Greek Architecture and Its Sculpture

From Athens and Arcadia on one side of the Aegean Sea and from Ionia, Lycia, and Karia on the other, this book brings together some of the great monuments of classical antiquity —among them two of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the later temple of Artemis at Ephesos and the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos.

Drawing on the Greek and Lycian architecture and sculpture in the British Museum—a collection second to none in quality, quantity, and geographical and chronological range—this lavishly illustrated volume tells a remarkable story reaching from the archaic temple of Artemis, the Parthenon, and other temples of the Athenian Acropolis to the temple of Apollo at Bassai, the sculptured tombs of Lycia, the Mausoleum, and the temple of Athena Polias at Priene. Ian Jenkins explains each as a work of art and as a historical phenomenon, revealing how the complex personality of these buildings is bound up with the people who funded, designed, built, used, destroyed, discovered, and studied them. With 250 photographs and specially commissioned line drawings, the book comprises a monumental narrative of the art and architecture that gave form, direction, and meaning to much of Western culture.

From Athens and Arcadia on one side of the Aegean Sea and from Ionia, Lycia, and Karia on the other, this book brings together some of the great monuments of classical antiquity —among them two of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the later temple of Artemis at Ephesos and the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos.

Drawing on the Greek and Lycian architecture and sculpture in the British Museum—a collection second to none in quality, quantity, and geographical and chronological range—this lavishly illustrated volume tells a remarkable story reaching from the archaic temple of Artemis, the Parthenon, and other temples of the Athenian Acropolis to the temple of Apollo at Bassai, the sculptured tombs of Lycia, the Mausoleum, and the temple of Athena Polias at Priene. Ian Jenkins explains each as a work of art and as a historical phenomenon, revealing how the complex personality of these buildings is bound up with the people who funded, designed, built, used, destroyed, discovered, and studied them. With 250 photographs and specially commissioned line drawings, the book comprises a monumental narrative of the art and architecture that gave form, direction, and meaning to much of Western culture.

Publishers Weekly

This overview aimed at the general reader is dense but fast-moving, despite its occasional detours into musty scholarly controversies. Jenkins focuses almost exclusively on temples and tombs whose artifacts can be seen at the British Museum, where he is senior curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. This arbitrary framework turns out to be as good as any for a long view of ancient Greek buildings and sculpture, given the breadth of the museum's holdings. Jenkins's accounts of the Parthenon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos and half a dozen other sites are wrapped in deft capsule histories of the political situations that gave rise to them. Hundreds of mostly color photos and diagrams, smartly laid out for easy reference to the corresponding text, usually make the most obscure of his points comprehensible-his theory of how the drainage from the roof of the Artemision Temple worked, for example. A few times Jenkins discusses, in somewhat excruciating detail, questions unlikely to excite the nonspecialist (e.g., the apparently passionate debate among scholars about exactly how many columns were in that same Artemision Temple). But for the most part, the smart design and the author's obvious enthusiasm for his subject make this an accessible and lively survey. (Jan. 15) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Ian Jenkins is Senior Curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, where he has responsibility for the Greek collections. His many publications include Archaeologists and Aesthetes and The Parthenon Frieze.