Search Results

(b Berlin, Oct 15, 1827; d Berlin, Sept 15, 1908).

German architect, archaeologist and writer. He was one of the leading figures of Berlin’s architectural establishment in the latter half of the 19th century. On completion of his studies in 1852, he was given the prestigious post of Bauleiter at the Neues Museum in Berlin, designed by Friedrich August Stüler. He subsequently became a lecturer and in 1861 a professor of architectural history at the Bauakademie in Berlin. Many of his church buildings used medieval motifs and elements, for example the Christuskirche (1862–8) in Berlin and the Elisabethkirche (1869–72) in Wilhelmshafen. He followed Karl Bötticher in his attempts to merge medieval and classical elements, best illustrated in his design for the Thomaskirche (competition 1862; built 1865–70), Berlin. There, Adler used Gothic structural devices embellished with rich Renaissance detail, a tendency that was also present in many of the entries for the Berlin Cathedral competition (...

(fl late 4th century bc).

Greek painter. Pliny (Natural History, XXXV.78) placed Aetion in the 107th Olympiad (352–349 bc) and (XXXV.50) included him in a list of painters who used a palette restricted to four colours: white, yellow, red and black. Cicero (Brutus xviii.70), however, listed him among those painters who used a wider palette. It is likely that the four-colour palette was a restriction adopted occasionally by many artists who, in other works, used more than four colours. None of Aetion’s work survives, but Pliny ascribed to him pictures of Dionysos, Tragedy and Comedy, Semiramis Rising from Slavery to Royal Power and an Old Woman Carrying Lamps and Attending a Bride, whose modesty was apparent. His most famous painting depicted the Wedding of Alexander the Great and Roxane, and it was perhaps painted to celebrate it (327 bc). It was described by Lucian of Samosata (Aetion iv–vi), who saw it in Italy. Lucian added that when the painting was shown at Olympia, Proxenides, one of the chief judges of the games, was so impressed by it that he gave his daughter to Aetion in marriage. Alexander the Great stood best man. The painting included erotes playing with Alexander’s armour, a motif repeated in several Roman wall paintings with reference to Mars and Hercules. Another Aetion, also assigned to the 107th Olympiad, appears in a list of bronze sculptors drawn up by Pliny (XXXIV.50); this is probably an interpolation from XXXV.78....

(fl late 5th century bc).

Greek painter. He was the son of Eudemos and came originally from Samos, but worked in Athens; none of his work survives. He was said to be self-taught. Vitruvius (On Architecture VII.praef.11) claimed that Agatharchos was the first artist to paint a stage set on wooden panels. This was for a tragedy by Aeschylus (525/4–456 bc), although it may have been a revival presented later in the 5th century bc. Vitruvius added that he wrote a commentary discussing the theoretical basis of his painted scenery and that the philosophers Demokritos (late 5th century bc) and Anaxagoras (c. 500–428 bc) followed him in exploring theories of perspective. It is unlikely that Agatharchos organized his compositions around a single vanishing point. More probably, individual objects and buildings or groups of buildings were depicted receding towards separate vanishing points. If Agatharchos’ experiments in perspective were confined to stage scenery, they would have been limited to architectural backgrounds, before which the actor moved. Aristotle (...

[Hageladas]

(fl c. 520–c. 450 bc).

Greek sculptor. Said to be the teacher of Polykleitos, Myron and Pheidias, he was a bronze sculptor from Argos, active in the Late Archaic and Early Classical periods. His early works were statues at Olympia for victors of 520 bc, 516 bc and 507 bc. His monument at Delphi depicting captive Massapian women and horses may belong to the second quarter of the 5th century bc. The Zeus Ithomatas for the Messenians at Naupaktos was probably made in the 450s bc. A problem is posed by the date of his Herakles Alexikakos in Athens, said to be a dedication after the plague in the 420s bc. That has led to speculation on the existence of a second Ageladas. The dates of his Zeus Pais and Youthful Herakles at Aigion are unknown. The statues for the Messenians and at Aigion seem to have been under life-size since they were easily transportable. A sense of their appearance is given by coins that show statues with stances like that of the ...

