Why Did People Use Marble For Sculptures

The properties of marble and its uses.

Why did people use marble for sculptures.

Sculpture is among the oldest of the arts. It is used for its chemical properties in pharmaceuticals and agriculture. Roman sculpture did however begin to search for new avenues of artistic expression moving away from their etruscan and greek roots and by the mid 1st century ce roman artists were seeking to capture and create optical effects of light and shade for greater realism. The archaic from about 650 to 480 bc classical 480 323 and hellenistic.

See pergamene school of greek sculpture. In the ancient world quarry workers many of them enslaved used hand tools to quarry marble. Portraits or busts and marble copies of greek bronzes. By later antiquity there was even a move towards impressionism using tricks of light and abstract forms.

During the republican era artists carved realistic portraits of people including political leaders military officials and historians from the chest or neck up known as busts these life sized works are celebrated for their impressively. The parthenon how did people quarry marble without power tools. It is used for its beauty in architecture and sculpture. At all periods there were great numbers.

Very few rocks have as many uses as marble. The lamentation of christ was a theme popular in northern european art since the 14th century but michelangelo s interpretation of mary holding a dead christ in her arms is remarkable in its faithfulness. Marble sculpture is the art of creating three dimensional forms from marble. Ancient roman sculptors are predominantly known for two types of marble sculptures.

Even before painting cave walls early humans fashioned shapes from stone. David marble sculpture executed from 1501 to 1504 by the italian renaissance artist michelangelo the statue was commissioned for one of the buttresses of the cathedral of florence and was carved from a block of marble that had been partially blocked out by other sculptors and left outdoors. Unfortunately this material was always in demand for re use in later periods whereas broken marble is not much use to anyone and so marble sculpture has better survived for posterity. The sculpture of ancient greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient greek art as with the exception of painted ancient greek pottery almost no ancient greek painting survives.

Probably the most popular material used in sculpture marble s translucency and durability has made it the medium of choice for all the greatest sculptors including greek artists like phidias myron polykleitos and praxiteles as well as their successors donatello. But marble is also rarer than limestone is and more expensive. From these beginnings artifacts have evolved to their current complexity. Michelangelo created the pietà between 1498 and 1500.

Consequently the quantity of surviving examples of bronze sculpture no more than twelve is not perhaps indicative of the fact that more bronze sculpture may. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone. So people like to use marble for buildings and for statues. After michelangelo completed the sculpture the florentine government decided instead to place it in.