Art and Architecture of the Ancient World II

In combination with its self-contained but complementary prequel, this B.A. class constitutes the second half of the two-part Period Introduction Overview dedicated to the art and architecture of the Ancient World, in which first-year students attain basic knowledge of the most characteristic artistic accomplishments of Ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, along with the Bronze-Age cultures of the Aegean, prior to being introduced to the earlier periods of Greek Art spanning between its “Dark-Age” beginnings and the Classical Period. The second-year course content in turn covers the most remarkable – and in part, but not entirely, Classically-inspired – stylistic and iconographic innovations that have (keeping pace with the continually increasing number of new artistic tasks and changing contexts of production and reception) characterized the ever more diversified visual culture of the Hellenistic monarchies and the later Roman Empire.
Classical, Hellenistic and Roman Art; Selectively highlighting the respective oeuvres of the most remarkable Greek architects, sculptors and painters of the period, this course opens with an introductory overview of the later Classical art, logically followed by a compressed account of various (and in part regionally determinable) artistic trends of the Hellenistic period encompassing a wide range of stylistic choices between the full-blown pathos of the so-called “Hellenistic Baroque” on the one side and the refined, retrospectively classicizing, “Atticist” alternatives on the other. The last part of this B.A. course is, in turn, dedicated to a chronological survey of the visual arts during the Roman Period starting with a brief introduction to the early developments (mostly marked by the interaction of Etruscan, Greek and “indigenous” Italic elements) but primarily centering on the crucial process of adoption and adaptation of Eastern Mediterranean Hellenistic models, the enduring impact of which was becoming increasingly more pronounced from the Late Republican Period onwards, and – in both public and private spheres – retained their paramount importance throughout the Roman Empire especially in the course of the first three centuries A.D. (but to varying degrees also tenaciously surviving into Late Antiquity). Within this section, special emphasis is placed on the architecture, sculpture and painting of the Augustan Age, which provides the obvious point of departure for a more nuanced, and context-oriented, understanding of the “official” art of the Roman state during the entire Imperial Period.