03 — ARTWORK
Caryatides
- MEDIUM
- Marble
- TYPE
- Mythological
PALETTE
HOVER OR TAP A SWATCH FOR NAME, SHARE AND HEX. SAMPLED FROM THE IMAGE — INDICATIVE, NOT A PIGMENT ANALYSIS.
THIS REPRODUCTION DOWNLOAD THE FULL FILE ↓
- FILE
- 900 × 1244 px · JPEG
COMMENTARY
UNDERLINED TERMS ARE DEFINED IN THE GLOSSARY.
The western wing of the Louvre was designed to accommodate court entertainments. On the ground floor Lescot built a ballroom featuring a musicians' tribune ("for hautboys and players of instruments") supported by four marbleloosely applied to any hard limestone that can be sawn into thin slabs and will take a good polish so that it is suitable for decorative work; more strictly, it refers to metamorphosed limestones whose structure has been recrystallized by heat or pressure. Marbles are widely disseminated and occur in a great variety of colours and patterns, but certain types have been particularly prized by sculptors. The most famous of Greek white marbles in the ancient world was the close-grained Pentelic, which was quarried at Mount Pentelicon in Attica. The Elgin Marbles are carved in Pentelic. Widely used also were the somewhat coarser-grained translucent white marbles from the Aegean islands of Paros and Naxos. Parian marble was used for the celebrated Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The pure white Carrara marble, quarried at Massa, Carrara, and Pietra Santa in Tuscany from the 3rd century BC, is the most famous of all sculptors' stones. It was used for the Apollo Belvedere, and was much favoured in the Renaissance, particularly by Michelangelo, who often visited the quarries to select material for his work. Neoclassical sculptors also favoured Carrara marble because of its ability to take a smooth, sleek surface, but it can look rather 'dead' compared with some of the finest Greek marbles. caryatids by Jean Goujon in a classicising style. The figures may have been inspired by Vitruvius's description of the caryatids of the Erechtheum, the Ionic temple built on the Acropolis in Athens between 421 and 406 B.C.E. Goujon's figures, their bodies animated by a subtle twist, wear sheer chitons that clearly reveal the bodily forms beneath, they combine a rigorously classicalRelating to the culture of ancient Greece and Rome (classical Antiquity). The classical world played a profoundly important role in the Renaissance, with Italian scholars, writers, and artists seeing their own period as the rebirth (the "renaissance") of classical values after the Middle Ages. The classical world was considered the golden age for the arts, literature, philosophy, and politics. Concepts of the classical, however, changed greatly from one period to the next. Roman literature provided the starting point in the 14th century, scholars patiently finding, editing and translating a wide range of texts. In the 15th century Greek literature, philosophy and art - together with the close study of the remains of Roman buildings and sculptures-expanded the concept of the classical and ensured it remained a vital source of ideas and inspiration. approach to line with sensuous modeling that is essentially Mannerist in spirit.
CITE THIS RECORD — BIBTEX
@online{wga-rd3d7182ababa9b,
author = {Krén, Emil and Marx, Daniel},
title = {Caryatides by GOUJON, Jean},
organization = {{Web Gallery of Art}},
date = {2026-09-12},
url = {https://beta.wga.hu/artists/goujon-jean-r3133ea325465d2/caryatides-rd3d7182ababa9b},
urldate = {2026-09-12},
langid = {english}
}ACCESSED 2026-09-12. REPLACE THE AUTHOR FIELD WITH THE COMMENTARY AUTHOR WHERE ONE IS NAMED.
