Author: Rosette Zeitoune

Final

Jewelry was often passed from generation to generation as family heirlooms. Occasionally it was dedicated at sanctuaries as an offering to the gods. The form/ size of jewelry or what part of your body the jewelry was worn could identify what class you are a part of. Sometimes jewelry was made to honor not only the gods but the kings of the ancient world. Every detail of jewelry from the material used to the carvings have hidden meanings. Jewelry had a big impact on the ancient world and its art.

Gold and cabochon garnet ring

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

The size of the hexagonal bezel, set with a plain but impressively large oval garnet, combined with the fact that another smaller garnet is set in a circular bezel at the center of the hoop at the rear, suggests that one was meant to wear this ring on the thumb. The piece is a striking example of the extravagant and ostentatious lifestyle of the rich in the Hellenistic world.

Gold Ring 

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

Intaglio gold ring: head of Alexander the Great in the guise of Herakles, wearing the lion’s skin, with paws, fastened around the neck.

Gold armband with Herakles knot 

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

The Herakles knot on this sumptuous armband is enriched with floral decoration and inlaid with garnets, emeralds, and enamel. According to the Roman writer Pliny, the decorative device of the Herakles knot could cure wounds, and its popularity in Hellenistic jewelry suggests that it was thought to have the power to avert evil.

Gold openwork hairnet with medallion

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

The medallion represents the head of a maenad, one of the female followers of the god Dionysos, wearing spiral earrings, a wreath of vine leaves and grapes, and a panther skin.

Pair of Gold Armbands

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

These imposing serpentine armbands represent two tritons, male and female, each holding a small winged Eros.

Jewelry was an important way that the Egyptians tried to get the attention of their gods. They thought that the more jewelry they wore, the more attractive they would be to the gods. There is a long-standing tradition of wearing pieces of jewelry that are symbolic in nature. Historically, jewelry was worn as a protective amulet or as an expression of faith, in addition to being a status symbol. Everyone wore jewelry in ancient Egypt, from poor farmers to wealthy royals. For the wealthy, pieces were made from semi-precious stones, precious metals, and glass beads. The poor substituted these with painted clay, stones, shells, animal teeth and bones. Jewelry affected everyone in the ancient world and through the modern world today. Each piece of jewelry symbolizes something different and it is interesting to see where it all started.

 

Bibliography

Hemingway, Colette, and Seán Hemingway. “Hellenistic Jewelry.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hjew/hd_hjew.htm (April 2007)

This writing explains the background the jewelry in Hellenistic times and why it has the impact it does and the meaning behind it. Hemingway writes about how when Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire in 331 B.C, his domain extended from Greece to Asia Minor, Egypt, the Near East, and India. This unprecedented contact with distant cultures not only spread Greek styles across the known world but also exposed Greek art and artists to new and exotic influences. Significant innovations in Greek jewelry can be traced even earlier to the time of Philip II of Macedon (r. 360/359–336 B.C.), father of Alexander the Great. An increasingly affluent society demanded luxurious objects, especially gold jewelry. After Alexander conquered the Persian empire and seized its fantastically rich treasures in Babylon, vast quantities of gold passed into circulation. The market for fashionable gold jewelry exploded. Even after the reign of Alexander, his successors for centuries supported flourishing industries of artists and craftsmen, the most important of whom were associated with the Hellenistic royal courts. This source is useful to my project because it helps me better understand the background of jewelry in ancient times and how it came to be.

LeGrand, Douglas S. “Early History of Jewelry: Ancient Times to the 17th Century.” International Gem Society, www.gemsociety.org/article/myth-magic-and-the-sorcerers-stone/.

This writing describes how jewelry was made and how it evolved from ancient times until now. Le Guin explains that the jewelry they wore in the old days was not made as we make it today. The Greeks were prolific writers and they often talked about jewelry and its impact on their day-to-day lives. As far back as 1200 BC, Greek jewelry was rich and varied and reflected the prosperity of the society. At first, the Greeks copied Eastern Motifs but then later developed their own style following their beliefs in the gods and symbols. Greek jewelry included crowns, earrings, bracelets, rings, hairpins, necklaces, and brooches. Greek women sometimes wore necklaces with 75 or more dangling miniature vases. Their jewelry combined the Eastern taste for gemstones and the Etruscan use of gold. The Etruscan perfected a method for making tiny gold beads called granulation. This work helped me better understand the materials and the making of ancient jewelry.

