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Article

Anaxagoras of Aigina  

C. Hobey-Hamsher

(fl first quarter of the 5th century bc).

Greek sculptor. The Greek city states that defeated the Persians at Plataia in 479 bc set aside a tithe for Zeus at Olympia from which was made a bronze statue of the god, 10 cubits tall. When Pausanias visited Olympia he saw the statue standing near the Bouleuterion and assigned it to Anaxagoras (...

Article

Antiphilos  

C. Hobey-Hamsher

(fl later 4th century bc–early 3rd).

Greek painter. Born in Egypt, Antiphilos was a pupil of Ktesidemos. Although none of his works survives, he painted both large and small pictures and was famous for the facility of his technique (Quintilian: Principles of Oratory XII.x.6). Pliny (Natural History XXXV.114, 138) listed many of his pictures, which included portraits (Philip II and Alexander the Great with the Goddess Athena, in Rome in Pliny’s day; Alexander the Great as a Boy, also taken to Rome; and Ptolemy I of Egypt Hunting) and mythological subjects (Hesione; Dionysos; Hippolytos Terrified of the Bull; and Cadmus and Europa), all of which were in Rome in Pliny’s day. He also painted genre pictures: A Boy Blowing a Fire, a painting much admired for the reflections cast about the room and on the boy’s face, and Women Spinning Wool. The Egyptian city of Alexandria was an artistic centre famous for the depiction of comic figures and grotesques in several media. In that context, Antiphilos contributed a picture of a man called ...

Article

Astrology in medieval art  

Sophie Page

Astrology is the art of predicting events on earth as well as human character and disposition from the movements of the planets and fixed stars. Medieval astrology encompassed both general concepts of celestial influence, and the technical art of making predictions with horoscopes, symbolic maps of the heavens at particular moments and places constructed from astronomical information. The scientific foundations of the art were developed in ancient Greece, largely lost in early medieval Europe and recovered by the Latin West from Arabic sources in the 12th and 13th centuries. Late medieval astrological images were successfully Christianized and were adapted to particular contexts, acquired local meanings and changed over time.

Astrology developed into a scientific branch of learning in ancient Greece, but because of the opposition of the Church Fathers it was transmitted to early medieval Europe in only fragmentary form in technically unsophisticated textbooks and popular divinatory genres. Literary and scientific texts provided more general ideas about the nature and attributes of the planets which were influential on later iconography. The first significant astrological images appear in 11th-century illustrated astronomical texts (e.g. London, BL, Cotton MS. Tiberius BV), which were acquired and produced by monasteries to aid with time-keeping and the construction of the Christian calendar....

Article

Osman Hamdi  

S. J. Vernoit

[Edhem, Osman HamdiHamdi Bey]

(b Istanbul, Dec 30, 1842; d Eskihisar, Gebze, nr Istanbul, Feb 24, 1910).

Turkish painter, museum director and archaeologist. In 1857 he was sent to Paris, where he stayed for 11 years, training as a painter under Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Léon Gérôme. On returning to Turkey he served in various official positions, including two years in Baghdad as chargé d’affaires, while at the same time continuing to paint. In 1873 he worked on a catalogue of costumes of the Ottoman empire, with photographic illustrations, for the Weltausstellung in Vienna. In 1881 he was appointed director of the Archaeological Museum at the Çinili Köşk, Topkapı Palace, in Istanbul. He persuaded Sultan Abdülhamid II (reg 1876–1909) to issue an order against the traffic in antiquities, which was put into effect in 1883, and he began to direct excavations within the Ottoman empire. As a result he brought together Classical and Islamic objects for the museum in Istanbul, including the Sarcophagus of Alexander, unearthed in Sidon in ...

Article

Hephaistion  

Martin Robertson

(fl 1st half of the 2nd century bc).

Greek mosaicist working in Pergamon (now in Turkey). The inscription Ephaistion epoiei (Gr.: ‘Hephaistion made’) appears in two lines on a cartellino in an emblema in the middle of a tessellated floor (Berlin, Pergamonmus) from a peristyle building (Palace V) at Pergamon associated with Eumenes II (reg 197–159 bc). The emblema was divided horizontally by a strip of marble; nothing remains of either part except traces of a myrtle garland at the top of the lower part and at the bottom centre a blue-grey area with the off-white piece of parchment on which the letters are in black. The cartellino is shown as held at the corners by blobs of scarlet wax, but that on the bottom right has broken, and the corner curls up, casting a shadow. This charming touch of untidiness recalls the account by Pliny (Natural History XXXVI.clxxxiv) of a famous floor, also at Pergamon, called the ‘Unswept Floor’, by ...

