Chapter 6
The Body, Human and Divine in Greek Sculpture
Rosemary Barrow,
Rosemary Barrow
Search for more papers by this authorRosemary Barrow,
Rosemary Barrow
Search for more papers by this authorBook Editor(s):Pierre Destrée,
Penelope Murray,
Pierre Destrée
Search for more papers by this authorPenelope Murray
Search for more papers by this authorSummary
Recent scholarship on ancient art insists that religious context is of paramount importance to original meaning. That is not to say that aesthetic considerations of style, form, and material are to be ignored, but that a multiplicity of viewing positions uniting the aesthetic and the sacred are necessary if we are to try and visualize Greek sculpture through ancient eyes. This chapter focuses on four well-known statues ranging from the Archaic to Hellenistic periods – the Peplos kore, the Doryphoros, the Aphrodite of Cnidos, and the Barberini faun – with the aim of exploring the essential relationship between aesthetics and religion in Greek sculpture and considering questions surrounding the nature of divinity and representation.
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Further Reading
- Platt and Squire (2010), a guest-edited volume of Arethusa, brings together a series of essays exploring how post-Enlightenment systems of aesthetics impact on our understanding of antique art and ponders ancient attitudes to these same art works. For a focus on religious context, in particular, chapter 2 of Elsner (2007), a collection of essays by a major scholar of Greco-Roman art, explores the ritual setting of religious Greek art in the context of Pausanias's descriptions of art works and their surroundings. In a similar vein, Steiner (2001) uses textual descriptions to examine intellectual responses to sculpture and sites them as an integral part of Greek life.
- Tanner (2001) explores the relationship between nature, culture, and society in cult statues of Archaic and Classical Greece and roots images within their religious contexts. Tanner (2006) extends this discussion to analyze the societal foundations of ancient art and foreground relationships between artists, patrons, and viewers. Neer (2010) is concerned with Archaic and Classical statuary and in tracing a continuity between the two styles; the book uses visual analysis and relationships with Greek textual sources to interrogate what the image means to the viewer.
- A number of publications discuss the four statues: for full treatments see Keesling (2003) on the Peplos Kore, Havelock (1995) on the Cnidia, Moon (1995) on the Doryphoros, and Sorabella (2007) on the Barberini faun.