“Necklaces and Collars.” Pyramids of Ancient Egypt: Bent Pyramid of Sneferu, Dashur, www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/jewellerycollar.html

This work described ancient jewelry and how the people of ancient Egypt used to wear their jewelry. The ancient Egyptians adored jewelry and loved to wear a variety of necklaces and collars made from a huge range of materials. Of course, only the wealthy could afford gold, silver or precious stones, but shells, wood, and bone were more readily available to those on a more restricted budget. Wealthy Egyptians could afford to buy beautifully crafted pieces of jewelry, but even those who could not afford the works of lesser craftsmen could employ their own ingenuity to make lovely pieces with which to adorn themselves. In art, the upper classes and the gods are almost always shown wearing a significant quantity of jewelry as a mark of their status. This particularly relates to collars and necklaces made from precious metals as these pieces of jewelry were often given as gifts by pharaoh to loyal supporters, making them a great source of personal pride. In biographies inscribed on the walls of their tombs, successful Egyptians are not slow to boast of every ocassion that their king rewarded their actions with a gift of a gold necklace!

O’Neil, Shannon Leigh. “Different Types of Ancient Egyptian Jewelry.” Synonym, 16 Mar. 2018, classroom.synonym.com/different-types-ancient-egyptian-jewelry-7270.html.

Ancient Egyptians believed strongly in the spiritual significance of jewelry. They wore it to protect their health, ward off evil spirits and bring good luck. Certain raw materials, designs and colors were associated with deities or symbolized supernatural powers. For example, carnelian, an orange-red stone, was a color suggestive of blood and therefore gave energy and potency to the ornament. Jewelers in ancient Egypt followed strict rules concerning the mystical aspects of their creations. They incorporated minerals into jewelry which conferred a symbolic meaning, such as amethyst, garnet, lapis lazuli, onyx and turquoise. They also used highly prized metals like gold, silver and copper.

Schorsch, Deborah. “Gold in Ancient Egypt.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/egold/hd_egold.htm (January 2017)

This writing explains the usage and importance of gold in Ancient Egypt. Egypt is a land rich in gold, and ancient miners employing traditional methods were thorough in their exploitation of economically feasible sources. In addition to the resources of the Eastern Desert, Egypt had access to the riches of Nubia, which is reflected in its ancient name, nbw (the Egyptian word for gold). The hieroglyph for gold—a broad collar—appears with the beginning of writing in Dynasty 1, but the earliest surviving gold artifacts date to the preliterate days of the fourth millennium B.C.; these are mostly beads and other modest items used for personal adornment. Gold jewelry intended for daily life or use in temple or funerary ritual continued to be produced throughout Egypt’s long history.

 

Final Outline

Topic: Jewelry in Ancient World

Thesis: Jewelry had a big impact on the ancient world and its art.

Intro: Jewelry was often passed from generation to generation as family heirlooms. Occasionally it was dedicated at sanctuaries as an offering to the gods. The form/ size of jewelry or what part of your body the jewelry was worn could identify what class you are a part of. Sometimes jewelry was made to honor not only the gods but the kings of the ancient world. Every detail of jewelry from the material used to the carvings have hidden meanings.

 

Gold and cabochon garnet ring

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

The size of the hexagonal bezel, set with a plain but impressively large oval garnet, combined with the fact that another smaller garnet is set in a circular bezel at the center of the hoop at the rear, suggests that one was meant to wear this ring on the thumb. The piece is a striking example of the extravagant and ostentatious lifestyle of the rich in the Hellenistic world.

2. 

Gold Ring 

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

Intaglio gold ring: head of Alexander the Great in the guise of Herakles, wearing the lion’s skin, with paws, fastened around the neck.

3. 

Gold armband with Herakles knot 

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

The Herakles knot on this sumptuous armband is enriched with floral decoration and inlaid with garnets, emeralds, and enamel. According to the Roman writer Pliny, the decorative device of the Herakles knot could cure wounds, and its popularity in Hellenistic jewelry suggests that it was thought to have the power to avert evil.

4. 

Gold openwork hairnet with medallion

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

The medallion represents the head of a maenad, one of the female followers of the god Dionysos, wearing spiral earrings, a wreath of vine leaves and grapes, and a panther skin.

5. 

Pair of Gold Armbands

3rd–2nd century B.C.

Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City

These imposing serpentine armbands represent two tritons, male and female, each holding a small winged Eros.

Met Museum

From its architecture to its massive art collection, The Met has a little bit of everything and one is sure to find something that captures his or her interest. Considering that The Met is the United States’ largest art museum, it is easy to get lost within its many corridors and wings. As a famous tourist site, there are a lot of visitors to the museum. However, the museum is commodious enough to hold a large number of visitors exploring artworks there. It was astounding how by switching between different parts of the museum could lead to completely different auras and cultures. The experience felt like a journey to the world and a travel in time. It broadened my horizon and taught me not to limit myself to only one possibility as in one single museum exist civilizations from around the world and even from decades ago. Overall, my experience in the Metropolitan Museum of Art is enriching and memorable.

