A world made by conquest
Between 334 and 323 BCE Alexander’s conquests created an empire from Greece and Asia Minor through Egypt and the Persian empire to India. Greek art spread with it, and met new influences. After his death his generals, the Diadochoi or “successors”, divided the empire into kingdoms: the Seleucids in the Near East, the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Antigonids in Macedonia. In western Asia Minor the Attalid family of Pergamon built a kingdom of its own, and a dynasty of Greek and Macedonian descent ruled as far away as Bactria.
Kings as patrons
For nearly three centuries the Greek East was ruled by kings, and kings wanted to be seen. They lived in splendid palaces with banquet halls and gardens, held lavish court festivals, and commissioned public architecture and sculpture as well as private luxury objects. Jewellery took on new, elaborate forms with rare stones that arrived along new trade routes, and as goldsmiths and silversmiths travelled more widely, a common style spread across the whole Hellenistic world.
Art for kings is art for display. The Great Altar of Pergamon, built around 170-160 BCE under King Eumenes II, carried a frieze 2.30 metres high and more than a hundred metres long, with over a hundred larger-than-life figures in the battle of gods and Giants. The theme was an old one in Greek art, and the battle was read as a reminder of the Pergamene kings’ own victories over the Gauls who had invaded Asia Minor.
Drama in public
The great public monuments of the period aim to move the viewer. The Nike of Samothrace, about 200-175 BCE and 3.28 metres tall, lands on the prow of a ship with the wind pressing her clothes against her body. King Attalos I of Pergamon celebrated his victory over the Galatians with a monument of bronze figures; a Roman marble copy of one of them, the Dying Gaul in the Capitoline Museums, shows a naked warrior wounded in the side, holding himself up on one hand. The enemy is defeated, and shown with dignity and pain.
Such works build on what the fourth century had begun, the softer bodies of Praxiteles and the new proportions of Lysippos, and push them towards stronger effects. The details, from portraits to old women and sleeping children, belong to Hellenistic sculpture.
A sense of history, and collectors
It was an age conscious of its past. For the first time there were museums and great libraries, at Alexandria and at Pergamon. Artists copied and adapted earlier styles as well as inventing new ones. Gods took new forms: Aphrodite appeared nude, Dionysos and Hermes became popular, and Eros was shown as a small child. Collectors commissioned original works and copies of famous older statues, and wealthier households filled their homes and gardens with bronze statuettes, carved furniture with bronze fittings and moulded pottery, made in quantities never seen before.
The keenest collectors of all were the Romans. By the first century BCE Rome itself was a centre of Hellenistic art production, and many Greek artists went there to work. The period is conventionally closed by the battle of Actium in 31 BCE, when Octavian defeated Mark Antony and ended the rule of the Ptolemies, the last Hellenistic dynasty to fall to Rome.
Where to see it
The Nike of Samothrace is in the Louvre in Paris, the Pergamon Altar in Berlin’s Staatliche Museen, the Dying Gaul in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. The Metropolitan Museum in New York has a rich Hellenistic collection, from the dancer statuette to the sleeping Eros. Check opening times before you go.
Sources
- C. Hemingway and S. Hemingway, “Art of the Hellenistic Age and the Hellenistic Tradition”, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2007).
- Musée du Louvre, Ma 2369; Musei Capitolini, “Galata morente”; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Antikensammlung, “Der Große Altar von Pergamon”.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record 1972.118.95.
.jpg){kind=link}