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The Erechtheion is an Ionic building, with its porches going in different directions. It commemorates the founding of Athens, with the contest between Athena and Poseidon Glistening white marbles which is seem to grow out of the hill form the picture on my mind of the Athens' Acropolis, from what I've seen in textbooks.  The city's highest hill has been a wonder to the world for 2500 years, and a symbol of Greek civilization since ancient times. One climbs the hill to get to the Propylaia, monumental gateway to the Acropolis.  A wide opening in the center allowed horse-drawn chariots to enter.  This view is from inside the hill. Although the Parthenon is Doric, this column on the ground was Ionic Yet, at any given time, so much on the Acropolis is in the process of restoration, covered up by scaffolds.  I was there on the first day of June, which, unusually, was not a sunny day. A view of the Acropolis ruins leads to another hill, capped Athens Tower I was surprised ...

This summer I finally had the opportunity to go to Greece and see the sprawling Palace at Knossos.  Actually, it's not certain if this site was a palace, administrative center, giant apartment building, religious/ceremonial building, or all of the above.  Yet it is so huge that, when discovered in 1900, archeologist Arthur Evans certainly thought he had found a true labyrinth where the legendary King Minos lived and kept his minotaur.  The name Minoan for the Bronze Age people who lived in Crete from about 2000-1300 BC has stuck. Covering 6 acres, the palace of Knossos and the surrounding city may have had a population of 100,000 in the Bronze Age According to legend, the king of Athens paid tribute to King Minos by sending him 7 young men and young women who were in turn fed and sacrificed to the half-man, half-bull minotaur. Eventually, with the aid of Minos' daughter and the inventor Daedalus, Theseus carried a ball of thread to find his way out and to slay the beast. ...

An exquisite of exhibition "mourning" statues at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, have a beauty and realism that give us something to cry about, a phrase Michelangelo used to describe Flemish painting. In the 15th century, Flanders was ruled by the Duke of Burgundy and similarities to the Flemish style of painting can be are apparent in the style of sculptors Jean de la Huerta and Antoine de la Moiturier. They learned their art from the great Claus Sluter, a Netherlandish sculptor who worked in Burgundy. The Dukes of Burgundy had one of Europe's richest courts, in rivalry with the King of France to the west and Holy Roman Empire to the east. The 40 statues line up as if in a funeral procession. At the exhibition, viewers have a chance to see the statues in more completeness and in a more realistic way than in the location they were originally placed, below the bodies of Duke John the Fearless (Jean sans Peur) and his wife, Marguerite. In the current display, th...

Six famous women hold up the Porch of the Maidens of the Erechtheion, a temple on the Acropolis of Athens. These statues are admired for their graceful poses and drapery, but who notices the hair? An Art Historian who specializes in the sculpture of the Acropolis, Katherine Schwab, has studied the hairstyles and made a project of it for her students at Fairfield University in Connecticut. Here's a summary of a presentation she gave last night at the Greek Embassy in Washington. In the New Acropolis Mus eum, Athens --which was just built a few years ago -- one can see the statues from the back with their beautiful long braids of hair, falling in fishtails followed by more curls. In fact, the hair of the statues is in better condition than the faces and bodies whose arms are completely missing. (Caryatid is the name given to a feminine statue which acts as a column to hold up a building; Kore is a statue of a maiden. ) These six caryatids are labeled Kore A - Kore F. Every ha...

In Selinunte, Sicily, the remains of several Greek temples from the 6th- 5th century BC can reveal much about temple construction, although they fell to Carthaginian invasions and earthquakes not long after their building.                     Architect Mark Schara, with his good eye for detail, took almost all of these photos.  Temple E has most of its outer colonnade, the peristyle , restored . Classical harmony is apparent in the rhythm of fluted columns, continuing up into the triglyphs raised to the sky. . But many of the capitals have fallen. On the ground level, we can appreciate their large scale. Temple F was badly damaged . Much of the white stucco facing for the fluted limestone column on right is still visible. Tem ple G, below, was the largest of the 7 temples of Selinunte, the ancient city of Silenus. This temple had columns about 54 feet tall. Here, we see the c...

This tall elegant Charioteer of Mozia or "Giovane of M ozia," was excavated in 1979. It brings up problems of identity, meaning and dating in Greek Art. A life-size statue was dug up in 1979 in Mozia, ancient Motya, a tiny island adjacent to the west coast of Sicily. The slightly larger than life-size Youth of Mozia demonstrates why it is necessary for art historians to constantly re-evaluate conceptions of style, meaning and dating in art. Everyone agrees it belongs to the 5th century BCE, and, based on exact location of the find and the layer in which it was buried, it cannot be later 397 BCE. Yet Mozia was a Carthaginian settlement and the Carthaginians were constantly at war with Greeks who controlled most of Sicily. The questions are: * Who is the subject? * What is the date? * Where was it made? * Why did it end up in Mozia? This statue has physical beauty, elegance, grace and transparent drapery. Feet and arms are missing but remnants of one hand dig into the correspo...