Greek Art in the Classical Age
Greek art is thought to have reached its peak during the Classical period in the fifth century B.C.E. Leading up to this period, the most common type of sculpture were the kouroi, which were life-size or larger marble statues of nude males that stood on sacred sites, often as grave markers, but also as offerings to the gods. With very stiff, straight poses(they evidently were modeled after Egyptian statues), it is clear that kouroi were not intended to look like real people. However, by the early fifth century, the style of Greek artwork changed. The transition is usually symbolized by the Kritios Boy, a marble statue found in the center of ancient Athens and attributed to Kritios, a sculptor active in Athens around 490-460 B.C.E. ▉It is dated by experts to just before 480 B. C.E. and represents Callias a victor in the boys’ footrace in an athletic competition. ▉The changes from the traditional kouros are slight, but the boy is standing as a boy might actually stand, the right leg forward of the left, which bears the weight of the body so that the right can relax slightly not how artistic convention decrees a hero should pose.▉Yet this naturalness is achieved without the loss of an idealization (representation as perfect) of the human body. Here is, in the words of the art historian Kenneth Clark. “the first beautiful nude in art. ▉”As John Boardman, an authority on Greek art, puts it: “This is a vital novelty in the history of ancient art-life deliberately observed, understood, and copied. After this all becomes possible.”
1.The word “sacred”in the passage is closest in meaning to
A.special
B.highly visible
C.ancient
D.holy
2. Why does the author mention when discussing the Kritios Boy statue that “the boy is standing as boy might actually stand”?
A.To support the point that the difference between the Kritios Boy statue and the traditional kouros is only slight
B.To emphasize that the Kritios Boy statue represents a victor in a boys’footrac C.To explain how the Kritios Boy statue reflects a significant change in the style of Greek artwork
D.To suggest that the sculptor Kritios intended the sculpture to be an idealization of the human body
3.Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph1 about Greek artistic traditions before the fifth century B.C.E.?
A.Artists carved images of heroes who stood in very stiff, straight poses.
B.Greek statues looked less like Egyptian statues than they did after the fifth century B.C.E.
C.Sculptors observed and copied the appearance of individual real people. D.Sculptures were much larger than real people were because they represented Greek gods.
There are a few clues as to why this revolution in art, from the stylized to the observed, took place.One is that bronze was becoming the most popular medium in which statues were being created. (It has been suggested that the Kritios Boy is a copy of a bronze original now lost.) The technical problems involved in casting and assembling bronze statues had been solved by the end of the sixth century B.C.E.,as the earliest examples show. From the Classical period on bronze predominated in Greek sculpture, but as almost every statue was later melted down so its metals could be reused it is hard to guess this today.
The few bronzes to survive (the Riace warriors, the Delphi charioteer and the majestic Zeus found in shipwreck off Cape Artemisium foremost among them) simply highlight what has been lost in quantity and quality. Bronze allowed far greater flexibility in modeling the process of building up a figure in bronze is totally different from cutting into marble. As a wonderful exhibition at the Royal Academy in London in 2012, Bronze, also showed bronze can be burnished (smoothed and shined) to produce a wide variety of aesthetic effects that pure white marble lacks.
4.The word “assembling”in the passage is closest in meaning to
A.putting together
B.supporting
C.moving
D.planning
5.According to paragraph 2, why are there relatively few surviving bronze statues such as”the Riace warriors, the Delphi charioteer and the majestic Zeus found in shipwreck off Cape Artemisium”?
A.Production of such statues was very rare from the Classical period on.
B.Greek sculptors were unable to make many statues of such unusually high quality.
C.The metals used to make such statues were difficult to work with.
D.Most bronze statues were destroyed so that the materials they were made of could be used again.
6. According to paragraph 2, which of the following was one important advantage of using bronze to make statues?
A.Greek sculptors were already familiar with using bronze because it had long been the most popular medium for creating statues.
B.Using bronze allowed Greek sculptors to make larger sculptures than they made before the Classical period.
C.Bronze offered sculptors greater flexibility in creating and shaping a figure than marble did.
D.Bronze required less burnishing than marble did.
