Hellenistic and late classic architecture

Late classic architecture.

Features:

1. Art and architecture first began to serve the aesthetic needs and interests of a private person, and not the polis as a whole.
2. Simultaneous striving for pomp, lightness and sophistication.

3.Prevalence of buildings of the Ionic order.

4. Great importance is attached to secular and public architecture.
5. Strengthening the value of the decorative beginning.

Hellenistic architecture.

The highest internal development of Ancient Greece coincides with the era of Pericles, the highest external flowering – with the era of Alexander, after he created a huge state covering the territory from the Black Sea to Egypt from the Danube to the Indus. A number of Hellenistic states appeared there; in them, the features of Greek cultural achievements were combined with features of eastern centralized despotism. This characteristic duality is typical for all spheres of life: political, economic, religious, art and architecture.

Hellenism as a new period in the history of the architecture of ancient Greece began with the collapse of the state of Alexander the Great.

Individualism developed actively because public interests did not play a fundamental role. Art focused on identifying the subjective in a person, his inner world, personal experiences. The private dominated the public. The representation of the individual in art became an important topic.

Features of the architecture of Hellenism:

1. The value and number of individual orders increases;
2. Art loses high realistic typing. The monumentality of the main buildings and their social significance are replaced by the desire for sophistication, decorativeness and luxury;
3. The dominance of the order system;
4. The order retained its significance as the main constructive and artistic system, but acquired more magnificent architectural and decorative forms;
5. There was a desire to combine different orders in the context of one structure: the monumental Doric order was located in the lower part, the upper floors used a light Ionic order, and inside the temples and buildings there was a Corinthian one, more solemn, graceful, plastic;
6. The Corinthian order was distributed mainly in the interior or in the architecture of “small forms”. It was rarely used on its own;
7. Innovative in order processing was the frequent use of column flutes only 2/3 of the height;
8. During the Hellenistic period, peristyle compositions are actively used in ensembles and residential buildings;
9. Penetration and influence of oriental art on the Hellenic;6. The Corinthian order was distributed mainly in the interior or in the architecture of “small forms”. It was rarely used on its own;
10. Innovative in order processing was the frequent use of column flutes only 2/3 of the height;
11. During the Hellenistic period, peristyle compositions are actively used in ensembles and residential buildings;
12. Penetration and influence of oriental art on the Hellenic;
13. Subjects and means of artistic expression receive more preference and attention than ideological content;
14. An illusory increase in the scale of the building;
15. Special attention is paid to the decorative component: various facing materials and sculptural plastic are used more actively;

Sculpture and painting were used in the decoration of all other parts of the buildings (plinths, intercolumnia, column bases, blind balustrades);

Works of monumental sculpture were widely introduced into architectural ensembles – colossal statues and multi-figured groups.

Urban planning:

1. Comparing the size and number of new buildings with the previous periods of Hellenic history, the construction of the Hellenistic period was characterized by enormous proportions. Hundreds of new cities appeared, the old ones were subject to reconstruction;
2. Building was carried out according to the hippodamous system;
3. Streets widened and were divided into main and secondary;
4. In the cities, the massive laying of sewage was started and water pipelines were installed;
5. A large network of improved roads grew, connecting the trading cities of the empire;
6. The main social center of the Hellenistic city was the complex of city squares, not the acropolis and temple ensemble as before;
7. For the Hellenistic urban planning, the separation of the administrative and commercial centers of the city is characteristic. A large number of public, commercial buildings (markets with shops, meeting houses of city government) and cultural structures (sports facilities, educational institutions, palaces of monarchs, temples) formed the city squares.
8. Temples were built inside peristyle courtyards, isolated from public buildings;
9. A new principle of the architectural solution of the main square – agorasurrounded by covered porticoes, which gave it a closed character, contributing to the compositional unification of the houses that were part of the ensemble;
10. Community centers of seaside towns were located near the harbor, connected to the port.

Theaters in the Hellenistic Age.

1. The theater is the most common type of public building.
2. In the era of Hellenism, comedy began to prevail over other genres, the meaning of the chorus was leveled. The platform on the roof of the projection, where episodic moments were previously shown, becamethe main scene of action.
3. The blind wall of the second floor was destroyed and opened along its entire length with three or five large holes (shooting gallery).
4. Proskenion was important in the Greek theater not only in architectural terms but also in the playing field, completing the open horseshoe-shaped configuration of the theater room, playing the role of a background or background where the scenery was located, which was not the case in the porticos of the classical period.During the Hellenistic period, round columns were not used, their place was taken by half-columns connected to pillars with devices for attaching decorations. The distance between the columns is greatly expanded to harmonize the proportions of the decorative panels.
5. The architecture of the askance and the whole theater corresponds to its practical purpose.

