Ebook: Classical Art and the cultures of Greece and Rome

Traditionally, art historians have been concerned with the anthropological aspects of ancient art. Onians (director, World Art Research Programme, Univ. of East Anglia) takes a rather different approach. He theorizes that classical art was "the natural product of the nurturing influence of a limited set of environmental factors on a living organism" and uses a biological or ecological point of view to identify "the most characteristic forms [of Greek and Roman art] and the environments in which these developed." Were the Greeks successful because they settled in a harsh land that required stone and metal tools to survive? Was that the reason they represented themselves in marble and bronze statues? It is an interesting argument, and a worthwhile one. Unfortunately, Onians suffers from page-long-paragraph syndrome. Illustrations are appropriate and well placed, and this helps somewhat, but only the hardiest of scholars will actually read the book through.