(b Paros, fl c. 450–c. 420 bc).

Greek sculptor. He was a prominent member of the group of artists led by Pheidias that executed the Periclean building programme on the Athenian Acropolis. Ancient literary sources provide little information on his career, and even this takes the form of later anecdotes, such as the story of his rivalry with Alkamenes in a competition to produce a statue of Aphrodite (Pliny: Natural History, XXXVI.iv.17), or has been distorted by the legends surrounding Pheidias, to whom two of his works were wrongly attributed: his statue of the Enthroned Mother of the Gods in the metroon in the Athenian Agora (Pausanias: Guide to Greece, I.iii.5) and his cult statue of Nemesis (c. 420 bc; Pausanias: I.xxxiii.3) for the temple at Rhamnous. The Nemesis was allegedly carved out of a colossal block of Parian marble brought to Marathon in 490 bc by the Persians, who intended to use it for a trophy after defeating the Athenians (Pausanias: I.xxxiii.2). Agorakritos was also credited with bronze statues of ...

(fl second half of the 5th century bc).

Greek sculptor. His date of birth and origins are uncertain; later sources mention both Athens and Lemnos as his birthplace. After the departure of Pheidias to Olympia, Alkamenes became the most eminent exponent of Athenian art. Sources that regard him as a student of Pheidias are not reliable, and the workshop in which he trained and developed his stylistic idiom is unknown. The number of his works in Athenian public buildings and the fact that Thrasybulus entrusted him with the production of a commemorative monument for his Theban allies after the fall of the Tyranny in 403 bc implies that Alkamenes was a supporter of the democratic party.

This monument, the form of which is difficult to visualize, is Alkamenes’ last attested work. His earliest work remains unknown, despite increasing acceptance of the assertion by Pausanias (V.x.8) that Alkamenes helped to execute the architectural sculptures of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Two ‘archaistic’ works for the Athenian Acropolis indicate that he must already have been active before the mid-...

(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 (...

(fl late 2nd century bc–mid-1st).

Greek architect and astronomer. He is associated with a single building, the Tower of the Winds (Horologion) on the edge of the Roman agora in Athens, of which he was named the architect by Vitruvius (On Architecture I.vi.4). This elegant and ingenious small marble octagonal building was designed externally as a monumental sundial and weather-vane, with a representation of each of the eight winds carved on the sides of the octagon; at the apex of the roof was a bronze Triton that acted as a weathercock. The interior of the building contained a complicated waterclock; apart from the Triton and the clock, the building is well preserved. Andronikos’ home town of Kyrrhos appears to be that in Macedonia, rather than the town of the same name in Syria, because a sundial from the island of Tenos carries an epigram in honour of its maker, who is named as Andronikos of Kyrrhos in Macedonia, son of Hermias, and compares him with the famous Hellenistic astronomer Aratos of Soli in Cilicia (...

(fl Athens, c. 530-c. 0510 bc).

Greek sculptor. A statue base signed by Antenor, son of Eumares, and indicating a dedication by Nearchos (perhaps the potter of that name who was working in the 560s bc) has been matched almost certainly with an outstanding kore found on the Acropolis of Athens in 1886 and hence called the Antenor Kore (h. incl. plinth 2.15 m; Athens, Acropolis Mus., 681). The kore is a conservative work of c.520 bc. Both arms are held unusually far from the body, which is powerfully modelled, the strong vertical folds of its himation (cloak) giving a columnar effect. Such features as the inlaid eyes and thin ankles betray a bronze worker: Pausanias (Guide to Greece I.viii.5) recorded that Antenor produced bronze statues of the tyrannicides Harmodios and Aristogeiton, which were carried off by Xerxes in 480/479 bc and replaced by Kritios Nesiotes’ famous group. The Antenor statues remained at Persepolis until Alexander the Great or one of his successors returned them to Athens, where they were placed in the Agora alongside the second group. A Roman head (London, BM) is perhaps a copy of Antenor’s ...

