Alberti’s Window

The quarter is over. Over the past few days I’ve reflected on what lectures I enjoyed teaching to my ancient art students. I think that my favorite lecture was based on Kenneth Lapatin’s essay, “The Fate of Plate and Other Precious Metals: Toward a Historiography of Ancient Greek Minor (?) Arts”¹.

The reason why Lapatin includes a question mark after the word “minor” is important: his whole essay revolves around the argument that the Greeks valued the so-called “minor arts” much more than they are valued today. For Lapatin, the “sumptuous” artistic materials like ivory, gold, silver and gemstone were the artistic mediums that the Greeks most prized. In other words, the Greek marble, bronze and (painted) pottery (all of which are placed at the heart of Western art history) weren’t as valued by the ancient Greeks.

To prove his point, Lapatin gives one especially interesting example. He writes that “in the middle of the sixth century BC, the inhabitants of Phocaea decided to abandon their city rather than submit to the Medes. Herodotus reports, ‘They loaded onto their ships their children, women, and household property, and above all the images of the gods from the sanctuaries and other dedications, everything, in fact, except bronzes, stoneworks, and paintings, and they sailed to Chios.'”² Now I realize that there may have been some practical reasons why the Greeks didn’t load their ships with stonework (it is heavy, after all!), but isn’t it interesting that the art we value today is precisely the art that the Greeks chose to abandon?

In some ways, this news shouldn’t come as a surprise to art historians. We have known for a long time that the main purpose of the Parthenon was to house Phidias’ chryselephantine cult statue of Athena (see above left for a reconstruction of an original of c. 438 BC). The cult statue was the most valued thing by the Greeks, not the building which housed the statue. This is very ironic, because today much more emphasis is placed on the architecture and exterior sculpture of the Parthenon. In fact, it’s interesting that one ancient Greek writer, Pausanias, only mentions the two pediments and cult statue when he described the Parthenon. He ignored the metopes and frieze completely, which suggests that they weren’t very important.³

So, why do we value painting, architecture, and sculpture above the “minor” materials and objects created by the Greeks? Lapatin traces this ideology back to Vasari’s writings of the 16th century (see a 1566-68 self-portrait of Vasari on right). Vasari’s Lives focused on the achievements of three artistic types: painters, sculptors, and architects. As a result, painting, sculpture, and architecture became “the canonical triad” in art history.⁴ In some ways, it’s not surprising that Vasari promoted these types of art: after all, he was a painter and architect himself. Although the effect of Vasari’s “triad” was not immediate (gems were still were considered part of the arts for a long time afterward), Vasari’s writings took part in “the displacement and demotion of items fashioned from sumptuous materials from the lofty position they held in ancient art and culture (as well as in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance).”⁵

Lapatin’s argument is fascinating. He also delves into interesting discussions of how Winckelmann affected our modern perception of Greek sculpture, particularly in terms of what we value today (i.e. unpainted white marble). It’s great stuff. I recommend that everyone should get their hands on a copy of this article. Unfortunately, his essay is found in a book that currently is out of print. But I promise that your efforts in securing a copy of this essay will be well worth the effort!


1 Kenneth Lapatin, “The Fate of Plate and Other Precious Metals: Toward a Historiography of Ancient Greek Minor (?) Arts,” in Ancient Art and its Historiography by A. A. Donohue, ed. (Cambridge: 2003): 69-91.


2 Ibid., 71.

3 Colin Cunningham, “The Parthenon Marbles,” in Academies, Museums and Canons of Art by Gill Perry and Colin Cunningham, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 53-54. Part of the citation is available online here.


4 Lapatin, 74. It should be noted that Vasari did discuss and laud the importance of gold work and glyptic in the first edition of his Lives (1550). However, the 1568 revision of the text demoted the sumptuous arts and elevated painting instead.


4 Ibid.

This week I’ve been thinking about several random art historical facts and ideas. Several of you might have seen some of these links on my Twitter feed, but I wanted to flesh out a few ideas here:

