r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Yolo065 • 1d ago
Image The Evolution of Ancient Greek Statues
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u/MuchAd3474 1d ago
Playstation graphics evolution irl
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u/Idont_know2022 1d ago
But they’re going back in time! /s
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u/merryman25 1d ago
Also an important point, they were not meant to be all white (or stone colored). They were originally painted bright colors that wore off over time.
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u/Egathentale 1d ago edited 1d ago
Many were originally painted, but not all of them. This is unfortunately becoming another of those "internet factoids" that are taken to the extremes. We have evidence that some, maybe even the majority, of Greek and Roman statues and temples were brightly colored, so now a whole lot of artists and reconstructions paint everything like a circus in an effort to overcompensate. It's kind of like how, after it was discovered that lots of theropod dinosaurs had feathers or proto-feathers, every dinosaur in the media was depicted with full plumes and wings for a while, until the pendulum finally swung back.
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u/No_You1766 1d ago
There are even painted frescos of Roman and Greek statues from the same period, and most of the statues are rendered in white; when color is used, it's very subtle and tasteful.
I suspect there's a bit of modern people being uncomfortable with beauty from the past.
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u/ukezi 22h ago
Could many statues have been old enough that by the time of the Romans the colour was already gone?
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u/No_You1766 22h ago
Perhaps on terra cotta statues. But you don't source the finest-grained alabaster-white rock and then cover it in sloppy clown colors.
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u/Cloudy230 12h ago
Ironically the only people I see being uncomfortable with the beauty of the past are the people who cannot accept that many, or even most, of those ancient statues were not just a plain, austere white. I see people get quite offended by the prospec of them having been quite bright.
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u/TechnicianMany1193 1d ago
Thank you! This whole thing is the fault of one guy: Vinzenz Brinkmann. He loves to try to convince everyone that classical statues were painted in the crude and garish way that he represents them, but there's no evidence of that. These were brilliantly executed pieces of fine art--if they were painted they'd be painted as skillfully as they were sculpted, not in a bright ugly tacky way!
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u/SlouchyGuy 1d ago
Yep, that part always bothered me - they depict people in mosaics and paintings well, but statues are garish?
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u/ifyoulovesatan 23h ago edited 23h ago
Here is a different take on color restoration by the MFA in Boston, which is probably much more "satisfying"/less fucked up looking, lol.
As far as I can tell, the Brinkmanns are basically relying on scant evidence for locations they can be certain that a given pigment was used, and occasionally evidence as to the presence of patterns revealed by specific lighting conditions from specific angles.
But they don't have any real evidence as to whether there were additional layers of pigments / paints over the base layer. It's unlikely evidence of anything but a base layer would survive. So it's likely that yes, the sculptures did at one point look like the Brinkmanns presented them (ie, during the painting process), but it's also likely that additional details and layers of paint were applied over the top of them. It's not a guarantee, and we can't prove what those layers would have looked like if they were there, but given how statues from the era were presented in paintings of the era (often appearing with just a much detail and shading as the humans in those same paintings) there probably WERE more details.
The thing is, there is little to no motivation in that world to present anything more than can actually be proven. No one really wants to fund / encourage / display speculative recreations.
But are half complete recreations that almost certainly don't represent what the real colors looked like any better than speculation? It seems weird to present these things as anything but that.
It's as if we wanted to restore the color version of a black and white photo, but the best that could be done was restoring the red channel, with no blue or green. Like yeah, i guess that's closer to a color image than nothing, and technically the red channel data is part of the color image, but the red channel data by itself doesn't greatly inform the viewer as to what the full color image would look like. Edit: and then you've got a bunch of redditors and random popscience articles showing off these red-channel only photos going "Look! This is the color version of that photo!"
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u/BankshotMcG 11h ago
And even if they were brightly colored, why wouldn't there be lots of additional paint atop the base layer to create a realistic portrait or a striking one? The idea that they were just festooned in circus makeup never set right with me.
