Ancient Greek Art

Ancient Greek art only properly surfaced around the 8^th century BC. This happened when iron was made into tools and weapons, the alphabet was being used, the first Olympic Games took place, a complex religion developed, and a cultural identity grew.

Early forms of Greek art were mostly centred around ceramic pottery. The region suffered disruption from widespread famine, social unrest and many Greeks moved to the mainland to settle in Italy and Asia. Only around 650 BC when trade started up again between Greece and Egypt, did the prosperity return to Greece and was there an increase of Greek culture.

There is no doubt that ancient Greek culture has shaped our world. Although modern understanding of ancient Greek is based on the classical art of the 5^th century BC, Greek civilization is vast and did not develop overnight.

The practice of fine art in ancient Greece evolved in three basic stages or periods:

• Archaic Period (650 – 480 BC)
• Classical Period (480 – 323 BC)
• Hellenistic Period (323 – 27 BC)

 

The Archaic era was a period of gradual experimentation. The Classical witnessed the flowering of mainland Greek’s power and artistic domination. The Hellenistic Period witnessed the creation of Greek-style art throughout the region. The period also saw the decline and fall of Greece and the rise of Rome.

 

 

Archaic Greek Art

With the beginning of the Archaic period a remarkable change appears in Greek art. The abstract geometric patterning of the previous period is replaced by a more naturalistic style. Greek artists were inspired to work in techniques such as gem cutting, ivory carving, jewellery making, and metalworking.

Eastern pictorial motifs were introduced like palmette and lotus compositions, animal hunts, griffins, sphinxes, and sirens. Greek artists embraced foreign styles and motifs into new portrayals of their own myths and customs, laying the foundations of Archaic and Classical Greek art.

During this time Greek settlements stretched far and wide and as they grew in wealth and power, they competed with one another in the construction of sanctuaries with huge stone temples. Sculptors in the Aegean islands, carved large-scale statues in marble. Goldsmiths specialized in fine jewellery, and bronzeworkers on fashioned armour and plaques decorated with superb reliefs.

Sparta and its neighbours in Laconia produced ivory carvings and bronzes. Corinthian artisans invented a style of silhouetted forms that focused on tapestry-like patterns of small animals and plant motifs. The vase painters of Athens illustrated mythological scenes.

Greeks were inspired by the monumental stone sculpture of Egypt and Mesopotamia and began again to carve in stone. These free-standing figures share the sturdiness and frontal stance characteristic of Eastern models, but their forms are more dynamic than those of Egyptian sculpture. A good example is the Lady of Auxerre and Torso of Hera.

Potters mastered Corinthian techniques in Athens, and by 550 BC, black-figure pottery dominated the export market throughout the Mediterranean region. Athenian vases provide a wealth of iconography illuminating numerous aspects of Greek culture, like funerary rites, daily life, symposia, athletics, warfare, religion, and mythology.

 

• Archaic Greek Pottery

The most developed art form of the pre-Archaic period was Greek pottery. These large vases and other vessels were originally decorated with linear designs, then more elaborate patterns of triangles, zigzags, and other similar shapes. Geometric pottery includes some of the finest Greek artworks, with vases typically made according to a strict system of proportions.

From about 700, there was a notable eastern influence as contact were again made with Anatolia, the Black Sea basin, and the Middle East. A wider repertoire or motifs were seen such as curvilinear designs, as well as many composite creatures like sphinxes, griffins, and chimeras. Decorations became more figurative, as more animals, zoomorphism and then human figures were included.

This ceramic figure painting was the first sign of the Greek fascination with the human body, as the noblest subject for a painter or sculptor.

Another ceramic style was black-figure pottery where figures were first drawn in black silhouette, and then marked with incised detail. Additional touches were added in purple or white. Athens came to dominate black-figure style pottery, with its perfection of a richer black pigment, and a new orange-red pigment which led to red-figure pottery. Famous Greek Archaic-era ceramic artists included the genius Exekias, Keitais, Andokides, Euthymides, Ergotimos, Lydos, Nearchos and Sophilos.

 

• Archaic Greek Architecture

Greek architecture relied on simple post-and-lintel building techniques. The rectangular building was surrounded by a line of columns on all four sides or, only at the front and rear. Roofs were constructed with timber beams overlaid with terracotta tiles. Pediments were decorated with relief sculpture or friezes, as was the row of lintels between the roof and the tops of the columns.

