The picture shows a scene from Hadrian's column, which depicts Roman conquests in Greece. In Judea, the fundamentalists resented the secularity nature of Herod's government, for the government strays from Judas's traditional religious views. The scene also reflects the Greek's mentality on war. According to the context of the carving, the war was fought for religious reasons. It was a fight against extremism— Herod's government. The unacceptable change in Orthodoxal views ignited the rebels to revolt against the government, displaying the influence of religion on political action at the time. During the war, the Greeks worshipped Athena, who was both the goddess of warfare and wisdom, and the guardian of the cities. In the picture, the swords and the shields are shown in intricate and meticulous detail; this emphasizes the Greek’s respect to Athena, for they honor her by carefully crafting her symbol of power.
In addition, the structure and appearance of humans are depicted in great detail. Each feature of the warriors in the piece reflects and underscores the use of symmetry. From observation of past art works during this era, it has been noted that many other contemporary artists of this period portrayed humans in an almost flawless sense—everything was exactly symmetrical and the humans were created with perfect features that exemplified impeccable human bodies. The artist focuses on making the humans look as beautiful and flawless in complexion as possible. The artist’s attention to detail of the human body indicates that anatomy was of great interest and priority. Moreover, this human self-interest is reflected among their traditions and cultures. People of this era seemed almost obsessed with the anatomy of the human body and with the mere existence of human beings. This reflected a huge part of their culture and traditions. The Greeks and the Romans were polytheistic, meaning they believed in many gods. In other cultures gods are depicted as animals or objects, but in Greek and Roman mythology all the gods are human in form and possess human qualities, thus making them more relatable to humans. Artists were not the only ones interested in the anatomy of humans and gods; philosophers, such as Aristotle, took a great interest in the science of the human body. Aristotle had a record of journals in which he analyzed the body of humans and related the structures to other creatures, such as chickens. These bursts of curiosity reflected a great aspect of the culture at that time; and often times curiosities led to great discoveries that contributed to revolutionary scientific breakthroughs in other cultures.
-- Team Four, Asher Period. 3 (Daphne, Michelle, Sophia, Han)
Great job analyzing the picture in detail, although some of the sentences could be elaborated or be better structured. There are many sentences that are short and several of them could be merged to form a longer sentence. Your connection between religion and the Greek and Roman gods was well thought out, but maybe you guys could have gone deeper with the analysis. Also, great diction choice in your response; it actually keeps the response interesting. There were some great comparisons between religion and man and was well described how the Gods had an influence in human life, with the example of Athena contributing to the idea of how similar we are related to gods. In general it was a great response to answer the prompt, except your group didn't mention the science aspect of the question. And also state clearly how the piece of art had effect on the aesthetic part of life of the ones depicted. Other than that it was a great first attempt and good luck in the future, and make sure to answer all aspects of the prompt completely next time with an example of each part of the question.
ReplyDeleteIt is well explained about how the chosen art piece is related to religion and how it interplayed of religion and aesthetics of the society in Roman Greek. People in Roman Greek worshipped in Gods especially Athena, the goddess of warfare and wisdom, and that is why the Greek artists drew war time pictures with Athena emphasizing the power of their army. Also the artists focused on details of human body. They emphasized the beauty of human beings who are flawless in complexion. This post also mentions about the interplay of culture and tradition; it compares how the Greek gods possesses the human forms whereas other ancient cultures had gods in animal or objective forms. However, it would be better if it explained why Greek gods have human forms. Also it needs more explanations about how the art piece is related to the science of that society, since they have mentioned that Greek artists also had interest in science. Moreover, it confuses me if the chosen art piece is a picture or a sculpture because it doesn’t identify the name of the art piece, and also said 'the picture' in the first sentence but 'according to the context of the carving' in the fourth sentence. Nevertheless, good job guys.
ReplyDeleteWylie, per.1 Team 1 ( Diana Kim, Jenny Yu, Ashley Chang, Justin Park)