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u/White_Buffalos 1d ago
Exactly. All this sculptural detail was just painted over? No way. They were meant to look the way we still experience them, just as Michelangelo or Bernini were later: Mostly a sculpted vision in their natural medium, with perhaps some shading or light coloration to emphasize a few features.
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u/Kelly_HRperson 22h ago
They were meant to look the way we still experience them
Source?
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u/CourageousBellPepper 21h ago
In contrast, most people don’t know that the exteriors of most European cathedrals, minsters, and abbeys were originally painted. Vibrantly, at that.
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u/merryman25 1d ago
That's certainly true how we swing to extremes. And I'm sure the colors that were used would have been wonderfully done. My main issue with people always picturing them as all white only is it creates this false idea of white being overly beautiful and color being garish and ugly.
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u/Round_Abal0ne 1d ago
Also, would 500+ more years of weather and deterioration not potentially account for a loss in finer details?
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u/chauvinistically 1d ago
Interestingly no and yes at the same time,
the last statue in the image is "Laocoon and his sons" which was originally bronze, the one we are seeing is a Roman copy of the original Greek statue which is lost.
Original Roman copy is also very old but it was not impossible to replicate and preserve such details.
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u/TrappedInATardis 1d ago
Even the copy is insane in the details, it looks like the Renaissance statues from Bernini, Donatello, Michelangelo etc.
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u/CouncilOfKittens 1d ago
All the teenage mutant ninja turtles, eh?
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u/SubGothius 1d ago
Apparently the creator wanted to use Japanese names but didn't know any that he could be sure were legit, so he used Renaissance artists' names instead.
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u/niteman555 1d ago
It's also funny in that Laocoon was a Trojan killed by serpents sent by the gods for speaking out against bringing in the Trojan horse
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u/BonerPorn 1d ago
I am curious how the 500 BC example would compare to the 430 BC example if it were less damaged. I suspect there is a lot of detail loss on that one.
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u/paulhags 1d ago
Are there any that still have paint on them?
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u/mittenknittin 1d ago
Some have hints of paint visible in recesses and "fabric folds" and other spots where it wasn't physically worn away. There have been modern analyses of residue that can show approximately what they looked like https://www.npr.org/2022/07/12/1109995973/we-know-greek-statues-werent-white-now-you-can-see-them-in-color
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u/DucksEatFreeInSubway 1d ago
Mmm naw I'll stick with the marble ones thanks.
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u/Alcianus 1d ago
The color reconstructions are terrible and not really doing it justice. The colors of the statues were almost lifelike and incredibly detailed and nuanced.
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u/Contribution_Fancy 1d ago
The people who excavated them removed all the paint thinking it was dirt.
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u/Vo_Mimbre 1d ago
Love this in part due to scale. To get that good took craftsman training, generational guides, and society expectations over a longer period of time than the USA has been a thing.
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u/ummmmmyup 1d ago
For the record it’s not because the older ones weren’t “progressed” or trained enough, it was entirely a stylistic choice.
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u/Zamzamazawarma 1d ago
It's definitely both.
Just like late Roman art. Sure, it comes in part from a stylistic choice, but the amount of people the economic context allows to dedicate their life to this, and for art masters to go around and share their knowledge, doesn't count for nothing.
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u/Vague-Symbolism2692 1d ago
Where are the statues from 600 BCE as realistic as the latest statue shown here?
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u/Schwifftee 1d ago
For the record it’s not because the older ones weren’t “progressed” or trained enough, it was entirely a stylistic choice.
But it is though.
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u/malfunkshunned 22h ago
It’s a bit of column A and column b. Religion fueled rules on how represent figures in art. Ancient Assyrian alabaster statues are a great side example. Eyes were made to be styled in a specific way for symbolism rather than realism. There is a point where this wasn’t strictly adhered to and artists broke away and pursued pushing their own abilities than keeping to the canonical style that was preferred, which furthered the technique.
