Ancient Greek Culture Wounded Amazon 400-350 BC marble relief (from the Temple of Artemis, Ephesus) Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Ancient Greek Culture Grave Naiskos with Enthroned Woman and Attendant 100 BC marble relief Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Ancient Greek Culture The Victorious Youth 300-100 BC bronze statue Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Ancient Greek Culture Grave Stele of Family Group 360 BC marble relief Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Ancient Greek Culture Tiepolo Aphrodite 2nd century BC marble statue Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Ancient Greek Culture Grave Naiskos of Young Woman 360 BC marble relief Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Ancient Greek Culture Figure of a Young Man 200 BC marble relief Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Ancient Greek Culture Nereid 390-380 BC marble statue (from the Nereid Monument, Lycia) British Museum |
Ancient Greek Culture Youth from Ionia 1st century BC marble statue Museo del Prado, Madrid |
Ancient Greek Culture Hermaphrodite 2nd century BC marble statuette Princeton University Art Museum |
Ancient Greek Culture Alexander the Great as a Hunter 250-100 BC bronze statuette British Museum |
Ancient Greek Culture Alexander the Great 2nd century BC marble statuette Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Ancient Greek Culture Grave Stele of Dionysios and Melitinec 125-100 BC marble relief Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Ancient Greek Culture Grave Stele of Youth and Slave 375-350 BC marble relief Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Ancient Greek Culture River Ilissos 440 BC marble statue (from the west pediment of the Parthenon) British Museum |
"The design of the ancients is distinguished by an union in the proportions, a simplicity of contour, and excellence of character. Of the first I have said as much as I might do without venturing too far into the mechanics of the art; but as I have only hinted at the others, some more particular remarks may not be improper. There is no one excellence of design from which we receive such immediate pleasure as from a gracefulness of action. If we observe the attitudes and movements of the Greek statues, we shall mark that careless decency and unaffected grace which ever attend the motions and gestures of men unconscious of observation. There is a prodigious difference between those movements which flow from nature and those which are directed by art. The ancients knew this well, and hence followed that singular simplicity which characterises their works. For though at times – as in the Venus of Medicis and daughters of Niobe – they rise to an assumed gracefulness and even profess a desire to please, yet this is confined to so simple a contour, it is so little above the measure of ordinary action, that it appears less the effect of study than the natural result of a superior character, or an habitual politeness."
– Daniel Webb, from An Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting (1760)