(fl c. 414–c. 369 bc).

Greek sculptor of the Argive school, student of Periklytos (who was himself a pupil of Polykleitos), teacher of Kleon of Sikyon, and thus in the circle of the elder Polykleitos (Pausanias: V.xvii.3). With no preserved sculpture, knowledge of Antiphanes derives entirely from Pausanias’ description (X.ix) of three Delphic monuments and three signatures: first, a bronze Trojan Horse dedicated by the Argives for a battle over Thyrea, probably the battle of 414 bc referred to by Thucydides (VI.xcv); also a Dioskouroi dedicated by Sparta as spoils from the battle of Aigospotamoi (405 bc; Dittenberger, no. 115); and finally, statues of Elatos, Apheidas and Erasos, which Pausanias claimed were part of the Tegean spoils from a battle with Sparta. A 4th-century bc inscription on a black limestone base may indicate that the dedicants were Arcadians, not just Tegeans, and thus that the battle was the devastation of Lakonia in 369 bc...

(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 ...

(b Kolophon, Ionia; fl late 4th century bc–early 3rd century bc; d? Kos).

Greek painter. Ancient sources stating that he was born at Kos (Pliny XXXV.xxxvi.79) or Ephesos (Strabo: Geography XIV.i.25) apparently confused his correct place of birth (Suidas: ‘Apelles’) with cities where he was later active. According to Pliny, Apelles flourished in the 112th Olympiad (”332 bc), and his association with Philip II of Macedon implies that his career began before 336 bc. His work for Ptolemy I of Egypt suggests that it lasted until after 304 bc, when Ptolemy declared himself king. No painting by Apelles survives, however, and his works are known only from literary sources.

Apelles studied painting first under Ephoros of Ephesos, then under Pamphilos of Sikyon (Suidas). According to Plutarch (Aratos xiii), however, he was already much admired before he went to Sikyon and enrolled at the school simply to share in its reputation. This is borne out by his probable collaboration with ...

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

Greek painter. Nicknamed the ‘Shadow Painter’, he is famous for his experiments with chiaroscuro, although none of his works survives. Pliny (Natural History XXXV.xxxvi.60) placed Apollodoros in the 93rd Olympiad (408–405 bc) and credited him with being the first painter to give his figures the appearance of reality and to bring true glory to the brush. Plutarch (De gloria Atheniensium II) was more specific and attributed to him the discovery of mixing colours, as well as the indication of light and shade in his work. Pliny saw Apollodoros as the precursor of Zeuxis, while Quintilian (Principles of Oratory XII.x.4) stated that the younger painter invented chiaroscuro. Among Apollodoros’ paintings were a Priest at Prayer and, still surviving at Pergamon in Pliny’s day, an Ajax Struck by Lightning. A scholiast of the comic playwright Aristophanes (Wasps, 385) attributed to Apollodoros a picture of the Daughters of Herakles and Alkmene Coming as Suppliants to the Athenians...

(fl 550 bc or later).

Greek sculptor. The son of Mikkiades and father of the sculptors Bupalos and Athenis, Archermos was credited with creating the first winged figure of Nike (Victory) in Greek art; his works were apparently to be seen on Delos and Lesbos. A column signed by Archermos, that may have supported a Nike, was dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis in the late 6th century bc, and a badly damaged statue base from Delos has a much-restored inscription (written in the script of the island of Paros) suggesting that Mikkiades and his son Archermos dedicated the statue to Artemis after they had left their homeland of Chios. A statue found in the same general area as the base, and like it datable to c. 550 bc, is the so-called (and originally winged) Nike of Delos (Athens, N. Archaeol. Mus.. It is, however, not absolutely certain that the Nike belongs to the base, or, if it does, that it stood there alone. Assuming the ...

[Aristides]

(fl 4th century bc).