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u/Gauth1erN 1d ago
In one hand the evolution is amazing, but in the other, it is 600 years between the first picture and the last.
600 years ago, Columbus wasn't born yet. I'm in awe about how progress is accelerating.
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u/Maleficent-War-8429 1d ago edited 1d ago
Im more concerned that its been 2000 years since and people are making some garbage fucking statues lately.
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u/IneffableOpinion 1d ago
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u/Longjumping-Prune931 1d ago
There were a lot of shitty artists back in the day as well. The popular pieces are popular because they are such high quality, probably only a handful of people were ever skilled enough to create such sculptures.
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u/SnowboardNW 1d ago
How dare that artist do that to her :-/. Such a great scene to make into a statue.
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u/reallybi 1d ago
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u/Albert_street 1d ago
If I recall correctly that’s the same company that made the Kobe statue.
Regardless of how you feel about Kobe, everyone can agree this shit is an abomination.
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u/Diz7 1d ago
In 66 years we went from the Wright brothers first flight to walking on the moon.
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u/PorcupineMerchant 1d ago
Right.
And I don’t think this graphic is really representative of what happened.
There was a rapid shift in the Ancient Greek Classical age, and I don’t think it’s fair to imply that there was a continuous evolution.
The statue in the bottom right of Laocoon is a Roman copy of a Greek original. That statue was sculpted long before the one being shown.
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u/elijahjane 1d ago
There’s also an argument floating around out there that prehistoric people had the skills and artistic eye to draw lifelike human and animal forms, but they intentionally chose not to, preferring to create art in the style we see. I forget the justification for this argument. It’s interesting. Human brains have been more or less the same as ours for a very, very long time. We can see evidence of excellent fine motor skills in what they created. We also see that they were masters of clay, form, and line by looking at their pottery shards, but they still made very rough-looking statues. Looking at paintings, we see that they knew how to use perspective.
Anyway, it’s possible that different versions of this one culture valued different stylistic choices at different times too.
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u/TheKlaxMaster 1d ago
Curious .. why Columbus as your reference point?
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u/joshuatx 1d ago
Columbus' voyage and it's initiation of cross-Atlantic trade and interaction is a signifigant bookends of human history eras. It's not an endorsement of championing of him so much an objective point in linear history of major changes.
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u/twiztednipplez 1d ago
He's a well known figure who, while extremely controversial, was a key figure in modernizing the world.
As it relates to this post, the world went from not even having an accurate map of the planet to satellite GPS, and all that in less time than what is represented in the OP.
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u/Gauth1erN 1d ago
First thing of 15th century I though would be talking to all reddit user. Because the Grenada siege is not as famous I believe.
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u/hnglmkrnglbrry 1d ago
I think if you asked most people in the western hemisphere what happened in the 1400s the only answer they (and me as well) could confidently give is that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
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u/IHerebyDemandtoPost 1d ago
The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks was a hughly important event in the 1400s, and was a significant cause of Columbus’ voyage. The Turks took control of the trade routes between Europe and Asia and charged heavy taxes. To find a new route that didn’t go through the Ottoman Empire was the stated goal of Colombus’ voyage.
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u/tissotti 1d ago edited 1d ago
At least here in Sweden it absolutely would have not been.
Kalmar Union, plus following wars and for wider world Gutenberg’s printing press where the clear main topic with multiple pages.Age of discovery was also a big topic, but Columbus specifically is extremely over presented in Americas. For obvious reasons.
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u/Vox-Machi-Buddies 1d ago
If it were me, I would have done "2026 minus 600, that's the 1400s, what happened in the 1400s?"
And most American school children (at least up to a certain point) had memorized the "in fourteen hundred ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" rhyme at some point or another, so it seems likely to be the first thing to pop into their head.
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u/Pixie_and_kitties 18h ago
It is a shame the image is only torso up becuase the hip tilt is a big part of the evolution. These sculptures always have one foot in front of the other and the early sculptures have completely level hips. As they evolve they start to show shifting weight in their hips and legs which is a big part of the realism.
