Greek Marble Lion Essay

Although my museum paper was based on the “Marble Lion” from the Late Classical period in the 4th Century, which was created to guard tombs with a ready to pounce-like appearance, it was difficult in researching more history to its existence so my topic has been changed to “Marble Statue of a Kouros (Youth).” The kouros was created to express the concerns of the human form. It recorded the sculptors’ progress of mastering the art of the human body. The kouros was created in the Archaic period that lasted from 800BC to 480BC. Athens became established by the 8th century, thus leading to its people being able to invest in time and re to create art which was limited in the Dark Ages. This sculpture is dated back to 590BC and is made of Island

Archaic sculptures such as these became more naturalistic and less stiff in appearance. They often depicted an “Archaic smile,” which showed a sense of well-being, or happiness. Kouroi were created as grave markers and also as dedications to the god Apollo. This kouros was created to mark a grave of an Athenian aristocrat. Because the Archaic period came after the Geometric period, kouroi were also sculpted in geometric forms and similar designs. This statue as an earlier figure was made to represent the ideal human figure of its time. This was a major trait that helped shape the Classical period, including the Classical kouros which had better defined and more realistic curved features added to its body to exhibit a closer likeliness to that of a human. Egyptians were an important influence to Greek art during the Archaic period. Rather than continuing to use wood in creations that didn’t last, Greeks learned to obtain stone from quarries and create more permanent statues from them from the Egyptians, who had worked with stone for centuries. Egyptian art also influenced the pose of the kouros, which its sculptors have used for over one hundred