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Birth Of Athena Essay

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The Birth of Athena, is an artwork from ancient Greece. More specifically, this is an ancient Greek amphora. The overall context, style, and subject directly relates to Ancient Greek art, and the craftsmanship of this amphora is astounding.
To begin, the context of this art work is from Ancient Greece. At first glance there is no specific purpose to this artwork, common people would just look at it and notice a vase; however, the amphora was very typical to the archaic period and existed regularity within Greek society. An amphora is a two handle pot that was typically used to store dry or wet goods, mostly stored wine. Such amphora’s and other storage vases date back to the Neolithic period, but the unique style of this artwork directly relates …show more content…

This amphora tells the story of her birth. Just plainly looking at The Birth of Athena, you see a large man seated in a chair with soldiers surrounding him and a smaller figure coming out of the largest figures head. The amphora very clearly displays the mythological story of the Birth of Athena. Athena is the daughter of Zeus, and on this amphora, Zeus is accurately displayed in hierarchy of scale compared to the rest of the figures. The Greek mythology behind this birth is that Athena was born right out of her Fathers head, which makes sense considering she is the goddess of intelligence, fully grown without a mother. Along with Sues and Athena, all of the other important gods within Greek mythology are depicted. Such as, Poseidon, Apollo, and Amphitrite. You can tell which god is which due to what symbols hey are surrounded with and how each subject is placed on this amphora. For example, Zeus is the largest and also is holding a lightning bolt. This story was important to Greek society because they worshiped these gods, and thus they painted them on amphora’s such as these to honor and respect the gods. Overall, the subject and context of this artwork is unarguably Greek, and along with subject and context, the style is Greek as

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