Article

Hermogenes  

F. E. Winter

(fl ?late 3rd century bc–early 2nd).

Greek architect. He may have been the Prienian and son of Harpalos who is referred to in an inscription from Priene as having dedicated the plan of a building (?temple) constructed by him (see Hiller von Gaertringen, pp. 143–4, no. 207). Like his predecessor Pytheos and his probable contemporary Arkesios, Hermogenes considered the Doric order inappropriate for temples (Vitruvius IV.iii.1), and he changed to Ionic the Doric design proposed for a temple of Dionysos, possibly the one at Teos. He wrote descriptive and theoretical treatises, frequently cited by Vitruvius, to whom his later reputation is largely due, on two of his most important works: the Temple of Artemis at Magnesia on the Maeander (begun late 3rd century bc; Vitruvius III.ii.6; VII.Preface 12) and the Temple of Dionysos at Teos (c. 200 bc: restored in Roman times). The former was pseudodipteral, a type of temple plan probably systematized, rather than invented, by Hermogenes; the latter employed the eustyle scheme for Ionic peristyles, which he developed (Vitruvius III.iii.6–9). He may also have designed the entire Sanctuary of Artemis at Magnesia, as well as the agora, and perhaps the early ...

Article

Isigonos, Epigonos, Stratonikos and Antigonos  

Andrew F. Stewart

(fl c. 250–200 bc).

Greek sculptors. They were employed by the Attalid kings of Pergamon to create monuments to Pergamene victories over the Gauls. Isigonos is mentioned only once (Pliny: Natural History, XXXIV.xix.84) and may be identical with Epigonos, whom Pliny credits with a Trumpeter and a Weeping Child ‘pitifully caressing its murdered mother’ (XXXIV.xix.88), and who also signed eight bases for bronze statues on the Pergamene acropolis, two celebrating victories over the Gauls. No originals by Epigonos survive, but the famous Dying Gaul (Rome, Mus. Capitolino; see Greece, ancient §IV 2., (iv), (b)) may reproduce his Trumpeter and be copied from one of the signed monuments of c. 223 bc. The warrior wears a Celtic torc and is bleeding from a chest wound, his broken trumpet and sword by his side. The realism of the statue emphasizes its pathos and, by stressing the dignity of the conquered, the statue exalts the achievement of the conquerors. Epigonos signed his work as a native Pergamene, while Stratonikos (who also made ‘philosophers’) was from Kyzikos; Antigonos came from Karystos in Euboea if, as some scholars think, he is the same person as the antiquarian of that name. This Antigonos combined the formal analysis of art pioneered by ...

Article

Kleanthes of Corinth  

C. Hobey-Hamsher

Greek painter of unknown date. According to Pliny (XXXV.16), it was either Kleanthes or the otherwise unknown Philokles of Egypt who invented outline drawing. Athenagoras (xvii) gave credit to the otherwise unknown Saurios of Samos for the invention of this technique, but included Kleanthes in his list of the earliest artists (those who worked before the gods were depicted), incorrectly assuming that secular subjects were depicted before divine ones. Indeed, deities were shown in at least two of the three paintings by Kleanthes held in the Temple of Artemis Alpheiosa in the territory around Olympia (Strabo: VIII.343; Athenaeus: VIII.346b–c): the Birth of Athena and Poseidon Offering a Tunny Fish to Zeus (Zeus was in labour, perhaps with the second birth of Dionysos). The third painting was the Fall of Troy. No other painting by Kleanthes is recorded, and none of his work survives.

Pauly–Wissowa; Thieme–Becker Athenaeus: Deipnosophists Athenagoras: Intercession Concerning the Christians...

Article

Phyromachos  

I. Leventi

(fl late 3rd–2nd century bc).

Athenian sculptor. He worked in the service of the Pergamene kings and made the colossal marble cult statue of Asklepios at Pergamon (c. 180 or c. 170 bc), carried off by King Prusias II of Bithynia in 156 or 155 bc (Polybius: Histories XXXII.xxv; Diodorus Siculus: World History XXXI. xxxv). The bearded head of the god on Pergamene coins may be derived from the statue, while a Roman Imperial copy of it has been seen in the colossal marble head in Syracuse (Mus. Archeol. Reg., inv. 693), and the type of his body in the seated marble Asklepios in Cherchel (Mus. Archéol., inv. no. S. 136). The same Phyromachos, presumably, was described as a bronzeworker by Pliny (Natural History XXXIV.li), who set his floruit in the 121st Olympiad (296–292 bc). This date, however, might have been an attempt by Pliny to set Phyromachos just before the dead period (...

