Label
From the Parthenon Down to the Sea
Dyer, Charles Gifford
n.d.Label Type
Object LabelLabel
From the Parthenon Down to the Sea
Dyer, Charles Gifford
late 19th centuryLabel Type
Object LabelLabel
"A number of works in DePaul’s collection illustrate the recurring fascination in Western art with ancient Greece and Rome.
Although classical models persist through European art history, the Renaissance beginning in the fifteenth century is often considered the first conscious emulation of the ancient past. By the eighteenth century attitudes of the Enlightenment, together with new archaeological discoveries in Italy and Greece, bring about another wave of admiration, and spur attempts to organize and study ancient evidence in systematic ways.
The prints of four views of a sculpture of Venus, taken from an eighteenth-century book reproducing classical works in museums of Florence, emphasize the sculpture’s visual strength from multiple angles - no view is awkward. The figure is pristine, apparently unmarred over more than a millennium. The views also remind us of the rationalism and scientific method characteristic of the Enlightenment: they are the eighteenth-century equivalent of the documentary photographs museums make of their collections today.
The late nineteenth century marks another phase of inspiration from the ancient world. The American painter Charles Gifford Dyer spent most of his artistic career in Europe, and towards the end of his life began to paint a series of views of Greek archaeological sites. He records the view from the Parthenon not from an idealized or imagined ancient perspective, but as it looked in the moment, with the crumbling stonework of an amphitheater and small modern houses painted with equal care."