Grave Stele of Hegeso
About this video
At the end of the 5th century BC, after the high classical moment, private funerary sculpture returned in Athens. The grave stele of Hegeso shows a seated woman examining jewelry from a box held by her servant. The video explains why such private monuments had disappeared, what the scene tells us about women's lives in Athens, and how its carving echoes the Parthenon frieze.
You'll be able to
- explain what a grave stele is and why they re-emerged at the end of the 5th century BC.
- describe the scene on the stele of Hegeso and what it shows about women in Athens.
- connect the stele's style to the Parthenon sculptures.
Key words
- stele
- An upright stone slab, often carved with relief sculpture, used as a grave marker.
- funerary sculpture
- Sculpture made to mark or honor a grave.
- relief
- Sculpture that projects from a flat background rather than standing free.
- foreshortened
- Drawn or carved to look shorter because it points toward or away from the viewer.
- kore and kouros
- Archaic statues of young women and men set up by elite families, sometimes as grave markers.
Transcript
(piano music) Man: At the end of the fifth century BC, the end of the very brief period that we call the high classical moment, there was a resurgence of funerary sculpture in Athens.
Woman: In fact, we're standing in a room in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens that's filled with grave markers, most of them in the form of what our historians called stele or upright slabs decorated with relief sculptures.
Man: Not so different from what we in the modern world would recognize as a grave stone.
Woman: Exactly. Interestingly, there was a disappearance of this type of monument during that high classical moment and then we see it reappear.
Man: What we do have in the high classical moment is most of the great sculptors working on the sculptural program of the Parthenon and the other buildings of the Acropolis. But we see private sculpture begin to re-emerge. That is, sculpture that is not part of a program of the state.
Woman: Exactly. Before the classical period in the archaic period, there were kore and kouros, the male and female figures that were set up by the elite Greek families as funerary markers, but during the period of democracy in Athens, the state was primary and not wealthy families.
Man: You see this resurgence especially in the cemeteries just outside of the city gates of Athens.
Woman: That's where this particular sculpture was found, which is called the grave stele of Hegeso. Hegeso is the woman who is shown seated opening a box of jewelry presented to her by her servant and examining a necklace, which is no longer there, but which was once represented in paint.
Man: There is such a precise rendering of the chair that she sits on.
Woman: Don't forget women's fear was the home. Women were not allowed to be citizens of Athens. Hegeso is shown in a domestic setting. We see plasters on either side and a pediment above, on which we see an inscription, that says, "Hegeso, daughter of Proxenos."
Women in ancient Greece led very circumcribed lives that were defined by their relationships with men. First their fathers and then their husbands.
Man: But I think that what I find most compelling is it's quiet reverence. This is so much in keeping with the tradition of the high classical that we see in Parthenon sculpture.
Woman: So this is a style that resembles very closely the kind of carving that we see on the figures on the Parthenon Frieze. Drapery that very closely follows the form of the body that creates elaborate folds and swirls that have a visual interest in their own right.
The drapery that bunches up between her two arms and around her belly and between her breasts are beautiful passages of sculpting.
Man: Her foot is resting on a foot rest so that there is no part of her is actually touching the ground. We see beautiful representation of her foot foreshortened and wearing a sandal. Look at the very delicate veil that falls to the right of the shoulder or the way in which the drapes around her legs fall on the far side of the chair.
And yet the drape by her waist falls on this side of the chair. So although we have this very shallow space, we have the full width of the body. Therefore all of this really vivid carving. This is a quiet image that is absolutely appropriate to the solemn mood of a grave stele.
(piano music)
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