• Norman Rockwell included a portrait of Grandma Moses in his painting Christmas Homecoming (1948, see right). You can see Moses on the left side of a painting, wearing an old-fashioned dress. The two artists were friends who lived relatively close to each other at one time. (In fact, you can read parts of a story about Norman Rockwell at Grandma Moses’ surprise 88th birthday party here.)
• I really don’t know that much about Grandma Moses. She never was discussed in any of my art history classes, but I didn’t focus on American art from the 20th century. But could she have been excluded from courses and textbooks because she is a folk artist? Out of curiosity, have any Americanists studied Grandma Moses’ work in an academic setting?
• I was surprised to learn that Johann Winckelmann, one of the early scholars of art history, was murdered in 1768. He was fifty years old. What if Winckelmann had lived a full life? I wonder if he would have retracted any of his ideas about unpainted classical sculpture, “good taste,” or how Greek art has “noble simplicity.”¹ (For example, scholars in the early 19th century were able to document the traces of paint on certain Greek statues after their excavation. If Winckelmann had lived longer, would he have learned this news and changed his ideas about white marble and beauty?) Maybe it’s a stretch, but I like to think about how the Western canon might have been different if Winckelmann had not been murdered.
• I’ve been reading about the Laocoön statue lately, partially because I want to know more about the theory that Michelangelo created the Laocoön (which is a rather far-fetched idea, in my opinion). I’ve also enjoyed looking at this annotated chronology of the statue: this piece has a pretty rich history!
• A comment from a student also led to me to look at a pre-20th century restoration of the Laocoön statue. This restoration depicts the arm of the priest as being fully-extended. (The restored arm (now lost) was the work of Renaissance artist Bandio Baccinelli. For those interested, Vasari wrote a little bit about Bandio Baccinelli’s work on the Laocoön here.) It appears that has been a lot of debate regarding how Laocoön originally appeared. As recently as 1989, one scholar argued that the whole composition needs to be more compact and pyramidal in order to be historically accurate.²

How was your week? Were your art historical thoughts as assorted as mine?

1 Johann Joachim Winckelmann, “Reflections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture,” in The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology by Donald Preziosi, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 31-39. For an interesting critique on Winckelmann’s theories, see also Kenneth Lapatin, “The Fate of Plate and Other Precious Materials: Toward a Historiography of Greek Minor (?) Arts,” from Ancient Art and its Historiography by A. A. Donohue, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 69-91.

2 Seymor Howard, “Laocoon Rerestored,” in American Journal of Archaeology 93, no. 3 (July 1989): 417-422.

Tonight I’ve been researching why the so-called “Peplos Kore” (c. 530 BCE, shown left) might not be wearing a peplos garment. (A “peplos” is a rectangle of cloth that is pinned at the shoulders and worn with a belt – it gives the effect that the woman is wearing a blouse. And “kore” means young woman; it is a name given to certain female statues made by the Greeks.)

This current “un-peplos” argument is based on recent reconstructions and studies of the figurine. Instead of a peplos, it is thought that the statue is wearing a long robe, cape, and an ependytes (an outer garment which is a metal-like sheath divided into regular, rectangular compartments).¹ The ependytes was an Eastern garment associated with divine power, and therefore suggests that this figurine would have represented some type of goddess, perhaps Artemis or Athena.

This argument has been solidified by the recent reconstructions of the Peplos Kore by German archaeologist Vincenz Brinkmann.² I suppose that now the problem is to try and ascertain which goddess could be depicted. The statue’s missing right hand probably held some object to help ascertain her identity (like a bow for Artemis). Brinkmann favors the idea that the goddess is Artemis (although alternate theories have been presented by others).³ Anyhow, here are some possible ideas presented in reconstructions of the Peplos Kore:

1 Richard T. Neer, The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 119. Source available online here.

2 Ibid. You also can read an English review of Brinkmann’s publication here (review by by Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway). Be sure to check out the penultimate paragraph and footnote #12 to find out more information about the Peplos Kore argument.

3 See Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway review (Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2004.08.07), footnote #12.

I’ve been reading snippets of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History over the past few days, and I can’t help but think that the ancient Roman and I would have been friends. I definitely feel as curious about the world as Pliny the Elder, but hopefully I am a little more practical (i.e. I wouldn’t risk my life to observe the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius).

There are two things that I like about Natural History. For one thing, I like Pliny’s little anecdotes about artists (I’m sure my penchant for anecdotes is no surprise, gentle reader!). Even though some of the stories seem a little too legendary and far-fetched (Vasari would have loved some of these stories for his Vite), they are still quite fun. For example, Pliny devotes a whole section to stories about the Greek painter Apelles of Cos (you can read some of the stories here). One such story involves speculation that Apelles painted Alexander the Great’s mistress Pancaste for Aphrodite Rising from the Foam (“Aphrodite Anadyomene,” shown above in a Roman mural from Pompeii (House of the Marine Venus, 1st century AD) which is thought to have been based on Apelles’ original work). ¹

I’m especially amused by this story about Apelles and a picture of a horse:

“There is, or at least there once existed, a picture of a horse by Apelles. It was painted for a competition in which he sought judgment not from men but from dumb animals. For, seeing that his rivals were getting the upper hand by devious means, he showed the pictures individually to some horses he had brought in, and they neighed only at Apelles’ picture. As this frequently happened on subsequent occasions it proved to be a good test of the artist’s skill.” (Natural History XXXV:95).

