Ancient Works of Art: Historical Analysis

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Studying the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses can oftentimes become quite confusing as several of these deities tend to overlap in their associated domains and responsibilities. This is because the Greeks had already established their pantheon of gods and goddesses prior to their defeat by the Romans as a means of explaining the various trials and tribulations they suffered in the world around them. The Romans had their own group of gods at this time, but they had not yet been organized into family structures and had not developed the depth of detail inherent in the Greek tales (Stone B., 2005). The conquering Romans liked the stories so much, they began adopting them as their own, changing the names of the deities to reflect a Roman heritage rather than Greek. At the same time, these cultures often traded with the peoples of Egypt, who also had gods and goddesses with similar forms and functions. To get a better understanding of these ancient cultures’ spiritual beliefs and deities, along with their associated symbolism, it is helpful to study the artwork they’ve left behind.

The statues of Sakhmet date from the 18^th dynasty Egypt during the reign of Amenhotep III, roughly between the years 1390 and 1352 BC. Unlike the sculptures dominant in Greece or Rome, these statues are made of a substance called granodiorite, which is a mixed rock containing high levels of quartz as well as high levels of mafic, giving it a sort of ‘salt and pepper appearance in many cases (Fichter, 2000). While these free-standing sculptures retain elements of this ‘salt and pepper’ appearance within the material, standing back away from them allows them to take on the more dominant darker hue.

The statues included in the Met’s collection appear very similar in shape and size, each one being just over life-size at about 5 ½ to 6 feet tall. However, if the goddess were to stand from her seated position, she would be intimidating, to say the least, towering over most of the mere mortals on earth. In all cases, the goddess sits easily on a plain throne, her feet are spaced shoulder-width apart and rest flat on the ground while her hands rest gently on her lap. In all but one of these statues, the goddess can be seen to be holding an ankh in her left hand (the exception cannot be determined because damage to the statue has obliterated her left hand, arm, and shoulder). While the statues are similar, there remain subtle differences between them that indicate they were not all created by the same artist. For instance, some of the goddesses have just the lion’s head with no additional adornment while others have either circular or columnar headwear.

The statues are just a few of many that were found around what was once the temple of Mut, the mother goddess at the lake of Karnak, thus providing religious reasons for their creation. Inscriptions placed on some of the statues would seem to indicate an offering to the goddess as a means of making her happy and bringing her favor upon the patron (provided copy). This goddess was particularly powerful. In her ‘negative’ state, she was the goddess of war, pestilence, and violent storms, yet when she was appeased and happy, she was the goddess of healing (provided copy). The presence of the ankh in her hand, a symbol of life, helps to illustrate this aspect of her character, indicating she held the power of life and death in her hands. Another important element of the goddess’ representation is the lion head on the female body. This, too, demonstrates her power over life and death as she is represented by the all-powerful king of beasts.

The marble statue of Aphrodite is generally designated by this simple description. It is an Imperial Roman fully round sculpture believed to have been made sometime around the first or second century AD and modeled after a much older Greek statue from the third or second century BC. The statue is made in duplication, or near-duplication, of an Aphrodite statue that was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and the first such statue is known to have been created illustrating the goddess nude. Although it is difficult to tell today, the goddess once had her arms spread out before her in a protective gesture as she attempted to cover her nudity. According to legend, she is supposed to have been surprised just stepping out of her bath. The arms have been lost to time and her lower legs have been restored by taking plaster casts of similar statues in Rome (provided copy). The goddess stands in a contrapposto position with her weight balanced on her left foot and her right foot leaning slightly forward. Her body is completely uncovered and faces head-on to the viewer while her face and head are turned to the left

The statue is an idealized image of the perfect female form. She is neither too skinny and chiseled or fat and bulgy in the wrong places. Instead, she is presented as the perfect example of feminine beauty and abundance within the community. In spite of this idealized state, she is nevertheless realistic in appearance, as if she could be hiding within the clothing of any normal girl of Greece with the single exception of the larger-than-life-size dimensions. The artist does make some use of symbolism in the statue by including what looks to be a small ewer or dolphin shape. This reflects the goddesses associated with the ocean. According to legend, she sprang out of the ocean from the foam of her father’s castrated member and is strongly associated with water and the water element. Even her hairstyle is configured in such a way as to suggest waves of the ocean while the slight flab in her stomach helps to suggest the concept of motherhood.

Early Christians also had their sculptures and art to commemorate their gods such as the Enthroned Virgin and Child statue made of walnut and decorated with paint, linen, and gesso. The sculpture is relatively small, measuring only about 31 inches tall, which would have made her life-size if she were standing, which is quite a bit smaller than some of the other examples of divinity. This statue is believed to have been created in the late 1100s AD somewhere in central France, probably the Auvergne region. This full-figured statue is obviously intended to be religious in nature although the admirable effort was put into making the features of the figures appear somewhat realistic. A clue as to the religious nature of the statue can be found in the two inner recesses within the body of the Virgin figure, which were probably used to house religious artifacts or relics (provided copy).

This idea is also supported in other evidence from the time period in which Mary is seen to be increasingly worshipped as a deity in her own right. The statue features Mary frontally positioned with her feet resting flat on the floor. In her lap sits a young Jesus figure. While not an infant, he remains a small boy and is thus placed on the throne of his father under the care and guidance of his protective and nurturing mother. Both of Mary’s hands are occupied in securing the safety of her young son while both of Jesus’ hands have been broken off. It is assumed that Jesus would have been holding a Bible as a symbol of his wisdom and power (provided copy). The faces of both figures are relatively emotionless while the drapings of their clothing are symmetrically elaborate.