Greek architects were the first to base their architectural design on the standard of proportionality. To do this, they introduced a set of design rules based on proportions between individual parts, such as the ratio between the width and height of a column. Famous buildings of ancient Greece constructed or begun during the Archaic period include the Temple of Hera (600), the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis (550), and the Temples at Paestum (550).

The history of art shows that building programs always stimulated the development of other forms of fine art, like sculpture and painting, as well as decorative art. Archaic Greek architecture was no exception. The new temples and other public buildings all needed plenty of decorative sculpture, including statues, reliefs, and friezes, as well as mural painting and mosaic art.

 

• Archaic Greek Sculpture

Archaic Greek sculpture during this time was influenced by Egyptian sculpture, and Syrian techniques. Greek sculptors created stone friezes and reliefs, as well as statues in stone, terracotta and bronze, and miniature works in ivory and bone.

Three styles of freestanding sculptures prevailed as the Greek artists made naturalistic representations of the human figure. This period is mostly known for large-scale marble kouros and kore sculptures. The kouros or male figure stands firm with wide-shoulders, narrow-waists, both arms hanging at the sides, fists clenched one leg slightly advanced or both firmly on the ground. Figures also wore the archaic smile after about 575 BC which may have been a way to give the figures a more human characteristic.

These sculptures were used as grave markers and was in the nude. The kore or female sculpture was never nude. She was usually clothed with jewellery and a crown. The third, as less frequently used, was the seated female figure.

All these sculptures show an increasingly accurate comprehension of human anatomy. The youths, like the example of Apollo, were either sombre or votive statues. More of the musculature and skeletal structure is visible in this statue than in earlier works. The standing, draped girls have a wide range of expression. Their drapery is carved and painted with the delicacy and meticulousness common in the details of sculpture of this period.

Constructed in sanctuaries and in cemeteries outside the city walls, these large stone statues served as dedications to the gods or as grave markers. Athenian aristocrats constructed expensive funerary monuments in the city and surrounding areas, especially for members of their family who had died young. Such monuments also took the form of stelae, often decorated in relief. Sanctuaries were the focus point of artistic works.

Temple architecture continued to be refined and were often embellished with sculptural figures of stone or terracotta, paintings, and elaborate mouldings. Narrative scenes in relief sculpture appeared in the last part of the century as artists became more interested in showing figures, especially the human figure, in motion. After the establishment of the Panathenaic games, statues of victorious athletes were built in Greek sanctuaries

As time passed, the representation of these formulaic statues became less rigid and more realistic. Later, more advanced, Archaic versions of kouroi and korai include the Peplos Kore, and the Kritios Boy, both seen in the Acropolis Museum, Athens.

Some famous works include: The Strangford Apollo in the British Museum; The Dipylon Kouros in the Kerameikos Museum, Athens; The Anavysos Kouros in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens; and Frieze of the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi.

 

• Archaic Greek Painting

Most vases and sculptures were painted, and this led to more work for the Greek painters. Walls of temples, municipal buildings and tombs were decorated with fresco painting, while their marble or wooden sculpture was coloured with tempera or encaustic paint. Encaustic had some of the lustre of oil painting, which was a medium still unknown to the Greeks, but it became a popular painting method for stone statues and architectural reliefs during the 6^th century.

Very few painted panels survived of this period due to erosion, destruction, and vandalism. The only examples we have are the wooden Pitsa panels decorated in stucco coloured with mineral pigments, a few painted slabs of terracotta, and murals like the 7th century battle scene taken from a temple at Kalapodi, near Thebes, and those from the underground tombs in Etruria.

 

 

Ancient (Classical) Greek Art

Victory over the Persians in 490 BC and 479 BC established Athens as the strongest of the Greek city states and it held this leading cultural role for the next few centuries. During the 5^th century BC, Athens witnessed a revival which dominated future Roman art, and when rediscovered by Renaissance Europe over 2000 years later, constituted an artistic standard for another four centuries. All this despite most Greek paintings and sculptures being destroyed.

Ancient Greek art has exerted a huge influence on the culture of many countries all over the world, especially in how it sees the human figure. In the Western countries Greek architecture was also hugely influential, and in both East and West the influence of Greek decoration can be traced right to modern day.

Roman and Etruscan art were directly obtained from Greek models, and Greek objects and influence reached into Celtic art north of the Alps, as well as all around the Mediterranean world and into Persia. Even in the East, Alexander the Great’s conquests initiated centuries of exchange between Greek, Central Asian and Indian cultures. This was supported by the spread of Buddhism, which picked up many Greek traits and motifs in Greco-Buddhist art.

