Art History

The art of the classical world, especially from the sixth to fourth centuries BC, must be considered under the aspect of high craftsmanship, and the artistic intensity of the design on an Attic vase can equal a metope from the Parthenon, noted Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli . Yet in antiquity first-rate works were naturally recognized as such. In the fourth century BC, Isocrates, at the beginning of the oration On Exchange, complains how some sophists slandered him by belittling his activity, reduced to the preparation of speeches for the courts, when he was instead capable of writing philosophical-political pamphlets; it would have been like apostrophizing Phidias as a dollmaker or saying that Zeuxis and Parrhasius practiced the same techne as the painters of votive tablets (pinakia). The module intends to address from several points of view some aspects relating to the illustrious Greek sculptors starting from the 5th century BC. such as Phidias. How is it possible to reconstruct their profiles? And does studying their activity end today only in the search for their masterpieces? No, because it is necessary to consider, for example, the economic aspects of the works and the different commissions depending on the contexts and periods. Anyone who is only a little human cannot, for example, ignore Praxiteles because of his mastery, as the great scholar of the first century BC, M. Terentius Varro says in Human Antiquities: because it is part of good culture and education, in short in humanitas, knowing also the chief greek artists.

The art of the classical world, especially from the sixth to fourth centuries BC, must be considered under the aspect of high craftsmanship, and the artistic intensity of the design on an Attic vase can equal a metope from the Parthenon, noted Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli . Yet in antiquity first-rate works were naturally recognized as such. In the fourth century BC, Isocrates, at the beginning of the oration On Exchange, complains how some sophists slandered him by belittling his activity, reduced to the preparation of speeches for the courts, when he was instead capable of writing philosophical-political pamphlets; it would have been like apostrophizing Phidias as a dollmaker or saying that Zeuxis and Parrhasius practiced the same techne as the painters of votive tablets (pinakia). The module intends to address from several points of view some aspects relating to the illustrious Greek sculptors starting from the 5th century BC. such as Phidias. How is it possible to reconstruct their profiles? And does studying their activity end today only in the search for their masterpieces? No, because it is necessary to consider, for example, the economic aspects of the works and the different commissions depending on the contexts and periods. Anyone who is only a little human cannot, for example, ignore Praxiteles because of his mastery, as the great scholar of the first century BC, M. Terentius Varro says in Human Antiquities: because it is part of good culture and education, in short in humanitas, knowing also the chief greek artists.