Broadly interpreted, Greek art may cover as many as six millennia from the spectacular Neolithic sites of Sesklo and Dimini to the end of antiquity. Most surveys and handbooks limit themselves to the two thousand years that begin with the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations (2000–1200 b.c.e.) and conclude with the Roman conquest of Greece. The book under review follows the other extreme of dealing with a few centuries only, as it was commissioned to focus ‘on a limited number of works in sculpture and vase painting’ (p. xi). These two subjects – without architecture – were also the focus of M. Robertson's influential A History of Greek Art (1975). This approach takes us to the beginning of the history of art in the Age of Enlightenment, shortly after the discovery of Paestum and the beginning of systematic excavations at Pompeii in 1748. Many prominent European enthusiasts rushed to Naples to witness the rebirth of antiquity and ancient Greece. Johann Winckelmann (1717–1768) was among them, dedicating the years before his untimely death by assassination to the study of Greek art and culminating in his seminal Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (History of Ancient Art [1764]), more than half of which covered Greece. As was the custom at that time, Winckelmann focused on sculpture but we have since learned to appreciate Greek painting as well, preserved in many thousands of vases that are still diligently published, most prominently since 1923 in more than 300 volumes of the international Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum.
W. has thoughtfully summarised three centuries of Classical Greece (600–300 b.c.e.). Her book deviates from the old model by including a good amount of architectural sculpture for the practical reason that buildings are securely dated. Many familiar or famous works of art appear in eleven richly illustrated chapters that are framed by ‘The Beginnings’ (Chapter 1) and ‘Art in Greek Society’ (Chapter 13). In an obvious effort to avoid being too technical, W. omits much of the usual terminology and whatever she considers superfluous information, some of which she gathers in Chapter 13 in this edition. The island of Crete, home of the Minoan civilisation and the predecessor of a great deal of Classical culture (as correctly argued by Sir A. Evans), has been left out of her discussion and her map. The text and pagination of this second edition remains identical to the first one except for two inserted pages on the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (at p. 157), followed by the new Chapter 13, a new timeline, and minor changes in ‘Notes’ (now called ‘Appendix’), ‘Glossary’, ‘Further Reading’ and a new index. Throughout the new edition, many coloured illustrations have replaced black-and-white ones and the quality of the images has generally been greatly improved.
As often happens with Greek art, the majority of the objects in this book originated in Athens, the overwhelmingly – albeit somewhat prejudicially – acknowledged cultural centre of ancient Greece. Even so, it is surprising that all vases in the main chapters on painting are Athenian, 2 (sixth century b.c.e.), 5 (late sixth–early fifth) and 8 (480–450 b.c.e.), as well as most in Chapters 1, 10, 11 and 13. Such loyal devotion to this reviewer's birthplace is very touching indeed. However, it would be justifiable to define this approach as Athenocentric. W.'s favourite masterpieces have full-page illustrations, coincidentally all except one being amphorae: Geometric from Dipylon (Fig. 3); Protoattic from Eleusis (Fig. 6, mistakenly described as a grave marker rather than a child's tomb, cf. G. Mylonas, The Protoattic Amphora from Eleusis [1957] in Greek); ‘Nessos’ (Fig. 9); François krater in Florence (Fig. 15); the Amasis Painter in Paris (Fig. 22), Exekias in the Vatican (Fig. 23), Phintias in Tarquinia (Fig. 81) and Euthymides in Munich (Fig. 87). Considering the brevity of the volume, their presence conveys W.'s belief in the power of images. The great vase painter Euphronios, considered by many to be the predecessor of monumental wall painting, takes second place to Euthymides with two small images of his impressive volute krater in Arezzo (Figs. 89–90). W. should have perhaps informed her readers of the friendly (?) rivalry between these two artists that culminated in Euthymides’ inscribing his Munich amphora with ‘as never Euphronios [could do]’. Douris, another great painter of the early-fifth century, is only included as an afterthought in Chapter 13 (Fig. 251).
Two chapters are devoted to the sculpture from the most important temples of Greece, Zeus at Olympia (Chapter 7) and the Parthenon (Chapter 9). Architectural sculptures are also discussed in Chapters 3 and 12, as well as statues and grave monuments in Chapters 4, 6, 10 and 12. Like so many authors on Classical art, W. finds herself in the difficult position of having no original freestanding statues to show for the decisive High Classical style (450–400 b.c.e.). Her chapter on this period includes a few unremarkable copies for ancient tourists and only two serious copies of statues by Polykleitos. The lack of such originals would be enough to make her readers wonder what all the fuss is about Classical. Even more problematic is the Early Classical period (Chapter 6), sometimes called Transitional or Severe (480–450 b.c.e.), for which two completely different styles of sculpture are regularly mingled in many books as well as W.'s: the rigid forms of Late Archaic (510–480 b.c.e.) alternate from page to page with statues in contrapposto of the Early Classical style.
This writer has tried unsuccessfully since 1983 to convince everyone that relying on the nearly century-old discipline of art history – starting in the 1920s – as formulated by Erwin Panofsky (1892–1968), Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001), or John White (born 1924), among many others, would enable us to identify ancient sculptors in the same way we do vase painters, as well as classical originals that have been languishing in museums and storage rooms as ‘Roman copies’. Having discovered several such masterpieces, I have been forced to enjoy them by myself. As it happens, it is quite common to find books on Classical art that inadvertently display originals as Roman copies rather than vice versa. Ironically, all this is happening while vase painting – partly by coincidence and mostly thanks to great work by many, but especially Sir J. Beazley and D. von Bothmer – has been correctly interpreted and classified following a methodology very similar to that of art history.
The second edition of W.'s synopsis of Classical art is a welcome sign that at least in the UK and hopefully elsewhere interest in the subject remains strong. It would have been desirable to include a few of the many recent discoveries, especially the royal tombs at Vergina where major frescoes have been found for the first time. Among them is the remarkable Abduction of Persephone by Hades, painted entirely in several shades of purple – the colour of the Underworld – by a great artist, perhaps someone as important as Apelles. The opening of the Acropolis Museum is certainly of major importance, as is the restoration of the Periclean buildings on the Acropolis and the many new insights gained from it. The funerary statue of Phrasikleia, the only known female portrait of early Greece, has finally been available for publication. Ultimately though, the choice of objects and the text for them must be respected as W.'s personal statement as to how it all fits with the overall strategy of conveying ideas.