After the Renaissance in Europe, the humanist beauty, and the technical standards of Greek art inspired generations of European artists. The classical tradition developed from Greece dominated the art of the western world well into the 19th century.

The main impact of Greek Classicism to fine art, was unquestionably its sculpture. More particularly the Canon of Proportions with its recognition of the ideal human body. This concept even reverberated strongly with High Renaissance art, a thousand years later.

The rate of stylistic development between 750 and 300 BC was remarkable by ancient standards and is best seen in surviving sculptures. There were also important advances in painting, which due to the lack of original survivals of any quality, must be reconstructed and is only in the field of painted pottery.

Greek architecture established a harmonious style with numerous detailed conventions that were largely adopted by Roman architecture and are still followed in some modern buildings today. It used a vocabulary of ornament that was shared with pottery, metalwork, and other media, and had a huge influence on Eurasian art.

The social context of Greek art included radical political developments and a great increase in prosperity as well as achievements in philosophy, literature, and other fields. There is no pertinent transition from one period to another. Art forms developed at different speeds in different parts of the Greek world. Some artists worked in more innovative styles than others and some are was widely exported. The whole period saw a generally steady increase in prosperity and trading links within the Greek world and with neighbouring cultures.

The survival rate of Greek art differs greatly as we have vast quantities of pottery and coins, stone sculpture, and a few large bronze sculptures. Many painting, fine metal vessels, and anything in perishable materials including wood are lacking. Many of the stone shell of several temples and theatres has survived, but little of their extensive decoration.

 

 

Ancient Greek Pottery

Classical Greek pottery was the most functional of the era’s art forms. People offered small terra cotta figurines as gifts to gods and goddesses, buried them with the dead and gave them to their children as toys. They also used clay pots, jars, and vases for almost everything. These were painted with religious or mythological scenes that grew more sophisticated and realistic over time.

Stylistically the history of ancient Greek pottery can be divided into five periods:

• Protogeometric from about 1050 BC
• Geometric from about 900 BC
• Late Geometric or Archaic from about 750 BC
• Black Figure from the early 7^th century BC
• Red Figure from about 530 BC

 

During the first two periods, Greek pottery was decorated with abstract designs. In the first this was elegant and large, with plenty of unpainted space, but in the second it often densely covered most of the surface.

The Geometric phase was followed by a period in the late 8^th century, when a few animals, either mythical or not native to Greece like the sphinx and lion respectively, were adapted from the Near East, accompanied by decorative motifs, such as the lotus and palmette. The Wild Goat Style is also regional variant often showing goats. Human figures were not so influenced from the East, but also became larger and more detailed.

The fully mature black-figure technique, with added red and white details, began in Corinth and was introduced into Attica. It flourished until the end of the 6^th century BC. The red-figure technique reversed this tradition, with the pots being painted black and the figures painted in red.

Much of our knowledge of classical Greek art comes from objects made of stone and clay that have survived for thousands of years. Finely painted vessels of all shapes are called vases, and there are more than 100,000 complete pieces that survived. With the inscriptions that many carries, it gives insights into many aspects of Greek life.

Architectural or sculptural, also often painted, and referred to as terracotta, have survived in large quantities. Sometimes pottery only refers to painted vessels, or vases and it was the main form of grave items placed in tombs, as funerary urns with the cremated ashes. It was also exported.

The distinctive style of Greek vase-painting with figures portrayed with strong outlines, with thin lines within the outlines, reached its peak from about 600 to 350 BC. It divides into the two main styles of black-figure and red-figure painting. Other colours like white and purplish red were also used in small areas or some larger ones.

Most of these pottery vessels were made for everyday use and not for display. Most surviving pottery, like amphorae, kraters, hydria, libation bowls, oil and perfume bottles for the toilet, jugs and cups were used for storing, serving, or drinking. Painted vessels for serving and eating food are much less common.

However, there were exceptions like the large Archaic monumental vases made as grave-markers, trophies won at games, and pieces made specifically to be left in graves. Some perfume bottles have a money-saving bottom just below the mouth, so a small quantity makes them appear full.

Painted pottery was also affordable for ordinary people and miniatures were produced in large numbers, mainly for use as offerings at temples. In earlier times even mall Greek cities produced pottery for their own locals. By the later Archaic and early Classical period, however, the two great commercial powers, Athens, and Corinth, came to dominate and their pottery was exported all over the Greek world, driving out the local varieties.

