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HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN ART

 

 

A sumptuously sculptured and colored sarcophagus found at Sidon, the former Phoenician city on the coast of present-day Lebanon, is a feat of technical accomplishment in the handling of marble (5,1). The workmanship is Greek and the amazing skill with which the material is chiselled, undercut, drilled and finished to present varying surfaces of subtly contrasted textures testifies to a long tradition of carving, gradually and laboriously refined since the beginning of the Classical period (see p. 138). Figures, especially the athletic nudes, the riders and their horses, lucidly arranged on a shallow stage, recall those on the frieze of the Parthenon, and not only as ideal 'types'. They all have that organic unity of structure which was fundamental to Greek art and its naturalistic bent. And yet, the work as a whole differs radically from anything previously produced in the Hellenic world.

Sarcophagi had rarely been made in Greece, least of all in Athens, where the dead were either cremated or buried in simple, unpretentious receptacles and commemorated by laconic, though often very beautiful, stelae (4,42). Greek attitudes to the afterlife and aversion to any idea of personal apotheosis were unfavourable to the development of sculptural glorifications of the dead. As an art form the sarcophagus had Oriental, ancient Egyptian and Etruscan antecedents. Often shaped like a house with a pitched roof, it provided a dwelling-place for the deceased and implied beliefs about the hereafter rather different from those held by the Greeks. But it was to become the predominant art form in funerary sculpture from the late fourth century BC throughout the Hellenistic and Roman eras right down to early Christian times.

In the example illustrated here, the so-called Alexander Sarcophagus, the reliefs show Greeks and Persians. On the front, they are fighting one another. On the back they join in a hunt in one of the big-game preserves which were a Persian speciality, the lion recalling those on Assyrian reliefs (5,2). Not only the form of the sarcophagus itself, therefore, but also iconographical and other elements reflecting attitudes to the afterlife, mark the re-entry into Greek art of influences from other cultures, which had been rare since the much earlier Orientalizing period. By the time this sarcophagus was carved, Greek civilization was, in fact, no longer limited to the shores of the Mediterranean. Philip II of Macedon (c. 359-336 BC), who united the city-states of Greece and robbed them of their independence, was succeeded by his 20-year-old son Alexander the Great (336-323 BC). As soon as he had firmly established control of the Greek mainland, Alexander led his army across the Hellespont into Asia. The Persians, the traditional enemies of the Greeks, were soon defeated and with astonishing speed Alexander made himself master of their entire empire and more. He conquered all Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Bactria and then passed beyond the Indus into the Indian sub-continent.



The battle on the front of the Alexander Sarcophagus records one of his first victories, possibly that over the Persian king Darius at Issus in 333 BC. Alexander is shown on the far left, clearly recognizable from his facial features as portrayed on coins (5,3). Near him in each scene there is the same much older figure in Persian costume, almost certainly the man for whom the sarcophagus was carved -the satrap of Sidon, who had prudently surrendered to Alexander and became his vassal. Portraiture had rarely been practised by the Greeks, but became increasingly important from the fourth century BC onwards. Alexander is not simply portrayed, however; he is all but deified by the emblems he wears on his head - the lion-skin of the deified hero Hercules, with whom he was often compared, and the horn of the Egyptian ram god Amun, whose 'son' he was claimed to be after his conquest of Egypt. He thus appears as the first in a long line of European emperors and kings who - like Oriental monarchs - were accorded the worship that the Greeks had hitherto paid only to the gods.

The meeting and intermingling of different cultures, so clearly visible in the Alexander Sarcophagus, is one of the essential aspects of both Hellenistic and Roman art. The interpenetration of Oriental and Occidental, of primitive and advanced ideas from East (Persia) and West (Etruria) reanimated and made more fluid the Greek inheritance and thus brought about the creation of a great new art for the enormously expanded, cosmopolitan world of the succeeding era.


Date: 2015-12-24; view: 715


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