"Primitive" Greek Artwork: Garden Statuary

"Primitive" Greek Artwork: Garden Statuary The Archaic Greeks built the 1st freestanding statuary, an impressive achievement as most sculptures up until then had been reliefs cut into walls and pillars. For the most part the statues, or kouros figures, were of young and desirable male or female (kore) Greeks. Considered by Greeks to represent splendour, the kouroi were created into stiff, forward facing poses with one foot outstretched, and the male statues were usually nude, well-built, and athletic. Around 650 BC, life-sized variations of the kouroi began to be observed. Throughout the Archaic period, a great time of changes, the Greeks were evolving new types of government, expressions of art, and a deeper understanding of people and cultures outside Greece. However, these clashes did little to impede the progress of the Greek civilization.

Creators of the First Fountains

Creators of the First Fountains Often working as architects, sculptors, artists, engineers and highly educated scholars all in one, from the 16th to the late 18th century, fountain designers were multi-faceted individuals, Leonardo da Vinci, a Renaissance artist, was celebrated as an imaginative intellect, inventor and scientific master. He methodically annotated his examinations in his now much celebrated notebooks about his research into the forces of nature and the attributes and mobility of water. Combining imagination with hydraulic and horticultural mastery, early Italian water feature creators changed private villa settings into ingenious water displays filled of emblematic meaning and natural wonder. The humanist Pirro Ligorio supplied the vision behind the splendors in Tivoli and was renowned for his virtuosity in archeology, architecture and garden concepts. Other water feature developers, masterminding the fantastic water marbles, water attributes and water antics for the many mansions near Florence, were tried and tested in humanistic topics and traditional scientific texts.