Pots from Athens and Athens are found as far afield as Spain, Ukraine, and Italy. Many of these pots are mass-produced products of low quality due to pottery becoming an industry in the 5^th century BC and painting pottery ceased to be an important art form.

The range of colours which could be used on pots was restricted by the technology of firing and black, white, red, and yellow were the most common. In the earlier periods, the pots were left in their natural light colour, and were decorated with slip that turned black in the kiln.

Greek pottery was sometimes signed by the potter or the master of the pottery, and occasionally by the painter. Hundreds of painters are also identified by their artistic personalities. Classical Greek pottery declined significantly in both quality and artistic merit, and eventually became dependent on local Hellenistic schools.

 

 

Ancient Greek Sculpture

In the history of sculpture, no period was more prolific than the 150 years between 480 and 330 BC. This period may be sub-divided into three subdivisions, the early Classical (480-450), High Classical (450-400), and Late Classical 9400-323).

During the era, there was a huge improvement in the technical ability of Greek sculptors to portray the human body in a naturalistic rather than rigid posture. Anatomy became more accurate and statues started to look much more lifelike. The human body was both sacred and secular as they saw their gods as having a human form.

Bronze became the main medium for free-standing works due to its ability to maintain its shape. Subjects were broadened to include the full array of Gods and Goddesses, along with minor divinities, an extensive range of mythological narratives, and a diverse selection of athletes. During the Late Classical era, the first respectable female nudes appeared.

In the Archaic Period the most important sculptural form was the standing male nude or kouros, the standing clothed female figure or the kore, but since Greek society did not permit the public display of female nudity until the 4^th century BC, the kore is considered to be of less importance in the development of sculpture during this period.

As with pottery, the Greeks did not produce sculpture only for artistic display, but they were commissioned by aristocratic individuals or by the state, and used for public memorials, as offerings to temples, oracles, and sanctuaries, or as markers for graves.

Those who practiced the visual arts, which included sculpture, had a low social status in ancient Greece, although some leading sculptors became famous and wealthy. Plutarch in the Life of Pericles, said, “we admire the work of art but despise the maker of it”. This was a common view in the ancient world.

Sculptures that survived were mostly made from two types of material. Stone, more specifically marble, or high-quality limestones. It was carved by hand or with metal tools. Bronze statues were of higher status but have survived in far smaller numbers. They were usually made in the lost wax technique.

Chryselephantine, or gold-and-ivory, statues were the cult-images in temples and were regarded as the highest form of sculpture. They were over-life size, built around a wooden frame, with thin carved slabs of ivory representing the flesh, and sheets of gold leaf, probably over wood, representing the garments, armour, hair, and other details.

In some cases, glass, glass paste, and precious and semi-precious stones were used for detail such as eyes, jewellery, and weaponry. Others used stone for the flesh parts, and wood for the rest, and marble statues sometimes had stucco hairstyles.

Terracotta was sometimes used for large statuary but few survived due to the vulnerability of the statues. One exception is the statue of Zeus carrying Ganymede found at Olympia that was also painted. Some sculptures were made of wood, but none survived.

Most Greek sculptures were painted in strong and bright colours called polychrome. Most of the times this was limited to parts portraying clothing, and hair, with the skin left in the natural colour of the stone or bronze. Sometimes sculptures were painted in their totality.

The Parthenon was a typical example of how the Greeks used sculpture to decorate and enhance their religious buildings. On the triangular pediments at either end were large-scale free-standing groups containing numerous figures of gods and mythological scenes. Along both sides were almost 100 reliefs of struggling figures including Gods, humans, and centaurs. Around the outside ran another relief, some 150 metres in length, which portrayed the Great Panathenaea. Despite being badly damaged, the Parthenon sculptures reveal the supreme artistic ability of their creators.

The greatest sculptures of the Classical era include:

• Leonidas, King of Sparta (c.480)
• Apollo Belvedere (c.330) by Leochares
• Doryphorus (440) by Polykleitos
• The Farnese Heracles (5th Century)
• The Charioteer of Delphi (c.475)
• Discobolus (c.450) by Myron
• Athena Parthenos (c.447-5) by Phidias
• Aphrodite of Knidos (350-40) by Praxiteles
• Youth of Antikythera (4th Century)

 

 

Hellenistic Greek Art

The transition from the Classical to the Hellenistic period occurred during the 4^th century BC. With the conquests of Alexander, the Great between 336 BC to 323 BC, Greek culture spread from Greece and Asia Minor through Egypt and the Persian empire to India. Greek art became more diverse and more influenced by the cultures of the peoples drawn into the Greek circle. Greek artists were exposed to new styles and new exotic influences.