Master of Monte Oliveto (Italian, active Siena ca. 1305–35)
Saints and Scenes from the Life of the Virgin

These well-preserved panels are the wings of a portable triptych, the center panel of which is still unidentified. The anonymous master worked outside Siena itself, but his scenes are based on those of Duccio’s famous altarpiece in the cathedral of the city. The left wing depicts three principal scenes from the life of the Virgin (her so-called “joys”) while on the right wing is her coronation in heaven. The six saints—three males and three females—would have been chosen by the person for whom the triptych was painted.

Merry Company on a Terrace

Another of Steen’s self-deprecating depictions of his own unruly household, this painting centers on the inviting figure of his wife, who looks out at the viewer with an empty wine glass in her hand. Steen, his face flushed with drink and a comic hat on his head, sits at the far left; next to him, with a sausage in his cap, is Hans Worst, the same theatrical figure depicted by Hals in a nearby work. To this day in the Netherlands, “a household by Jan Steen” remains proverbial for disorder and domestic chaos.

UNIT 2 SUMMARY

The Art of the Ancient World is an extremely diverse sub field within Art itself, and features many unique artworks. The span of the artworks of the Ancient World go from Ancient Egypt, to Ancient Greece, and Ancient Rome,  each place having its own unique set of principles and approaches to making art. As evidenced throughout the history of art, there are significant differences among the artworks of all three artistic eras. Nevertheless, there are also a sizable amount of similarities between them as well.

Ancient Egyptian art is the painting, sculpture, architecture and other arts produced by the civilization of Ancient Egypt from about 3000 BC to 30 AD. Ancient Egyptian art reached a high level in painting and sculpture, and was both highly stylized and symbolic. It was famously conservative, and Egyptian styles changed remarkably over more than three thousand years. The artwork mainly focused on idolizing Egyptian gods and hierarchy. Much of the surviving art comes from tombs and monuments and now there is an emphasis on life after death and the preservation of knowledge of the past. Ancient Egyptian art included paintings, sculpture in wood, stone and ceramics, drawings on papyrus, faience, jewelry, ivories, and other art media. It displays an extraordinarily vivid representation of the ancient Egyptian’s status and belief systems.

Ancient Greek art stands out among that of other ancient cultures for its development of naturalistic but idealized depictions of the human body, in which largely nude male figures were generally the focus of innovation. The rate of stylistic development between about 750 and 300 BC was remarkable by ancient standards, and in surviving works is best seen in sculpture. There were important innovations in painting, which have to be essentially reconstructed due to the lack of original survivals of quality, other than the distinct field of painted pottery.

Roman art refers to the visual arts made in Ancient Rome and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Roman artists copied, imitated, and innovated to produce art on a grand scale. The Romans did not believe, as we do today, that to have a copy of an artwork was of any less value that to have the original. The copies, however, were more often variations rather than direct copies, and they had small changes made to them. The variations could be made with humor, taking the serious and somber element of Greek art and turning it on its head. Recording historical events without the clutter of symbolism and mythological metaphor became an obsession. Immortalizing an individual private patron in art was a common artist’s commission. Realism became the ideal and the cultivation of a knowledge and appreciation of art itself became a worthy goal.

Egypt’s art focused heavily on the practice of worship and praise, either to the gods, who they thought controlled their lives, or to kings, who were the closest step to a god in the human form. The Greeks and Romans approached rather differently than the Egyptians. Both Greece and Rome were interested in this idea of humanism. Humanism in art puts more of the emphasis on the person and the human body, than it does on worshiping gods or offering praise. While Romans and Greeks both focused their art on Humanism these two did have some differences in how they approached this subject.  The Greeks worked almost exclusively in bronze and avoided marble, as bronze was also less likely to chip away over time and needs less structural support. Romans worked heavily in marble and loved Greek art, often replicating many of the bronzed statues that existed already, but in marble.

Humanism in Greek and Roman Art

Humanism is an outlook or system of thought attaching prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. Humanist beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings, emphasize common human needs, and seek solely rational ways of solving human problems.

Greek Humanism also refers to the Greeks’ emphasis on the human body: on physical beauty and athleticism;  the Greeks see physical beauty as literally “divine”, as godly. For the Greeks, all people can and do communicate with a god or gods; these gods exist very much in the real world, taking on the shape of humans, and even often having sexual relations with humans. This physicality reinforces the belief that human physical qualities are themselves an element of the divine.  If the gods look like us, then we look like the gods; thus, our bodies are godly.

