Art Analysis on An Ancient Greek Gravestone
Uploaded by SamSkillz on Dec 22, 2004
Art Analysis: An Ancient Greek Gravestone
"Why me? Why did I have to go so soon? I could have done more with my life. Who is going to take care of the children?" These are thoughts that could have poured through the mind of the woman in the marble stele. The chosen piece is a marble grave marker from the mid-fourth century B.C. It depicts a woman sitting to the right side, with her left side facing the world, in a chair with her head half covered by a shawl of some sort.
The stele, which is made of marble, is forty-eight and one eighth inches high, and it was found sometime before 1827 in Acharnae, Menidi, in Attica. There isn't much known as to who carved it, or as to whom it is a carving of. This could be because in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a great deal of great artifacts, especially sculptures were gathered up and collected by Europeans (Art of the Western World). This caused some statues to be damaged during their transports, and many of them have lost pieces of their histories due to the harvesting of these artworks en masse. This piece in particular was donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1948, as part of the Harry Brisbane Dick Fund (MMA postcard). Its purpose is the only thing that is really known, and that is that it is a grave marker. However, it is still beautiful and charming nonetheless.
Based on the Story of Art, the untitled marble stele would be classified as a Classical piece of art. This means that the Greeks of the time tried to capture true human essence by portraying people as beautiful, but trying to portray real positions of people at the same time. The artists tried to break away from the stiffness of the archaic style. It infuses ideality with reality.
The woman, proportionally, looks like the size of an average woman, but she has a beauty to her. Her face is smooth, and her nose, although it is broken, is the ideal size. Her nose, mouth and eyes are all properly distanced from each other. Perhaps this is what the woman who died looked like at her prime in life, or maybe this is how she looked...