The other thing I like about Pliny the Elder is his apparent passion and excitement for his subject matter. I love that he calls the pyramids “a pointless and absurd display of royal wealth.” (Natural History XXXVI: 75) (Not that I agree with that statement, I just love his frank opinion.)

I also can relate to his awe regarding the Colossus of Rhodes (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, original c. 292-284 BC, shown left through a wood engraving reconstruction by Sidney Barclay, c. 1875). I’m always interested in how a sculpture’s scale compares to that of a human being, and Pliny seems to have that same interest: “No statue has commanded greater admiration than the Colossus of Rhodes made by Chares of Lindos, the pupil of Lysippus. It was about 105 feet high. Sixty-six years after its erection the Colossus was toppled by an earthquake, but even lying on the ground it is amazing. Few people can make their arms meet round its thumb, and the fingers alone are larger than most statues.” (Natural History XXXIV:42). (On a side note, it was announced about two years ago that the Colossus of Rhodes was going to be rebuilt as a giant light sculpture. Does anyone know if progress has been made on that project?)

Who here has read Natural History? Any likes or dislikes? If you haven’t had a chance to get to know Pliny the Elder and his thoughts on art, I’d highly recommend those few chapters from Natural History. Pliny the Elder is witty, opinionated, and just all-around interesting.

1 Pancaste could really be labeled as Alexander the Great’s ex-mistress. Pliny records that the ruler commissioned Apelles to paint Pancaste, and then Apelles ended up in love with his subject. In turn, Alexander gave Pancaste to Apelles, which Pliny noted was indicative of Alexander’s magnanimity. (Natural History XXXV:86-87).

This past weekend, my family and I traveled to visit the Washington State Capitol Building. It’s always fun for me to identify the different architectural features on such buildings, and particularly to think of Western/European counterparts which may have inspired such features. But as we approached the bronze doors of the capitol (c. 1923-28, see detail on left), I paused. Bronze doors are a common feature in Western architecture, but what about the lion’s head doorknockers? What’s their history? I could think of earlier lion’s head knockers, such as the Ottonian ones on the Hildesheim Cathedral, but I wasn’t sure if there might be an earlier example.

After doing a little research, I found a really charming article from 1918 that discusses the history of doorknockers. I was surprised to learn that the doorknocker has existed since ancient Greece.¹ At this time slaves were often assigned to answer doors, and they were chained to the door in order to prevent them from running away. The predecessor of doorknockers were short iron bars that attached to these chains, which were used as “rappers.”

It appears that the lion’s head design also existed for doorknockers in ancient Greece. In 1942 Sterling Dow mentioned some “heavy handsome lion’s-head door knockers…which escaped the sack by Philip in 348 BC.”²

So, what’s the significance of lion’s head doorknockers?  Did they symbolize anything, or were they just decorative? I haven’t come across any speculation on the subject, but I think that there must have been some symbolism involved. Lions held symbolism in lots of ancient cultures, and often embodied power and strength. I have a theory that lion’s head doorknockers were intended to serve the same symbolic function as the lion statues which decorated the gates of the Hittites (Hattusha Lion Gate, c. 1400 BCE, see above right) and the Mycenaeans (Lion Gate at Mycenae, c. 1250 BCE). In each case, these intimidating lions serve as guardian beasts for the city, as well as symbolize strength and power.  I think the same thing can be said for lion’s head doorknockers, which rest on the doors (i.e. gates) as guardians of a building.

On a side note, though, it’s interesting that not everyone today associates lion’s head doorknockers with such ancient symbolism.  This fascinating study by Zachary McCune mentions a woman who selected a lion’s head doorknocker for her home, but only because the same knocker was found on the door of the UK Prime Minister’s house.  In this woman’s case, it appears that she wanted her knocker (and her home) to have some connection and/or status with this association to the Prime Minister.

Do lion’s head doorknockers have any particular meaning or symbolism for you? Can you think of an ornate doorknocker (of a lion’s head or otherwise) that you particularly like?


1 “The Evolution of the Door-Knocker,” The Art World 3, no. 5 (1918): v, vii-viii.


2 Sterling Dow, “Review: Excavations at Olynthus,” The American Historical Review 47, no. 4 (July 1942): 824.