Art History For Dummies. Jesse Bryant Wilder

they dragged the giant wooden horse into their unsuspecting city.

      Honoring the classical in a new world

      Part of the intense expressiveness you see in The Dying Trumpeter and Laocoön and His Sons was no doubt due to the assimilation of so many foreign cultures, and part of it to a new worldview. The self-confidence of classical Greece had proved to be self-delusion. Life was gritty and unpredictable, not serene, changeless, and otherworldly.

      But the serene beauty of Greek classicism didn’t fade away completely. The Venus de Milo (or Venus of Melos), shown in Figure 7-14, is a throwback to fourth-century Athens, though it was carved between 150 and 125 BC. With her unflappable calm, Venus could have been sculpted by Praxiteles. The fact that her clothes seem to be slipping off enhances the goddess’s potent sexuality. Yet her musing gaze takes the viewer beyond her sensuality to a place of timeless beauty and mystery.

      Gloria Wilder

      FIGURE 7-14: Venus de Milo is one of the most celebrated Hellenistic statues.