so let's take a look at the temple of Harrah at paestum you can see that this is temple one with much meaning there must be another one this is we're at 1550 BCE and this example is about a hundred feet by a hundred and seventy-five feet it's made from marble of course this is unreinforced stone masonry in post and lintel construction technique what we've got here are very heavy closely placed columns and the problem here is that when you and I stand out here in worship we can't see what's going on inside now you notice that the inside is missing now it has it has fallen but the roof has fallen that the pediment is gone but you still get a sense of the enormity of these space look at how they very carefully situate the columns and figure out the spacing so that they stop right at the corner that what order is this is this Corinthian ionic or Doric you tell me D is for dull D is for Doric it is a site that you can get right up next to but most much of the meta P's and triglyphs have fallen or were in a state of about to fall so they have been removed into the museum which is on site so you can stand right next to something that would have been up so high that you couldn't see it which is I think a really nice advantage here so this close spacing of these giant columns is not going to last for long it's going to prevent us from seeing what we need to see inside and one thing that is imperceptible is this Greek obsession with perfect mathematical proportion the Greeks develop a technique called ant assess or entices where they are artificially tweaking the shape of the structure to make it look more perfect from a distance this is an artificial optical treatment of the column in this case so the temple appears in perfect proportion when you back away from it so the illustration on the right shows you what it's gonna look like when it has been visually and optically corrected if they didn't give this and this is not something that you perceive when you stand there but when you hold up geometric instrument ensures instruments next to it you can see that they've made these Corrections everything is about perfection and of course the Pythagorean theorem that magic rate ratio mathematic ratio of two to one something developed by by the ancient Greeks themselves this proportion is something that they see in the natural world and it's something that they want to replicate in things that they make so if you for example take a look at the nautilus shell it follows this two to one ratio each part divided into equal parts into infinity and they do the same thing with the human form whether it's the full body or whether it is something like the human hand something that will come in very handy for Greek sculptors in the future so here is an example of a pediment sculpture this is very early for the Temple of Artemis we've got Medusa out there sort of running in a pinwheel fashion one of the things you notice that they figure out is how to utilize this strange space so of course a pediment is large in the center and then tapers you notice that a lot of this sculpture is missing so rather than make up the missing sculpture they just give you an outline of what that might have looked like another example from antiquity the Scythian Treasury and from Delphi we're at five-thirty BCE this is a non peripheral meaning no columns on the exterior and we've got these really cool figures here female figures that form columns and a brightly painted frieze band up at the top so this interest in filling the pediment figures is something that goes forward into time here we are at the temple of aphaia we are at about 500 BCE and this is where we see a big important moment in the history of art we are reminded of course that these are all brightly painted figures that the pediment itself no longer is extant today but we've got renderings artists reconstruction on what it would look like so we've got the west pediment and the east pediment look again at how the pediment tapers to a sharp point and they have to figure out how to fill that with sculpture here is a plan view showing us the scale this is a Doric temple with alternating triglyphs and metopes now we're going to zoom back and look at the pediment this is from the west pediment and this is a Greek Archaic figure and one of the reasons you know that it is archaic is it has something called the archaic smile see that silly smile on his face when was the last time a warrior who had a arrow through his chest was smiling this is not realistic this is not lifelike and this is not gonna last with the Greeks look at the date 490 BCE and now let's take a look at the same building with the opposite pediment that is just a few years younger so we go from the archaic to the classic all in the same building with just 100 years separating the two now it's unfortunate that we're still counting backwards because that messes people up but with just 10 years of evolution now we can see a dying warrior who is shown in a realistic depiction you get the sense of the weight of his body as he dies right he's got the sword you see the sword is missing these were made of bronze and they were often stolen and melted down to be made into weapons he not looking at us with a silly smile he's gazing at the ground he's showing pain on his face and one of the ways that I remember which is which is I say that the West is worst and the East is best you know you have to make these little things up for your self in order to remember them so this awkward archaic posed a silly smile which is not correct whereas we've got correct Anatomy an appropriate emotional reaction to the finger on the right and this brings us to this light bulb moment the change from the archaic period to the Classical period all in one building with just 10 years difference this light bulb moment of understanding realistic depiction for the first time in the history of Western art we see people standing as they really stand we call that contrapposto weight shift and that's what we see with this figure right here all of the weight put on one leg and just the other leg used in balance so that rigid frontal 2 feet flat on the ground is gone and we see it exemplified here in this important form known as the kritis boy this is now crossing over into the Greek classic period yes he's got some damage but when you stand in contrapposto weight shift you have all the weight on the one leg and that makes one hip rise and one hip fall and then it does the opposite to the shoulders and so that is how people really stand and that's why this sculpture is so important also used as a grave marker probably had some kind of semi precious jewel for eyes which are now missing but this photograph of the Acropolis is frightening look here's the calf Bearer here's a head that has been removed from a sculpture and here is the body of the greediest boy missing its head which they were later able to find so this photograph from the 1850s 1860s okay and now here is the forum then reunited in the Acropolis in Athens