While some pieces mimicked the Classical style of the previous period, other artists were more interested in capturing motion and emotion. On the Great Altar of Zeus from Pergamon, for example, expressions of agony and a confused mass of limbs convey a newfound interest in drama. The scale of architectural structures hugely increased, as seen with the Temple of Apollo at Didymo were the surrounding landscape was terraced to create spectacular vistas.

The death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. traditionally marks the beginning of the Hellenistic period. The lands were divided into kingdoms of their own and the new Hellenistic dynasties emerged. In this greatly expanded Greek world, Hellenistic art and culture emerged and flourished. Hellenistic kingship remained the dominant political form in the Greek East for nearly three centuries and royal families lived in splendid palaces with elaborate banquet halls and sumptuously decorated rooms and gardens.

Hellenistic kings became patrons of the arts, commissioning public works of architecture and sculpture, as well as private luxury items that demonstrated their wealth and taste. Jewellery took on new elaborate forms and incorporated rare and unique stones. Precious and semiprecious stones were available through newly established trade routes.

For the first time, there were museums and great libraries, as those at Alexandria and Pergamon. Hellenistic artists copied and adapted earlier styles and created new inventions. Representations of Greek gods took on new forms. Eros, the Greek personification of love, for example, is portrayed as a young child and the nude Aphrodite reflects the increased secularization of traditional religion.

One of the immediate results of the new Hellenistic milieu was the broadened range of subject matter that had little precedent in earlier Greek art. There are representations of unorthodox subjects, and of more conventional inhabitants, such as children and elderly people. These images, as well as the portraits of ethnic people, describe a diverse Hellenistic populace.

Many art collectors commissioned original works of art and copies of earlier Greek statues. Affluent consumers were eager to enhance their private homes and gardens with luxury items, such as bronze statuettes, carved furniture decorated with bronze fittings, stone sculpture, and elaborate pottery with mould-made decoration. These items were manufactured on a bigger scale than ever before.

The Romans were the most avid collectors of Greek art and decorated their town houses and country villas with Greek sculptures. By the 1^st century BC, Rome was a centre of Hellenistic art production, and many Greek artists came there to work.

The Hellenistic period came to an end with the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. Octavian defeated Marc Antony’s fleet and ended Ptolemaic rule. The Ptolemies were the last Hellenistic dynasty to fall to Rome. Interest in Greek art and culture remained strong during the Roman Imperial period. For many centuries, Roman artists continued to make works of art in the Hellenistic tradition.

 

• Hellenistic Sculpture

Hellenistic Greek sculpture continued the Classical trend towards naturalism. Animals, as well as ordinary people became subjects for sculpture. This was often commissioned by wealthy individuals or families to decorate their homes and gardens.

There was a greater demand from the newly established overseas Greek cultural centres in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey for statues and reliefs of Greek Gods, Goddesses and heroic figures for their temples and public areas. A large market developed in the production and export of Greek sculpture, that inevitably led to the fall in workmanship and creativity.

Sculpture became more naturalistic, and expressive with the interest in portraying emotion sometimes being pushed to extremes. Genre subjects of common people, women, children, animals, and domestic scenes became acceptable subjects for sculpture. Realistic portraits of men and women of all ages were produced, and sculptors no longer felt obliged to depict people as ideals of beauty or physical perfection.

With new Hellenistic cities developing all over Egypt, Anatolia and Syria, statues portraying the heroes and gods of Greece for their public places and temples were in high demand. This turned sculpture into an industry, and many survived the era than is the case with the Classical period.

The multi-figure group of statues was another Hellenistic innovation, where the epic battles of earlier temple pediment reliefs off their walls were taken and replaced as a life-size group of statues. This is called the baroque style, with extravagantly twisted body poses, and intense expressions in the faces. The reliefs on the Pergamon Altar are one original survival, but other well-known works are believed to be Roman copies of Hellenistic originals.

These include the Dying Gaul and the less well-known Kneeling Gaul among other, all believed to copy Pergamene commissions by Attalus I to commemorate his victory around 241 over the Gauls of Galatia.

Hellenistic sculpture was also marked by an increase in scale, like the Colossus of Rhodes in the late 3^rd century, which was the same size as the Statue of Liberty in New York. Unfortunately, earthquakes and looting have destroyed this as well as other very large works of this period.