Article

Pytheos  

F. E. Winter

(fl c. 370–c. 330 bc).

Greek architect who worked in Asia Minor. Vitruvius (On Architecture I.i.12–15, VII.Pref.12) cited the Commentaries by Pytheos on his most famous works, the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos (see Halikarnassos §2) and the Temple of Athena Polias at Priene; Pytheos has also been credited with the original design for the altar of Athena at Priene. He may have produced new town plans for Halikarnassos and Priene, including, at Priene, provision for the sanctuary of Zeus east of the agora, and he may be Pliny the elder’s ‘Pythis’, the designer of the quadriga on top of the Mausoleum (Natural History XXVI.iv.31). He apparently incorporated a traditionally Doric opisthodomos and acanthus-scroll sima in the Temple of Athena at Priene, setting a precedent for later Ionic temples such as the new Temple of Artemis at Ephesos. The Priene temple evidently inspired some features of the new Temple of Zeus (c....

Article

Rallis, Theodoros  

Greek, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 16 February 1852, in Istanbul, Turkey; died 2 October 1909, in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Painter, watercolourist, draughtsman. Genre scenes, portraits, local figures, architectural subjects, interiors with figures, animals.

Theodoros Rallis (Théodore Jacques Ralli) studied in Paris under Gérôme and Lecomte du Nouy and at the École des Beaux-Arts. He travelled widely in the Middle East and North Africa, finding many sources of inspiration. He exhibited first in 1875 at the Paris Salon, and subsequently at the Salon des Artistes Français, of which he was a member. He received an honourable mention in 1885 and a silver medal in 1889 for the Exposition Universelle, and served as a member of the jury for the 1900 Exposition Universelle. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy in London from 1879. He was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur in 1901....

Article

Restitution  

Noémie Goldman and Kim Oosterlinck

Term for the return of lost or looted cultural objects to their country of origin, former owners, or their heirs. The loss of the object may happen in a variety of contexts (armed conflicts, war, colonialism, imperialism, or genocide), and the nature of the looted cultural objects may also vary, ranging from artworks, such as paintings and sculptures, to human remains, books, manuscripts, and religious artifacts. An essential part of the process of restitution is the seemingly unavoidable conflict around the transfer of the objects in question from the current to the former owners. Ownership disputes of this nature raise legal, ethical, and diplomatic issues. The heightened tensions in the process arise because the looting of cultural objects challenges, if not breaks down, relationships between peoples, territories, cultures, and heritages.

The history of plundering and art imperialism may be traced back to ancient times. Looting has been documented in many instances from the sack by the Romans of the Etruscan city of Veii in ...

Article

Sophilos  

Martin Robertson

(fl c. 200 bc).

Ancient Greek mosaicist active in Egypt. His work is known from a signed floor at Tell Timai in the Nile Delta (now Alexandria, Gr.–Rom. Mus.), in which sophilos epoiei (Gk: ‘Sophilos made’) is set in two lines in black tesserae on a white floor. It appears to date to c. 200 bc or possibly a little before. At the edge of the rectangular floor is a frame of black crenellations; in the centre is an emblema in opus vermiculatum framed in isometric meander, with the inscription and a bust of a woman wearing a headdress in the form of a ship’s prow (see Alexandria §2, (iii)). This representation also appears in a circular emblema of coarser execution and apparently later date from the same site (now Alexandria, Gr.–Rom. Mus.). The figure has usually been interpreted as a personification of Alexandria, but Daszewski pointed out that figures that certainly represent the city are quite differently conceived and suggested that these are portraits of a Ptolemaic queen, probably Berenike II (...

Article

Sosos  

Martin Robertson

(fl Pergamon [now in Turkey], some time between c. 250–c. 150 bc).

Ancient Greek mosaicist. Pliny (Natural History XXXVI. lx. 184) named Sosos as the most celebrated Greek mosaicist (see also Overbeck). He said that Sosos laid a floor at Pergamon that became known as the Unswept Room, because he showed all the scraps from the feast that are usually swept away. Some Roman mosaic floors illustrate the same idea (see fig.), but none can be claimed as a copy of Sosos’ work. According to Pliny, Sosos made another floor, also at Pergamon, depicting a dove drinking and casting the shadow of its head on the water while other doves preen themselves in the sun on the lip of a vessel. Again, there are Roman mosaics of this subject. The earliest example from a dated context is a fine fragmentary emblema of c. 100 bc, from House B in the Quarter of the Inopos (now Delos, Archaeol. Mus.). A famous example from Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (Tibur; Rome, Mus. Capitolino; see Pfuhl, fig.) has been claimed by Donderer as the original, with particular reference to the character of the frame....