The Greek artist Phaidimos created “A Pieced Front of a Limestone Block from the Stepped Base of a Funerary Monument” was said to be from the Athens during mid-sixth century B.C. The pieces current location is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, given to the museum by Jacob S. Rogers. The materials that were used to create this piece was limestone and engraved into the limestone is two lines of poetry that are called Dactylic Hexameter, dactylic hexameter is the oldest known form of Greek poetry and is the preeminent metre of narrative and didactic poetry in Greek and Latin (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannic. “Hexameter Poetry.)”
The use of limestone is used for buildings along with marble and a long process. This process consisted of “architects participating in every aspect of the building process, from choosing the stone and overseeing its extraction to supervising the craftsmen who cut each piece in the quarry. After workers shaped the stone and put the blocks into place, other skilled laborers completed the construction.” (Leigh, Shannon. "Limestone in Ancient Greek Architecture.”) Additionally, poetry was used to express grief over the death of a loved one within Greek times. The art movement this was in was Ancient Greek Art, in my opinion, it consists of architecture, balance and proper proportions.
My perception on this art piece is the use of lines created was called Boustrophedon which is the writing of alternate routes in opposite directions (as from left to right and from right to left) ("Boustrophedon." Merriam-Webster.com) is interesting with the difference of text between this century and the mid-mid-sixth century. The inscription from the Metropolitan is "On the death of Chairedemos his father Amphichares set up this monument mourning a good son. Phaidimos made it.” The texture and pattern are rough due to the wear and tearoom the piece due to it being centuries old along with the cracks. The emphasis of this piece is in the text to let the reader know that this is for a funerary monument and that a loved one had died. Space has not been used well enough, as, in my opinion, I would’ve lowered the text so that it would’ve at least been centered so space would’ve been even. The block is in landscape form consisting of no human figures. The most lavish funerary monuments were erected in the sixth century B.C. – Each funerary monument had an inscribed base with an epitaph, often in verse that memorialized the dead (Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece.”) Personally, the emotions portrayed in pieces like this were usually meant for grieving but also to give an insight into the deceased.
The art style is an Archaic Greek, the Archaic Period is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages (c.1200- 800 BCE), a period about which little is known for sure, and followed by the Classical Period (c. 510- 323 BCE), which is one of the better documented periods of Greek history, with tragedies, comedies, histories, legal cases and more surviving in the form of literary and epigraphic sources (James Lloyd. “Greek Archaic Period.”) For Regional style, while in the fifth century B.C. Athenian families began to bury their dead in simple stone sarcophagi placed in the ground within grave precincts arranged in man-made terraces buttressed by a high retaining wall that faced the cemetery road. (Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece.”) Meanwhile, in the sixth century, the most lavish funerary monuments were erected in the sixth century B.C. by aristocratic families of Attica in private burial grounds along the roadside on the family estate or near Athens. (Department of Greek and Roman Art. “Death, Burial, and the Afterlife in Ancient Greece.”) For personal style, on the other hand, there isn’t much uniqueness in Phaidimos’ art. Phaidimos’ objective in personal opinion is to show the grieving of Amphichares’ son.
The focus of worship in Greek religion was the altar, which for a long time was a simple block and only much later evolved into a monumental form. (britannica.com Western Architecture”) For Greece, there were three different architectural styles, the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The Doric order emerged on the Greek mainland during the course of the late seventh century B.C.E. and remained the predominant order for Greek temple construction through the early fifth century B.C.E. The Ionic order developed in Ionia during the mid-sixth century B.C.E. – the Ionic order incorporates a running frieze of continuous sculptural relief, as opposed to the Doric frieze composed of triglyphs and metopes. In archaeological terms, the earliest known Corinthian capital comes from the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae and dates to c. 427 B.C.E. The Romans favored the Corinthian order, perhaps due to its slender properties. (Dr. Jeffrey A. Becker. “Greek architectural orders.”) For the artist and his birthplace and native country, there is no information regarding this information or himself beside this limestone block.
For interpretation, this artwork caught my eye since in the Metropolitan Greek and Roman exhibit, yes there are beautiful sculptures and vases, but I saw this piece with the Boustrophedon poetry. I thought that they could’ve just had statues or what ordinary people would consider art but the fact that they took a limestone block and some ancient Greek typography was showing the viewer that there is more to art than what they think. I do believe this artwork is successful. It is straightforward after you get a translation of the Greek lettering and have a basic concept of the idea behind the art. It’s also impressed with the smoothness of the letters and how Phaidimos was able to have the curves look so natural and give it a three-dimensional view on a flat surface. As an example of architecture and limestone being art, the first great monument of classical art and architecture is the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, site of the Olympic Games. The architect was Libon of Elis, who began work on the temple about 470 B.C.E. and completed it by 457 B.C.E. (Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner’s Art through the Ages: A Global History 15th Edition, A Global History.)