Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
used to be the Assyrian Empire). Two hundred years later, this Greek-speaking Hellenistic
Empire was conquered by the Romans.
• There's a nude male statue on the left side of the room.
Torso of an Idealized Youth
The Greeks saw their gods in human form...and human beings were godlike. They inven-
ted a statue type—the kouros (literally, “youth”)—to showcase idealized bodies. In this
example (c. 520-510
B.C.
), the youth would have exemplified the divine orderliness of
the universe with his once perfectly round head (it's now missing), symmetrical pecs, and
navel in the center. The ideal man was geometrically perfect, a balance of opposites, the
Golden Mean. In a statue, that meant finding the right balance between movement and
stillness, between realistic human anatomy (with human flaws) and the perfection of a
Greek god. Our youth is still a bit uptight, stiff as the rock from which he's carved. But—as
we'll see—in just a few short decades, the Greeks would cut loose and create realistic
statues that seemed to move like real humans.