It was in the philosophical, artistic, and political writings of the ancient Romans that they found inspiration for their own move away from traditional religion and otherworldly philosophy in favor of a this-worldly concern for humanity. Rome was practical, not mystical. They were primarily concerned with whatever worked best and whatever helped them achieve their goals. Even in religion, gods and ceremonies which did not serve a practical purpose tended to be neglected and ultimately dropped, which added to the idea of humanism.

Unlike ancient Greek and Roman art, Mesopotamian and Egyptian art were meant to glorify the gods and the king. Greek and Roman art are different from Mesopotamian and Egyptian art as you can see in the pictures below. On the right is a Greek sculpture of a human man. He is shown to be very strong and masculine and shows off his body. On the left is a Mesopotamian carving of a god-like creature. Its a humans head on an animals body with wings. As you can see the two artworks are very different and focus on different ideas.

   

Brooklyn Museum Part 1

The front panel of the Great Lyre sound box is an example of Sumerian art from the Ancient Near East. The panel is divided into four different registers. These registers contain four scenes with figures (mostly animals) involved in various activities. Despite the rather rigid compartmentalization of the four sound box scenes, the overall effect of the front panel of the Great Lyre sound box is one of energy and dynamism. Such energy can be seen in the color of the figures and in curvy compositional lines.

The sound box is comprised of two different colors, a dark black and a light tan.  These colors are caused by the medium of the panel. Dark black is the color of bitumen, which is used for the background of the panel and lines. Light tan is the color of the inlaid shell that is used for the bodies of the figures and objects. The stark contrast of light tan against a dark background adds a sense of dynamism to the figures. The figures seem to glow and hum with life. Furthermore, these lightly-colored figures are pushed closer toward the viewer, away from the black background, which gives the figures a sense of presence and energy.

The front panel of the Great Lyre sound box embodies energy in many ways. This energy can be seen not only because of the colors of the panel, but also through several compositional devices and lines. Such visual interest in energy is fitting for this piece, given that this sound box originally hummed with musical vibrations and the energy created by sound.

 

 

Unit 1- summary

To me the most important topics we learned about in unit 1 are the banking model and formal analysis. 

The banking model is a way Paulo Freire described and critiqued the education system. This model shows a student as an empty container being filled with knowledge by their educator. Freire argued  that teachers don’t communicate with the students, they make “deposits” and the students are expected to receive, memorize, and repeat the information. This empowers the teachers because they have the power to instill anything they’d like into the students, but this is at the students expense because they don’t develop a creative process. I learned from this that I am very lucky that in Brooklyn College teachers don’t teach that way and they care about my opinion. 

 

Formal analysis is a way of looking at the painting and all of its details and fully understanding it. Formal Analysis is the idea of analyzing a single work of art, especially a painting, in terms of specific visual components. The components of a formal analysis are composition, color, line, shape, contrast, texture, and technique. All of these elements help us understand what the artist is trying to convey in his or her work. Formal Analysis is using your senses, like sight and touch, its all about what you see in the details of the painting.  The goal of a formal analysis is to use all of the formal elements of a painting or sculpture to fully grasp the meaning of the work. Whenever I went to a museum and looked at a painting or sculpture, I never really put that much thought into it. Because of this class, I now know how to look at art and use all of the elements of formal analysis to interpret the underlying meaning of the artwork.

Comment on Sabrina Novacov’s post

Like in my post, Sabrina’s post explains formal analysis and its components which are the composition, color, line, shape, contrast, texture, and technique. We also agreed on the the function of formal analysis which is to try to understand the artists intentions and what they want to convey in their piece. Unlike my post, Sabrina used colors and clearer organization and made her post very appealing and intriguing. I enjoyed reading her post and look forward to future posts!

Formal Ananlysis

When I’m in a museum and I look at a painting I usually think very little and either say pretty, ugly, scary, etc. But there is so much more to the painting and formal analysis is a way of looking at the painting and all of its details and fully understanding it. Formal Analysis is the idea of analyzing a single work of art, especially a painting, in terms of specific visual components. The components of a formal analysis are composition, color, line, shape, contrast, texture, and technique. All of these elements help us understand what the artist is trying to convey in his or her work. Formal Analysis is using your senses, like sight and touch, its all about what you see in the details of the painting. Although, knowing the time period the art is from and historic background also helps understand what the artist is trying to express. The goal of a formal analysis is to use all of the formal elements of a painting or sculpture to fully grasp the meaning of the work.