Greek Art

1. Greek Art The Laocoon Group

4. The Laocoon Group • Introduction: • Greek or Hellenic art developed in the Greek peninsula, on the islands of the Aegean Sea, and on the shores of Asia Minor. • The inhabitants of Greece called themselves Hellenes, and their country Hellas.

5. The Laocoon Group • Gods- The Greek Gods were generally nature personifications, who assumed human forms. Each city chose a patron divinity. • Greek also has produced great philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. • The Greek Art is often divided into:

6. The Laocoon Group • Pre- Hellenic, including chiefly the Cretan and Mycenaean (about 3000- 1100 B.C.) • 2. Hellenic, subdivided into • Archaic(1200-450 B.C.) • Classical(450-300 B.C.) • Hellenistic (3rd C. B.C. to Christian era.)

7. The Laocoon Group • Sculpture: • It was in sculpture that the Greeks excelled. They were first to attain perfection in carving, statues of the human body, both in relief and in the round, at rest and in motion. • Their ideal perfection of physical qualities was achieved by athletic exercises for the full development of bodily beauty

8. The Laocoon Group • The result was their magnificent physique and sculptors found splendid models among the competitors for the games. • The themes of Greek sculpture were varied and not limited to any one aspect of local life; they were religious, civil, domestic and sepulchral as the need arose.

9. The Laocoon Group • Several athletic figures of young men from the archaic period have been preserved. The are often called by the Greek word Kouros( plural kouroi) • Until the “Nike” was discovered over a hundred years ago, the most admired work of Hellenistic statuary had been a group showing the death of Laocoon and his two sons.

10. The Laocoon Group • It had been found in Rome as early as 1506 and had made a tremendous impression on Michelangelo and countless others. • The history of its fame is rather like that of the “Apollo Belvedere”; the two were treated as complementary, the “Apollo”exemplifying harmonious beauty, the Laocoon sublime tragedy

11. The Laocoon Group • Today we tend to find pathos of the group somewhat calculated and rhetorical; its meticulous surface finish strikes us as a display of virtuoso technique. • In style, including the relief – like spread of the three figures, it clearly descends from the Pergamum frieze, although its dynamism has become uncomfortably self – conscious.

12. The Laocoon Group • It was long accepted as a Greek original and identified with a group by Agesender, Athenodorus, and Polydorus of Rhodes that the Roman writer Pily mentions, in the palace of the Emperor Titus; now it is thought to be a Roman copy or reconstruction of a late Hellenistic work.

13. The Laocoon Group • For the Romans, the subject must have held a special meaning; the divine punishment meted out to Laocoon and his sons forewarned Aeneas of the fall of Troy and caused him to flee that city in time.

14. The Laocoon Group • Since Aeneas was believed to have come to Italy and to have been the ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the death of Laocoon could be viewed as the first link in a chain of events that ultimately led to the founding of Rome.