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| April 2008 |
| Billie Silvey |
| History of Sculpture |
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| Prehistoric. They’re called Venuses, and they’re among the earliest sculpture, dating back to Prehistoric times. But they’re far from what we’d think of as Venus today. Small figurines of stone or ivory, they were carved during the Stone Age. Subjects of Stone Age sculpture tended to be animals or people, but the large number of small female statues with exaggerated breasts and stomachs are assumed to be connected with fertility rites. |
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| Egyptian. In early Egypt, sculpture had a political purpose--to glorify the Pharaoh or to provide images of government workers and servants to care for his needs in the afterlife. Here is a scribe, writing implements poised to take dictation, awaiting his master’s orders. Egyptian sculpture was carved to be seen head-on or from the side. |
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| Early Greek. Greek sculpture glorified humanity. Here is an early kouros, or young man, still stiff and formalized, but with a hint of weight and action with that foot thrust forward. Greek sculpture was carved in the round. |
| Classical Roman. Roman art harkened back to the Egyptian in its glorification of political leaders. Here’s a representation of the Emperor Augustus Caesar. |
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| Real progress can be seen in sculpting the human body in action between early and classical Greek times. |
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| Medieval. In the Middle Ages, most sculpture was created for religious purposes--to adorn cathedrals. Some Medieval sculpture is stiff and unrealistic, but some begins to show individuality. |
| Renaissance. When we were in Florence, we visited the Accademia and saw Michaelangelo’s David, an example of the rediscovery of classical sculpture by some of the world's greatest artists. The sculpture shows the renewed interest in the beauty and grace of the human form. It was carved to stand outside the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's town hall, as an image of the city itself--proud, victorious and free. |
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| Baroque. Bernini was the premier sculptor of the Baroque period, a time of story-telling in a more ornate style. In his Apollo and Daphne, Bernini shows the god attacking a woman, who is defended by being turned into a tree. |
| Early 19th Century. Canova sculpted Pauline Borghese, Napoleon's sister, in the Empire style of early Rome. We saw it and the Bernini above in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. |
| Late 19th Century. Rodin's Burghers of Calais shows rough texture and individual expression in elongated forms presaging the modern. |
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| 20th Century. The 20th century sculptor Henry Moore took sculpture back to its primitive roots in the smooth shapes and distorted sexuality of his massive works. |