The art of the first years after the Persian wars expressed the severe balance between mature intensity and calm recognition of freedom. there followed the miracle that has been named 'Classical', and that identified this term with the concepts of enduring value and perfection. In the course of a generation, so much work of unique intellectual compactness and incomparable artistic completeness was created, that Athens can rightly be regarded as the cradle of the whole of later western civilization. Admiration for the art of this age is linked with the works' multidimensional content, inner dynamism, and ecumenical value. For the veneer of calm in classical figures is due not to lack of passion and inner conflict, but to the harmonioius synthesis of antitheses through conscious, painstaking effort, Man's effort to understand the world and himself. The bliss exuded by these works is the result of a clever blend of old-established elements with radical new solutions, of virginal clarity with accumulated experience, of youthful sap with restrained ripeness. |
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The architecture of the age managed to outflank the strict commands of cult objectives and limitations of terrain, at the same time setting out unprecedented aesthetic criteria. Fifth-century sculpture portrayed the gods with matchless grandeur and deep spirituality. But human beings, too, were fashioned with elegant, succulent bodies and delightsome faces, character radiating in their keen gaze. In the following century, the bodies became softer and more flexible; they acquired dimension in space and shyly prepared for the transition to Hellenistic art. Increased interest in the individual and study of his emotions pushed forward to the greatest achievement of the age, the portrait.
Painting, for the most part lost to us, apparently investigated in its own way the relationship of Man with space and with the limits of perfection. We can discern faint reflections of it in vase-painting, which, with its expressivity of design and balanced compositions, competed during the Classical years with the great arts in character and and gentleness. The coroplastic art coupled structural firmness with refinement and delicacy in its figures. Metalwork fills out a picture of high technical skill and artistic sensibility characteristic of the whole of Classical creation.
Lastly, in the Classical period the arts of the beautiful and the good and their ideal aesthetic expressions became for the first time a subject of philosophical and scientific observation. During the 4th century the artistic wakefulness and the torrential creativity of the age slid imperceptibly and irrevocably towards the Hellenistic fragmentation and reconstitution of the intellectual and artistic identity of the Hellenic world.
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