X-Nico

5 unusual facts about Greek art


Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker

Welcker was a pioneer in the field of archaeology, and was one of the first to insist, like Böckh and his pupil Karl Otfried Müller, on the necessity of co-ordinating the study of Greek art and religion with philology, in opposition to the methods of the older Hellenists, like Gottfried Hermann, which they perceived as too narrow.

Greek art

It absorbed influences of Eastern civilizations, of Roman art and its patrons, and the new religion of Orthodox Christianity in the Byzantine era and absorbed Italian and European ideas during the period of Romanticism (with the invigoration of the Greek Revolution), right up until the Modernist and Postmodernist.

Minoan prehistorical civilizations, and gave birth to Western classical art in the subsequent Geometric, Archaic and Classical periods (with further developments during the Hellenistic Period).

Indo-Greek art

This is particularly the case of some purely Hellenistic works in Hadda, Afghanistan, an area which "might indeed be the cradle of incipient Buddhist sculpture in Indo-Greek style".

Rolf Thommessen

He received the dr.philos. degree from the University of Kristiania in 1908, with the thesis Kunstneren i den græske kunst, about Greek art.



see also

Bengt Erland Fogelberg

His Odin (1831), Thor (1842), and Balder (1842), though influenced by Greek art, display considerable power of independent imagination.

Japodian burial urns

The Japodian burial urn art was a unique form of art influenced to a degree by the Situla art of northern Illyria and Italy and by Greek art.

Silk Road transmission of art

To this day however the transmission of many iconographical details is still visible, such as the Hercules inspiration behind the Nio guardian deities in front of Japanese Buddhist temples, or representations of the Buddha reminiscent of Greek art such as the Buddha in Kamakura.