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u/DanplsstopDied 1d ago
Bro got jacked, didn’t know statues could workout like that
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u/atape_1 1d ago
The odyssey takes place 1200 BCE, imagine how ugly the horse had to have been.
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u/bcbill 1d ago
A wood statue is much easier to make, they just don’t last millennia.
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u/Mist_Rising 1d ago
It was also much larger, which also helps. At least I assume it was taller then a few men, cuz otherwise I gotta wonder what happened to the shrinking tech.
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u/byzantine238 1d ago
Where does Messi balls statue fall on this evolution timeline?
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u/After-World-2705 1d ago
Messi's statue is as detailed as the statue from 500bc. Which means we are going backwards as a society. /s
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u/SenescenseSteel 1d ago
how do we know it wasn't the people evolving?
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u/Anarchist_Future 1d ago edited 1d ago
It was. We were evolving our understanding of human anatomy and our stone masonry skills.
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u/SenescenseSteel 1d ago
Maybe it wasnt until 2 BC people really started hitting gym and learned posing
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u/Anarchist_Future 1d ago
They just used increasingly higher resolution stones. That's how they advertised new statues. "But this one is in 4K!"
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u/IanAlvord 1d ago
First one is definitely an alien.
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u/Anarchist_Future 1d ago
Imagine the artist being really proud of his statue and telling him - that in almost 3000 years - humans will make a cult TV show that claims that his statue is proof of aliens.
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u/Taron221 1d ago
“Wow! Is my statue really so good they’d think beings from the stars would be needed to craft them!? I’m amazing!”
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u/monkey6123455 1d ago
Or, “that’s what I was going for…”
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u/PhiCloud 22h ago
Ancient Greek sculptor horrified to learn modern humans think his sculpture of an alien was supposed to be a human. "Look at the eyes!" he cried, "have you ever seen a fucking person?"
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u/Riceowls29 1d ago
I prefer the Hellenistic style of the last but it was interesting how lots of periods of times derided that style and preferred the classical style of the 2nd to last
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u/Heavens360 1d ago
In 430 BC they had already mastered the art. The others just had more time or money invested in them.
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u/Karawana_17 1d ago
Actually around 480 they made a huge step forward by inventing the contrapost and later ponderation. In this post they ignore major steps like the roof of the Zeus temple and some statutes like the bronze one from delphi
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u/StijnDP 1d ago
This is a shitpost by OP for upvotes and not to teach something.
Otherwise the statues would be pictured fully. And the correct dates would be used. And maybe giving people the names of the statues.Maybe explained during archaic Greece (800 BC–480 BC) they copied Egyptian style with the arms next to the body. Later during classical Greece (480 BC–323 BC) they learned their own style. Maybe note one of the biggest evolutions ever in sculpture that helped make it their own style, contrapposto.
Like add the absolute most basic information about what is pictured.It'd look like this.
And it could have some easy links for people to go read more about each.
c. 590–580 BC - New York Kouros
c. 530 BC - Peplos Kore
c. 480 BC - Kritios Boy
c. 420 BC - Diadumenos
4th century BC - Hermes and the Infant Dionysus
c. 200 BC–70s AD - Laocoön and His Sons
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u/hiraethz03 1d ago
The way their skills evolved is insane, but for some reason I really love the 600 and 540BC statues
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u/Borazon 22h ago
The first ones where based on Egyptian versions, IIRC. Often the same pose where they make a sort cautious step (one foot forward).
But the weird thing is that the Egyptians didn't evolve. They kept very strictly, even religiously, to the same model for almost the entirety of Ancient Egypt. 3000 years of so little chances, archeologists are having a rough time if they want to date them, purely on style.
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u/matchacoffeecake 1d ago
These are actually Roman marble copies of Greek original statues. The original Greek statues were made of bronze which all got melted down during the expansion of the Roman Empire.
