Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

The Ny Carlsberg Glytotek is a museum in Copenhagen that has significant Ancient Greek & Roman art as well as French and Danish paintings and sculpture. I was there to see the former and I much appreciated the fact that the entrance fee is waived on Sundays.

Etruscan temples were made of earthen materials, which over time have decomposed. Here we see the some remnants of a surviving Etruscan temple.

Doric, Ionic or Corinthian? Ionic because of the curly scrolls, called volutes.

The founder of Carlsberg Beer, Carl Jacobsen had a love of things French, Danish and Ancient. He donated his colletion to form this museum and this room is a celebration of the ancient world.

Palm trees in Denmark? The museum's two buildings are connected by a beautiful winter garden atrium.

Archaic (c. 560 BCE)...

....hellenistic (c. 330 BCE)

When the Romans overtook the Greeks, the victors took the original bronzes as war booty. They melted down the bronzes but luckily, due to their love of Greek sculpture, we have marble copies today. This is the of Polykleitos' "Discus Bearer." Polykleitos is known as the first Greek sculptor to shift the weight of his subject. This pose is called "controposto" with one leg forward and the opposite arm behind.

Here is a copy of Lysippos' "Hermes". Lysippos not only changed the canon of the head being 1/7 to 1/8 of the body, but he also began having the viewer look at the figure from multiple angles.

This is the guy I came to see, Demosthenes! In the Hellenistic age, no we begin to see portraits of regular people, or more specifically, body types that were not ideal ones. Demosthenes here is an old man, showing his age. The artist, Polyeuktos, doesn't idealize him, but shows him as he was, frail, with receding hair and an expression of sadness.

The room in which Demosthenes is housed was showing some crazy exhibition on Danish chairs and there were spotlights circling about flashing comments. I think this is an interesting statement on Hellenistic portraiture.

Augustus

The beard of a Roman man.

Roman women weren't excluded from portraiture. Notice the locket of hair that drops from off her perfectly kept hair.

The Roman Empire reached its greatest extent during the rule of Hadrian (117-138 AD). In times of peace, mens hair became bigger and bigger.

Lucius Verus (161-169 AD)

Alexander Severus (222-235 AD). Crew cut......

This bust is by Carpeaux, an 19th century sculptor. It shows just how far along, and how good, artists of the ancient world were. As I learn more about the ancient world, the more I hold it in high esteem.