Hellenistic temples.

1. The temple, which in the classical era was the main city building, became only part of the general central ensemble, which also included administrative buildings, basilicas, a library and a gymnasium.
2. A prostylos temple was widespread.
3. Along with the peripter, the dipter was widespread.
4. Instead of the Doric, the Ionic order was more often used.
5. The role of the wall increased. In this regard, the order began to lose its constructive meaning and was used as elements of the architectonic division of the wall.
6. The temple was located on a dais – a podium on the temple site, going into the depths, adjoining the wall with its rear facade.
7. The position of the temple is symmetrical, directed towards the view from the frontal facade.
8. The temple was surrounded by a restocking yard.
9. The temple had a deep pronaos, connected to the naos by a high portal between the two walls of the parapets.

Typical structures of the late classics and Hellenism.

The choregic monument of Lysicrates in Athens (334 BC) or the Lantern of Diogenes – a pedestal for the victory trophy of the choir of Lysicrates, was an example of a private order to perpetuate the victory of the choir, which Lysicrates supported. The monument is located on a high square pedestal, folded from hewn squares, from which a slender cylinder rises, surrounded by half-columns of the Corinthian order. It is believed to be the first use of the Corinthian order in the exterior. A frieze carved from a single block of marble runs along the entablature above the narrow architrave. It depicts the story of Dionysus from Homer’s hymn of Dionysus. The cone-shaped roof is crowned with a slender acroterium, which is a stand for a bronze triceps that housed the prize for the victory of the choir of Lysicrates.

This structure had a number of influences on architecture and replicas of its architectural nature can be traced in such structures as National Statuary Hall Washington DC, Philadelphia Mercantile Exchange.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus (Olympion) is one of the most grandiose structures of Athens during the Hellenistic period. The temple was under construction for several hundred years. Olimpeion was a dipter measuring 41 × 108 m. 20 columns were located on its longitudinal sides, 8 columns were on the facades.

In this building, the Corinthian order was first used independently in the outer colonnade of such a huge religious building (before that it was used only in the interior or small architectural forms).

Tower of Winds built in the middle of the 1st century. BC is a small octahedral structure 12 m high, based on three steps. The tower was covered with a pyramidal roof. Its end was a weather vane in the shape of a Triton figure, which showed the direction of the wind. The frieze of eight relief sculptures represents the eight winds depicted allegorically. The winds carry symbolic gifts associated with the seasons in which they blow.

A sundial was placed on the outside of the tower.

Above was a cylindrical tower, which, under the pressure of water from the aqueduct, forced the mechanism of the water clock inside to work. The water clock was a revolutionary find as it worked regardless of the weather and time of day.

Replicas of this construction are present in the tribune of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Astronomical Observatory at Oxford, the 19th century tower in Sevastopol, and the 1940 tower in Bergamo.

The Halicarnassus Mausoleum – the memorial tomb of the ruler of the Carian Kingdom in Asia Minor – is a vivid example of how architectural styles of different historical eras intersected in the Hellenistic world.

It is not known for certain what the tombs looked like. From Pliny’s descriptions, it is known that its height reached 43 m, in plan it was close to a square, with sides 30.5 x 36.5 m.

A structure resembling a Greek temple with 36 columns on top, which rose on a powerful podium, like the palaces of the Assyrian kings or the ziggurats of Babylon. The podium had 24 steps. On the roof, which in configuration resembled a truncated Egyptian pyramid, was a sculptural group depicting King Mavsol and his wife Artemisia.

The Pergamon Altar, or the Great Altar of Zeus, was built in the ancient Greek city of Pergamum in 180 BC. e. in honor of the victory over the barbarian tribe of Galatians who invaded the Pergamon kingdom. The altar is a huge marble platform for sacrifices to the main god of the Hellenes. Artar, raised on a four-step stereobath, was in the square. The Pergamon altar was concentrated on a high monumental podium, which consisted of a plinth, a wide frieze with high-relief images and a significantly extended cornice. The 24-meter stepped march crashed into the podium, leading to the top, where there was a prismatic altar – the altar itself in the form of a tribune 3-4 m high. Two more stairs led to the altar. A blank wall enclosed it on three sides, creating a backdrop for the graceful Ionic colonnades that envelop the entire structure around the perimeter. At each end, they emerged in four columns. Twelve columns above the stairs created the ceremonial propylaea. The area around the altar was framed with ribbons of paired columns. Impressive, dynamic, pretentious, high-relief portrayed the battle of the gods with giants, as a symbolic battle of good and evil, civilization and barbarism, intelligence and brute force, but unlike the classics, the giants are already losing their interpretation of something ugly and terrible.