The revolution also suggests a preoccupation with human form. While earlier Greek artists were focused on those few human beings who had become heroes, they now seemed concerned with the physical beauty of human beings as an end in itself. It is hard to see the Riace warriors without being aware of their intense sensuality. Yet within a few years this sensuality fades and is replaced by a greater concentration on the nature of the human body as an ideal.It was the sculptor Polycleitos, probably a native of Argos working from the fifth into the fourth century B.C.E.,who allied aesthetics with mathematics when he suggested that the perfect human body was perfect precisely because it reflected ideal mathematical proportions that were capable of being discovered. One of his statues, the Doryphoros, or “spear bearer”(originally in bronze, but now known only through Roman copies in marble), was supposed to represent this ideal. If this approach was followed to its extreme, all statues would have had the same, perfect, proportions but the Greeks could not close their eyes to the variety of human experience. There always remained a tension in the art of the period between the abstract ideal of the human body and a particular body copied by the artist. This may be one reason for its aesthetic appeal.
7.Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.
A.The first person capable of discovering the ideal mathematical proportions of the human body was probably the sculptor Polycleitos.
B.The sculptor Polycleitos suggested that it might be possible to make the human body more perfect by allying aesthetics with mathematics.
C.The discovery of ideal mathematical proportions led the sculptor Polycleitos to suggest that the human body was perfect.
D.The sculptor Polycleitos believed that the reason the perfect human body was perfect had to do with ideal mathematical proportions that could be discovered
8.According to paragraph 3, which of the following is probably a reason for the aesthetic appeal of Greek statues from the Classical period?
A.They were all very similar in their proportions.
B.They combined both idealized and realistic elements.
C.Sculptors were trained in mathematics as well as art.
D.Classical sculptors copied the statues from earlier periods.
9.Look at the four squares [▇]that indicate where the following sentence could be added to the passage. Where would the sentence best fit?
The young man represented in Kritios’s sculpture is indeed very good-looking.
Greek art is thought to have reached its peak during the Classical period in the fifth century B.C.E. Leading up to this period, the most common type of sculpture were the kouroi, which were life-size or larger marble statues of nude males that stood on sacred sites, often as grave markers, but also as offerings to the gods. With very stiff, straight poses(they evidently were modeled after Egyptian statues), it is clear that kouroi were not intended to look like real people. However, by the early fifth century, the style of Greek artwork changed. The transition is usually symbolized by the Kritios Boy, a marble statue found in the center of ancient Athens and attributed to Kritios, a sculptor active in Athens around 490-460 B.C.E. ▉It is dated by experts to just before 480 B. C.E. and represents Callias a victor in the boys’ footrace in an athletic competition. ▉The changes from the traditional kouros are slight, but the boy is standing as a boy might actually stand, the right leg forward of the left, which bears the weight of the body so that the right can relax slightly not how artistic convention decrees a hero should pose.▉Yet this naturalness is achieved without the loss of an idealization (representation as perfect) of the human body. Here is, in the words of the art historian Kenneth Clark. “the first beautiful nude in art. ▉”As John Boardman, an authority on Greek art, puts it: “This is a vital novelty in the history of ancient art-life deliberately observed, understood, and copied. After this all becomes possible.”
10.Directions: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some answer choices do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage. This questions is worth 2 points.
Greek sculpture underwent important changes around the fifth century B.C.E.
A.New kinds of sculpture that appeared during Greece’s Classical period represented Greek gods as well as victors of various athletic competitions.
B.Before the fifth century B.C.E.,Greek sculptures commonly resembled Egyptian statues, representing men in stylized, straight postures that were not meant to appear lifelike.
C.The revolution that occurred in the artwork of Classical Greece was partly the result of a new level of attention to representing the details of human bodies as they appear in real life.
D.Marble became the most popular medium of Greek art during the Classical period due to a need to melt down bronze sculptures and reuse the metal for other purposes.
E.The adoption of bronze as a material for making sculptures was a significant factor in allowing the sculpture of Classical Greece to reach new heights of artistic excellence.
F.By the end of the Classical period, Greck sculptors mainly produced statues of perfect human bodies that represented ideal mathematical shapes, rather than of particular individuals.
