the international exposition, the German Pavilion was located in a secluded spot chosen by the architect himself, outside the main axis of the exhibition where the larger buildings built for the occasion were located. The modest size of the pavilion was also surprising, as it was even smaller than a residential house.
The building was built on a travertine-covered podium, on which there were also two ponds. Access was gained via a small staircase tangential to the podium. The structure consisted of eight cruciform steel pillars that supported a flat roof. The magnificent building was completed with interior walls, independent of the structure, made of large pieces of handcrafted marble, as well as large glazed enclosures. The overall impression is that of a luxurious space created by perpendicular planes in three dimensions. The work was complemented by a sculpture by Georg Kolbe, Der Morgen (“Dawn”), and sparse furniture consisting of armchairs designed by the architect himself, called the Barcelona chair (which are an important milestone in the history of 20th-century furniture design), a curtain, and a red carpet. The black and yellowish colors, combined with the color of the marble walls, imitated the colors of the German flag.
The pavilion was dismantled at the end of the exposition, but over time, this work became a key reference in the history of 20th-century architecture, as well as for the career of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. For this reason, in 1980, at the initiative of Oriol Bohigas, the idea of reconstructing the building in its original location began to take shape within the Urban Planning Delegation of the Barcelona City Council. Work began in 1983, led by the architects Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Cristian Cirici, and Fernando Ramos. The reconstruction was based entirely on the original design and used all the same materials. It was inaugurated in 1986.
Fallingwater
Fallingwater is located in Bear Run, Pennsylvania (United States). It was designed in 1935 and completed in 1939. Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is considered by some authors to be the best American architect, and his “house on the waterfall” is considered his masterpiece. Called “the most famous house ever built,” the AIA (American Institute of Architects) has judged it to be “the best work of American architecture.”
Designed and built between 1934-1935 and 1936-1937 in Pennsylvania, Fallingwater was the home of Edgar Kaufmann, his wife Liliane, and their son Edgar Jr., owners of a department store in Pittsburgh. Today, Fallingwater is a national monument in the United States that operates as a museum and belongs to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Fallingwater follows the principles of “organic architecture” emphasized by Wright in his Taliesin studio and school. It basically consists of integrating the building with the environmental factors of the place, the use and functions, native materials, the construction process, and the human being or client. There are several anecdotes about the construction of Fallingwater. Kaufmann’s preferred location for his summer house was opposite the waterfall formed by the “Bear Run” stream. After a couple of visits to the site, and having accepted the proposal to build on the waterfall itself, and nine months “without touching a pencil,” Frank Lloyd Wright “germinated” the project in his mind.
When Edgar Kaufmann announced his visit to Taliesin (September 1935), Wright drew the first sketch and the plans for the house were developed in a few hours. Kaufmann commented to Wright, “…designed for the music of the waterfall… for those who like to hear it.” Today, the sound of the waterfall can be heard from anywhere in the house.