Most terracotta figurines lost their religious nature, and rather represented characters from everyday life. Tanagra figurines, from one of several centres of production, are mass-manufactured using moulds, and then painted after firing. Dolls, figures of fashionably dressed ladies and of actors, were among the new subjects. These figurines were cheap, and at first displayed in the home much like modern ornamental figurines but were often buried with their owners.

At the same time, cities like Alexandria, Smyrna or Tarsus produced an abundance of grotesque figurines, representing individuals with deformed members, eyes bulging and contorting themselves. Such figurines were also made from bronze.

Famous Greek sculptures of the period include:

• The Farnese Bull – 2^nd century
• Dying Gaul – 232 BC by Epigonus
• Winged Victory of Samothrace – 1^st or 2^nd century BC
• The Pergamon Altar – 180 to 150 BC
• The Medici Venus – 150 to 100 BC
• The Three Graces – 2^nd century
• Venus de Milo – 100 BC by Alexandros of Antioch
• Laocoon and His Sons – 42 to 20 BC by Hagesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus.

 

All these statues depict Classical themes, but their treatment is far more sensuous and emotional than the austere taste of the Classical period would have allowed, or its technical skills permitted.

 

• Hellenistic Painting

The demand for Greek-style sculpture was similar in the increase in popularity of Hellenistic Greek painting. The Greeks seem to value painting even more than sculpture. The informed appreciation and even the practice of painting were components that was taught and propagated in several separate schools, both on the mainland and in the islands.

The medium is quite often mentioned in literature of the era but unfortunately, there is hardly any of these kinds of paintings, on wood panel or in fresco, left that this literature was concerned with.

One aspect that is not mentions in literature is vase-painting, but over 100,000 examples survived, giving many individual painters a respectable surviving legacy. The only idea we have of the best Greek painting must be drawn from a careful consideration of parallels in vase-painting, late Greco-Roman copies in mosaic and fresco, some very late examples of actual painting in the Greek tradition, and the ancient literature.

There was a sort of painting tradition in ancient Greece and they underwent differentiated developments, due to their technical differences. It seems that early painting has developed along similar lines to vase-painting. It relied heavily on outline and flat areas of colour, but then flowered and developed at the time that vase-painting went into decline.

The greatest contribution of Hellenist painters was in portrait art, especially the Fayum mummy portraits. These beautifully preserved panel paintings over 900 works, from the Coptic period, are the only significant body of art to have survived intact from Greek Antiquity. These realistic facial portraits were attached to the funeral cloth to cover the faces of mummified bodies and was found around the Fayum Basin in Egypt. Artistically, these images belong to the Greek style of portraiture, rather than any Egyptian tradition.

By the end of the Hellenistic period, technical developments included modelling to indicate contours in forms, shadows, foreshortening, some probably imprecise form of perspective, interior and landscape backgrounds. There was also the use of changing colours to suggest distance in landscapes. Greek artists had all the technical devices needed for fully illusionistic painting.

 

• Hellenistic Architecture

With the division of the Greek Empire into separate entities, each with its own ruler and dynasty, new opportunities were created to boost the rulers’ image and self-importance. For example: In Asia Minor, a new capital city was built at Pergamon by the Attalids; in Persia, the Seleucids evolved a form of Baroque-style building design; and in Egypt, the Ptolemaic dynasty constructed the lighthouse and library at Alexandria. Lavish architecture was revived, and numerous municipal structures were built to boost the influence of local rulers.

Temple architecture, on the other hand, experienced a major slump. From 300 BC onwards, the Greek peripheral temple lost much of its importance. Temple construction came to a virtual stop during the third century, in mainland Greece and in the nearby Greek colonies. Monumental projects, like the Artemisia at Sardis and the temple of Apollo at Didymo near Miletus, that were still in construction, made little progress.

Luckily this changed during the second century, when temple building was revived due to increased prosperity. This was partly to improvements made by the architect Hermogenes of Priene to the Ionic style of architecture, and partly to the cultural propaganda war waged between the various Hellenistic kingdoms, and between them and Rome.

An extensive number of Greek temples, and small-scale structures (pseudoperipteros) and shrines (naiskoi), were erected in Egypt, southern Asia Minor, and North Africa. The Doric style of temple architect now fell completely out of fashion as Hellenistic architecture demanded more flamboyant forms of the Ionic and Corinthian Orders.