Greek Body Image Essay

The image of the human body from Archaic Greece to the Renaissance to drastically changed over this time frame. For the Archaic Greece time, all the sculptures are all smiling. They also believed the perfect person was someone that was fit, handsome and intelligent. During the Greek period, their focus was getting the perfect/ideal person. For the men, they would focus on making them look strong and fit. Although they were doing this, they had also altered the body, with making the legs half the body size, which in reality, is not true. They also extend the length of the people to be eight heads high, when most human bodies are seven heads high. The women were seen as somewhat bigger during this time. With all the things they were doing, this made for body image issues to the people in
Greece. During the Hellenistic Greece period, the women are seen as muscular and strong in the sculptures. The men are still seen as very strong and fit, but are starting to become more realistic. They show the muscles on the body, which is showing that the men are extremely strong. In the end, the men were focused on heroic and fit, and the women are focused on general strength and fertility. During the Roman period, the “perfect” body was seen as a farmer to show all the experience they have.
Wisdom was also key at this time. To them, wisdom was not just classified as intelligence, but also classified as the years and years of experience they had. In their work, the heads and shoulders look older, which is done by adding wrinkles to the face. Making someone look older is something that the artists only do to the men that they sculpt. When it came to showing leaders in sculptures, they would make them look young, so they can be seen as strong leader that was in charge. During the Renaissance, this is when they started using more realistic figures compared to idealizing. With the discovery of dissection of the human body, artists could start to understand the human body and the structure of it. They could learn about the muscles and body make up to make their figures look more realistic. With this, both the men and women were starting to look more muscular, which some people may not think is very realistic because not everyone is muscular like these sculptures. Another thing about this time was that some painters and sculptors only used men forms for both men and
women.
During the Greeks, the sculptures and paintings ended up making people have body image issues. They would make most of their sculptures and paintings very muscular and out of proportion. With making the people look unrealistic, viewers may want to look like that too, which is was almost impossible to do. Another thing that is shown during this time is that women are supposed to be seen as motherly figures and fertility. During most of these periods, the women are only seen has mothers and wives, which they are supposed to stay in the house and have children.
During the Roman time, these paintings and sculptures showed that this society was about being experienced and working hard. They thought the ideal person was someone that was a farmer, which farmers work long hours and required many skills to be a seen as a successful farmer. Experience was also important at this time. The more experience a person had, the better they looked compared to others. Another thing that was big during this time was education. Not that people would brag about how smart they were, but they would definitely want others to know that they have an education. Having an education usually meant that that couple or family was pretty well off with having a decent amount of money and a nice home.
During the Medieval time, most of the paintings were about Jesus and God. This time was very religious and groups of people were trying to make other religious too. Groups would put on theater acts to show the audience not to sin. They would do this by putting on terrifying acts that dealt with a devil like creature.
During the whole Renaissance time, this was when paintings were used to tell women how to act during marriage. They were told to be available to their husbands at any time, have children as often as possible, hope to find love with their husband, be charming, be beautiful, and do not be unhappy during the marriage. There were multiple paintings the people would receive as gifts or buy themselves that were meant to tell the roles of the husband and wife in the marriage. When it came to the husbands, they were supposed to be the bread winner for the family. When it came to the wife, she would be in the house doing common housework and being available to her husband. Some of these paintings were also about religion. They would try to communicate the message that faith should be more important than work.