PART EIGHT
‘Art is the signature of civilizations.’
Beverly Sills
The arts are sometimes thought of in terms of entertainment and certainly that is one of the roles they fulfil. However, they reveal much more about human nature than that and help us to examine our world in all its detail, as well as better comprehend our relationship with it. To the American novelist, John Cheever, art is nothing less than ‘the triumph over chaos’ while Leo Tolstoy said: ‘Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.’ Of course, such claims may not be true of all art, but even that which might be regarded as the most trivial product of ‘low culture’ can shed light upon the human condition. Perhaps it is more useful to think of art rather in terms of that which is good and that which is not. Leonard Bernstein had this to say: ‘Any great work of art . . . revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world – the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.’
In terms of cultural production, the Classical period refers to that of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. Classicism and Neoclassicism, meanwhile, denote later revivals based on the philosophical and aesthetic principles of those ancient traditions. The most famous of these revivals is the Renaissance (literally, rebirth) that stretched roughly from the beginning of the 15th to the end of the 16th century.
The Classical era lasted approximately from 1000 BCE to the mid-5th century CE, when the Roman Empire was approaching its end. As such, it encompasses a great many styles, traditions and regional influences. Nonetheless, it is possible to draw out some general features. For instance, classical painters and sculptors tended to value harmony, proportion and balance. They also developed a highly naturalistic style, in contrast to the stylized images of, say, the ancient Egyptians or the medieval religious painters who worked after the end of the classical period. However, while the classical tradition prized naturalist depictions, it also specialized in idealized forms and well-defined notions of beauty – the men typically muscle-bound, full-lipped and virile, the women curvaceous and, custom often had it, red-headed. Many classical artists became experts in the study of human anatomy. It is said that Michelangelo refused Pope Julius II’s request that he add limbs and a head to the then recently discovered ‘Belvedere torso’ – the remains of a circa first-century-BCE seated, marble, male nude – on the grounds that it was too beautiful to be adapted.
Classical architecture
In architecture, themes of balance and proportion again reigned. Important buildings were typically adorned with columns and capitals, all built on the basis of exacting mathematical principles. For instance, pillars were customarily fatter in the middle so as to appear to better conform to the principles of perspective. Among the finest extant examples of classical-era buildings are the Parthenon in Athens (featuring the work of the architects Iktinos and Kallikrates as well as the sculptor Pheidias) and the Pantheon in Rome.
Revivals of classical styles were not long in coming after the fall of Rome – the ‘Carolingian Renaissance’ extended from c. 750–900, while the Romanesque architectural style found favour in the 11th century. But Italy was the focal point of the greatest revival – the Renaissance that began in the early 15th century when the values of the classical age were reconstituted and built upon in remarkable ways. The result was a body of cultural production almost without rival. Figures such as the architects Filippo Brunelleschi (whose work includes the Duomo in Florence) and Andrea Palladio, along with an array of artists, such as Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, redefined the boundaries of artistic possibility. Indeed, their combined work is still regarded by many as the high point of human cultural endeavour.