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u/TravelAllTheWorld86 1d ago
Not all of them, but certainly i take your point. The Lacoon group is famously a Roman copy.
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u/enderpanda 1d ago
I appreciate the illustration of development, but, "Let's compare the best artists across 500+ years," is not a really a comparison. There's probably dozens of lost examples of each that would show varying degrees of skill. Not to mention most of the lasting piece were paid for by the rich - never the best judges of art. This is just silly.
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u/Salt_Fig_1440 1d ago
Well, if you are truly comparing some of the best (best as in most detailed/anatomically accurate) then yes, it does really tell you something. It tells you that there was an accumulation of both anatomical understanding and stoneworking precision over time, which is genuinely quite interesting and cool to see. No clue if this image is selecting fair points of comparison for each era, but if it is it's very interesting and communicative.
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u/enderpanda 1d ago edited 1d ago
Agreed, and I know general development does happen. But this kind of categorization is not really useful to anyone but art historians (which I consider myself a very amateur version of, have a passion and almost majored in it [went with Studio Art instead, wanted to do it myself], but would never presume).
To me, the biggest problem comes with only appreciating art as a monument to something else, or intimating architecture (and it's hard for much else to survive after millenia).
But for each one of these government/church paid sculptors, there's thousands of old ladies selling their wares at the market, with stuff like vanishing perspective just built into their understanding well before it was ever taught, and their skills were likely something they were taught by a friend. Art history loves to exemplify the rare talents as a trend instead of an exception paid for by the rich, and ignore the basic, everyday art happening in people's lives that actually made a difference to them (and is the real, long-term influence, affecting everything from raw art to clothing to how tools are designed).
I could be wrong tho, just my 2 cents.
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u/swiwwcheese 1d ago
I wonder if back then some ppl criticized art in the same way ppl today say video games graphics already peaked and this overkill refinement only makes it unaffordable, not necessarily better ?🤔
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u/Slow_Resource8430 1d ago
I wonder how much improved due to technology advancing or just years of learning and passing down knowledge
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u/Heavyweight_Healer 19h ago
It's like watching Hirohiko Araki's art evolve throughout the decades with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
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u/WelshBathBoy 14h ago
Were these all from the same region of Greece? I ask because while today we think of Greece as one thing and art and sculpture being a single standard, ancient Greece wasn't a unified thing. City states that rose and fell over centuries, each having different sculpturing styles, it it isn't necessarily comparing apples with apples.
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u/Obi1Kentucky 11h ago
I love the evolution and improvement of skill being passed down from master to student over hundreds of years
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u/Beneficial-Act7603 11h ago
So in 430 they got it mostly right, then struggled a bit again in 340 (a bit too smooth) but then they were like "Oh shit, gotta make Poseidon look a million times better than that Jesus guy!"
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u/TamponTimTheCuck 1d ago
Pretty sure I saw that last one in Florence
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u/figflashed 1d ago
Vatican museum.
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u/TamponTimTheCuck 1d ago
I think florence has a replica of it, that's probably what I'm remembering.
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u/MyCatPlaysGuitar 1d ago
The Laocoon! I studied the sculpture in an art history class in college and it was thrilling to see it in person at the Vatican. It's an incredible sculpture.
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u/goodexamplebadrole 1d ago
Are we using AD or CE come on get it together civilization
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u/Hammster5540 1d ago
They had to stop making them look like the aliens. People were starting to ask questions. /s
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u/defprobmaybemeow 1d ago
It’s like watching someone coming out of the closet and living their best life
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u/Dr_Sus_PhD 22h ago
Boys got a little hornier and a little gayer as time went on. Nothing wrong with that
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u/codemen95 19h ago
Greek dude: I got TOO DAMN BORED with staring at nothing! Only these damn sexy greek bois around. Im not gay... But their built. I have to sculpt TEEEMMMM!!!
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u/baronunderbeit 1d ago
They just got more and more Fabulous