Measuring approximately 22 1/4 “ by 7 3/4”, The Crucifixion and The Last Judgment are both paintings created to illustrate momentous events in the Christian calendar. Both of these paintings exist today as oil on canvas although they were originally transferred from wood. They were created probably sometime around 1430, still in the early years of Jan van Eyck’s artistic career, but were most certainly completed before 1441 when he died. Although van Eyck painted a majority of both paintings, he did have a painter’s assistant who is known to have completed the upper section of The Last Judgment (provided copy). In content, the paintings represent the end of Jesus’ life on Earth and his role in the Final Judgment to take place at the end of days. Although they are each based entirely upon stories from the Bible, each at least partially centered upon the character of Jesus, they are widely different in their presentation styles. Each image is surrounded by decorative text that describes what is happening within the scene, creating a play between the words and the picture that would have been highly appreciated by van Eyck’s audience (provided copy).

The Crucifixion illustrates the death of Jesus Christ on Earth. The painting is vertically oriented with Jesus taking the central position, flanked on either side by the criminals that were crucified along with him. The entire picture plane is covered with the landscape as if the artist were actually on hand witnessing the scene. The vibrant colors of the crowd of people and horses in the foreground are permitted to fade away in the distance of the background imagery. Of particular note is the timeline of the painting in that it also depicts the moment when Jesus is stabbed by the spear of a Roman soldier. Of the figures being crucified, only Jesus hangs on the cross entirely naked and without a blindfold. The other two men appear to have already had their arms pulled out of their sockets in death at this point while Jesus, as evidenced by the spurt of blood falling from the wound in his side, is still very much alive.

In contrast, “The Last Judgment” is portrayed in three levels. Comprising almost the entire bottom segment of the painting are the images of the poor souls suffering eternity in hell. This segment is physically separated from the rest of the painting by the nearly horizontal, spread-eagled shape of a human skeleton with tremendous bat wings hovering over the damned souls like a gruesome protector. Above this segment can be discerned the people of the earth, both the common people and the aristocrats, all of whom are painted as smaller figures as a means of denoting their lesser importance to the greater scheme of the whole. At the top and dominating the entire scene both because of his central position and his larger size is Jesus surrounded by Mary and Joseph and a host of smaller angels as he makes the decisions of who will live in heaven and who should suffer in hell.

In each work of art, one can see a fascination among the artisans with depictions of their gods and goddesses as they sought a connection with something greater than themselves. While there doesn’t seem to be many comparisons between the naturalistic lines and curves of the Roman statue of Aphrodite, modeled as it was after their predecessors, the Greeks, and the statues of other cultures, such as those of Sakhmet and Mary, they do have this one idea in common that they are all representations of a culture’s female deities. This fascination with the power of the female can be seen to gradually give way to the power of the male in the later works, particularly those of van Eyck, who focuses his paintings upon the activities of the male god Jesus.

There are some artistic similarities between some of the works that would seem incongruous as well. This is particularly true in the case of the statues of Sakhmet and that of the Virgin Mary with her child. The pose adopted by all of these figures is strangely reminiscent of each other. They both face their audience completely frontally with their feet resting approximately shoulder-width apart and flat to the floor. Although Sakhmet’s hands are resting on her thighs with one lightly holding her ankh, the symbol of her power, and Mary’s are busily ensuring that the small child in her lap doesn’t slip, she too is holding a symbol of her power which translates to those of the Christian faith in much the same way as the ankh translated to the Egyptians. The vast difference between the depiction of Aphrodite and that of Sakhmet suggests a tremendous difference in viewpoint between the Egyptians and the Greeks in their view of their gods and their relative approachability.

While the Egyptians seem to have felt their gods existed well without the realm of humans and could only be reached through abstract and indistinct channels, the Greeks seemed to have an idea that the gods were only slightly better than humans in their actions and abilities and were thus much more accessible, possibly even walking around among them. Although Mary takes on the same pose as Sakhmet, she seems more approachable, perhaps because of her more human figure and smaller stature, placing her within the realm of the humans in much the same way as the realistic nature of the Greek sculpture tends to bring Aphrodite closer. By contrast, the paintings by van Eyck again seem to place distance between the god and the audience as Jesus exists in both in an elevated status – once in the mid-ground thus separating us by the foreground and hanging on a cross in the air separating us from our standpoint as well, and once by placing him within the realm of heaven, far from our own mundane realm.

Although the study of these artworks and their cultural context is very interesting, it is still the Greek sculpture that speaks to me the most. The realism involved in the stonework, the beauty of the marble, and the naturalness of her pose all suggest entirely human qualities within a godly form. While I know the Greeks thought of their gods as having the same inherent flaws as humans, only on a grander scale and therefore all the more terrifying, it seems that this statue illustrates the divine power of beauty to the same degree. Although Aphrodite is not perfect as a female figure, she is approachable and believable to a greater degree than any of the other works.

Works Cited

Fichter, Lynn S. “Granodiorite.” Igneous Rocks. (2000). Web.

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Ancient Works of Art: Historical Analysis

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