[ home · entrance · contact · what's new · about me · *fine art* · digital art · cd cover · darkroom · photography · sculptures ]
[ back to main page art history ]  [ back to main page fine art ]

wildbrush's art.to.day - you entered my world of art history -

Comparative Advancing Art History     
 of Pigments and Mediums     
in European and Asian Cultures     

PIGMENTS, PAINTING, SCULPTURE IN B.C. HISTORY:
- MEDITERRANEAN CIVILIZATIONS

GREECE

2000 B.C., MYCENAEANS, from the city in Argous State on Peloponnesus Island, Pre-Greek, were a rich culture for the last thousand years, as Homer said, over a ton of gold was retrieved from the Heinrich Schliemann excavations. He was a merchant for the color indigo from India.

1500 B.C., The ETRUSCAN and GREEK civilizations formed about this time, equal to the EGYPTIAN MIDDLE EMPIRE, the XII Dynasty. The Etruscans used lead, iron, mercury, cobalt and arsenic colors, and the copper frits from Egypt. Turpentine, mastic, balsams, egg, wax and lime were the mediums for painting, also sandaraca from Morocco. By the time Christ was born, Romans were great painters and the Greeks would be great sculptures. The Greeks were probably great painters also, but no paintings or murals survived. Pompeii and Herculaneum murals in Italy were saved by the Vesuvius eruption in A.D. 79.

1100 B.C., PELOPONNESUS, the seat of this early Mycenaean, Pre-Crete civilization, is the large land that forms the southern end of the Greek peninsula. The Dorian, Ionian, and Aiolian tribes that begin occupying Peloponnesus will form the Greek civilization, and fight the Trojan War. Art diminishes and the first "Dark Age" period was upon us, artisans were working in limestone, marble and diorite, an igneous rock of plagioclase feldspar and hornblende. Their not getting much support.

1000 B.C., PELOPONNESUS - Dark Ages. Homer writes the Iliad and the Odyssey, and unites the people with stories about they're great god's.
All art is only abstract, the work of children who lived through the wars. Geometric forms similar to our post war abstract modern art, painting in general is on a downhill slide after the Mycenaean Age, which was also declining at the end. Very little art is to be found from this "Dark Age period of Painting" until 525 B.C.., and there only cartoon drawings without shadows, like the Egyptians with out the rigorous formality of positions. Perhaps this is a great step forward.

900 B.C., GREECE is smelting bronze, It's now all one big united peninsula.

700 B.C., Clay plate ceramics of mining at CORINTH, Greece are found.

600 B.C., The Temple of Hara, the Heraeum at Olympia, had wood columns which were replaced by stone in the Doric order. In Delphi, Greece, their sculptures were stiff with heavy Egyptian influence. I went there in 1963 to see the theater stadium, it was about 30 seat steps high, half way around a single tennis court in size. It was way out of the way and everything was an iron red-tan color.

580 B.C., Coreyra, early Corfu, at the top of the Ionian Island's chain, bas-reliefs with Egyptian influence. The "Youth from Attica" sculpture is the stiff "Apolos", or Greek-Egyptian type style.

550 B.C., the "Hera of Samos" looks as if it were cut from a tree, very massive.

500 B.C., Cretan sculpture is more advanced with perfect lifelike figures.

500 B.C., Aegina, the large island near Athens, is reaching the peak in sculpturing, good movement and good proportions.

500 B.C., Berlin has a ceramic jug with realistic stylized drawing that is better then the Greeks work.

470 B.C., Delphi bronze are life size, stiff and close to realistic. The Persian War's are over and Greece starts it's rebuilding. They will be the next rulers of the Persian Empire.

460 B.C., Pericles is in power, the second Temple of Hera is built at Paestum, it's 80' wide and it's also called the Temple of Posidon. Located in southern Italy, it looks like an early Parthenon, Doric in style, with wax painted blue and red on at least the moldings. The other order of architecture to emerge from the "dark Ages" is Ionic, a more elaborate and decorated style, which was popular on the more advanced Aegean Islands.
"Zeus" the poured bronze sculpture was larger then life and perfect. They told me in Greece it was really a sculpture of Posidon and probably stolen from Crete. Myron, made realisticly perfect bronzes as seen from the Roman copy of "The Discus Thrower".

440 B.C., Doric Parthenon, 101' wide, 228' long, created by the Greek architects Ictinus and Callicrates, it was Athena's Temple, built on the highest of Athens three hills. It was made from the best pentelic marble and Phidias was the master sculpture. Polygnotus was their greatest painter, working in wax and mastic. All of his paintings have vanished. Polyclitus proportioned the body seven heads high.

410 B.C., Ionic Erechtheum, straight fluted pillars on the back and the Porch of the Maidens in front.

[ back to main page art history ]  [ back to main page fine art ]