Greek painter (s) from Thebes. There appear to have been two painters named Aristeides, perhaps grandfather and grandson; none of their works survive. According to Pliny (Natural History XXX.75) an Aristeides was a pupil of Euxenidas, a contemporary of Parrhasios and Timanthes. The same author named the painter and sculptor Euphranor among his pupils (XXXV.111). This Aristeides would have flourished in the first half of the 4th century bc. Elsewhere, however, Pliny (XXXV.110) mentioned an Aristeides who was a pupil of his father Nikomachos of Thebes. He must be the Aristeides who was a contemporary of Apelles and whose style and works the author described (XXXV.98–100). This Aristeides would have worked in the second half of the 4th century bc. Pliny criticized the younger Aristeides for using colours that were a little harsh but praised him for being the first painter to depict the soul and to give expression to the affections and emotions. Many of the paintings ascribed to that Aristeides suggest the emotional quality of his work: ...

(fl c. 100 bc).

Mosaicist from Arados, Phoenicia. The fragmentary inscription… piades Aradios epoiei (Gr.: ‘…piades of Arados made’) is set in two lines of black tesserae on the white ground of a tessellated floor still in situ in the House of the Dolphins on the island of Delos (see Bruneau, fig.). The beginning of the name is lost, but ‘Asklepiades’ is the most probable. The square floor, which occupies the central court, can be dated to c. 100 bc. It has an outer border of black crenellation and within that a series of pattern bands in concentric circles surrounds a rosette, each corner being occupied by an Eros riding a dolphin and leading a second on the rein. Most of the floor is worked in opus tessellatum, but these corner groups are in opus vermiculatum (using very fine tesserae). The inscription lies between two of the pattern circles. One of these has horned heads, alternately characterized as griffins and lions, that grow out of arcs of ornament. Animal ornament is rare in Greek art, but there is a close parallel on an Orientalizing vase of the ...

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....

(fl later 4th century bc–early 3rd).

Greek painter from Maroneia in Thrace, none of whose work survives. The only account of Athenion is given by Pliny (Natural History XXXV.134), who said he was a pupil of Glaukion of Corinth. Some thought his work more pleasing than that of Nikias, who was thus probably a contemporary. Yet Athenion used a more severe colour scheme, an austerity that reflected the intellectual principles by which he painted. His work included Odysseus Discovering Achilles Disguised as a Girl, an Assembly of Relatives (at Athens) and, his most famous painting, a Groom with a Horse. He also painted a portrait of the cavalry commander Phylarchus for the temple at Eleusis, which seems to link him to the period of Athens’ wars against Kassander, King of Macedon (reg 310–297 bc; cf. Pausanias: Guide to Greece I.xxvi.3). Athenion died young.

(fl late 8th century bc).

Greek painter, none of whose work survives. Boularchos is known only from two references in Pliny (Natural History VII.126, XXXV.55). King Kandaules, also called Myrsilos, of Lydia (d late 8th century bc) bought a picture of the Defeat of the Magnetes by Boularchos, paying the picture’s weight in gold. The date and circumstances of the battle are uncertain, but it is unusual that a Greek artist painted a Greek defeat. The early date assigned to Boularchos and the story of the Lydian gold cast doubt on the historicity of Pliny’s account....

(fl second half of 4th century bc).

Greek sculptor. Though his name shows him to have been a native of Caria in Asia Minor, he was trained in Athens. There his name first occurs c. 350 bc on a signed marble base (Athens, N. Archaeol. Mus., 1733), which carries a dedication relating to the victories of an Athenian family in the anthippasia (a horsemanship contest). On the three subsidiary sides of the base are inferior quality low-relief carvings of horsemen and tripods. Indeed, the base may have supported a bronze tripod. Bryaxis was described as a ‘bronzeworker’ by Pliny (Natural History XXXIV.lxxiii), who recorded two of his works, an Asklepios and a portrait of Seleukos I Nikator (reg 305–281 bc; both untraced). It is not certain if the former was the statue of Asklepios by Bryaxis that Pausanias (Guide to Greece I.xl.6) saw, together with a statue of Hygieia by him in Megara (both untraced)....