(Cheerful Piano Music)
Voiceover: We're in the
National Archaeological Museum in Athens
looking at the Anavysos Kouros.
Voiceover: A sculpture from
the archaic period,
the sixth century BCE
in ancient Greece.
Voiceover: It's about life size,
a little bit larger,
and the idea of monumental sculpture
of an ideal male youth
is a very powerful motif in Greek culture.
Voiceover: Thousands
of these figures were produced.
We give them the generic name
of kouros, or "Youth".
They could be used as grave markers,
as offerings in sanctuaries,
and sometimes, though more rarely,
they represented a god,
usually the god Apollo.
Voiceover: Some Art Historians
think that perhaps these monumental sculptures
were inspired by contact with ancient Egypt.
Voiceover: Well, you can see
the resemblance to Egyptian sculpture very easily.
Voiceover: And look at the traces
of the original paint in the hair,
on the eyes,
it really gives us a sense
of what this would have looked like initially.
Voiceover: so one of the things
that happens when you talk about
the kouros figures is that you compare them
to one another because they're of a type,
but there's also the tendency to compare
them to human bodies.
How life-like is it,
or how far from being life-like is it?
Voiceover: in the earlier kouros,
you have a greater sense of stiffness,
of abstraction of the human body,
where forms are represented
almost as symbols rather than
as an articulation of what we see
in the human body.
Voiceover: And in those earlier figures,
too, you have the sense of the body
corresponding to a block of stone,
so you have four very distinct views.
This particular kouros shows us
the way that during the sixth century,
during the archaic period,
the figures become more natural,
more lifelike, more rounded, less blocky.
Voiceover: Well, look at
the swelling of the calves,
of the hips, of the abdomen.
and certainly of the arms and the cheeks.
In earlier figures,
what we saw was a sort of inscribing
in the stone,
almost as if you were drawing into the stone,
whereas here you have modeling in the round.
Voiceover: And in some earlier figures,
we see a hard line where the torso
meets the legs,
and here that's been softened,
so there's a more gradual transition.
Voiceover: And the forms of the face
are more integrated.
In fact, the forms of the entire body,
one piece to the next,
one part of the body to the next,
is more integrated.
So you see a more natural flow
of the cheeks, to the sides of the face,
to the temples, to the forehead.
But there's still continuity
with these older standing nude figures.
The left leg is out, both knees are locked,
the weight is evenly distributed on both legs.
We still have traditional braiding of the hair,
we still have that traditional headband
and those wonderful curls underneath it.
Voiceover: And still,
that archaic smile,
which speaks of a figure
that transcends this world,
that has a sense of aristocratic nobility,
and in fact this figure was set up
by an aristocratic family
as a grave marker to their son,
who died in war.
There were often inscriptions of the bases
of the kouros figures,
and there was a base with an inscription found
near the find spot of this particular figure.
Voiceover: That was probably from
about the same period,
and some art historians think
that it belongs to this sculpture,
some don't.
but in any case, it's instructive.
Voiceover: The inscription reads
"Stay and mourn
"at the monument of dead Kroisos,
"who raging Ares slew
"as he fought in the front ranks."
So just to unpack that a little bit,
Kroisos would be the name of the figure--
Voiceover: The man who died.
Voiceover: And Ares is the god of war.
So this is obviously a youth who fell in battle,
which is the most noble way to die,
the way to die that's associated with
the ancient Greek heroes
that we read about in the Iliad.
Male vocieover: And look at the sense
of potential, of this life
that was cut short,
but at this moment of greatest strength,
of greatest beauty.
And it's important to recognize
that this is not a portrait,
this is not a specific individual.
There's a reference to an individual here,
but the body that's being represented
is an ideal, it is a perfected body.
and as with so many of these standing male figures,
the artist has had to leave
a little bit of a bridge attaching
the hands to the hips
in order to strengthen the object.
Voiceover: Or else the limbs
could easily break off.
Voiceover: This figure was found
in 1936 and was spirited out of Greece,
and was recovered by the Greek Police in Paris,
and brought back a year later.
Voiceover: the intention
was to sell it on the market outside of Greece.
Voiceover: And this has been
a continuous problem,
grave robbing of antiquities in Greece
and in other countries
because the market is so strong.
It's created not only a black market,
for stolen objects,
but also a market for forgeries
which has complicated archaeological studies.
Voiceover: But the good thing
about this figure was that he was found,
he was returned to Greece,
and we can all see him here
in the Archaeological museum in Athens.
(Cheerful Piano Music)