 Political developments directly and significantly influenced Greek art of the fifth century B.C. Constitutional reforms in Athens, proposed by the legislator Kleisthenes at the end of the sixth century B.C., led to a more democratic system of government. Invasion of mainland Greece by the Persian king and his armies in the first decades of the fifth century B.C. resulted in the plundering and destruction of Greek centers, including the Athenian Akropolis, and caused the fiercely independent Greek city-states to band together for the first time. Athens played a major role in the defeat of the enemy, both in 490 B.C. at the Battle of Marathon and ten years later in a decisive naval battle near the island of Salamis. Following the final battle at Plateia in 479 B.C., the victorious Greeks formed a confederacy of which Athens became the leader. From this position of prominence, Athens soon developed into the preeminent political, economic, and cultural center of Greece.
The magnitude of the Greek–indeed Athenian–victory is reflected in the art of the fifth century B.C. The red-figure technique superseded black-figure in vase-painting thanks to a small group of artists designated the Pioneers, among whom Euphronios and Euthymides were leaders. Potters and painters of the first decades of the fifth century B.C. specialized in the fabrication and decoration of certain shapes; painted drinking cups were especially popular. Works by Onesimos, Douris, Makron, the Kleophrades Painter, and the Berlin Painter exhibit the superlative draftsmanship and masterful decoration that were achieved at this time. The greatest innovations lay in the rendering of the human body, clothed or naked, at rest and in motion. The miniature art of engraving gemstones and coin dies was equally accomplished. Monumental sculpture was slower to break from the Archaic conventions of symmetry and bold frontality. Nonetheless, a new sculptural style, known today as Classical, emerged after the Persian Wars. It retained the geometric principles of earlier periods but for the first time represented human beings as self-conscious individuals with complete naturalism. This achievement was coupled with a remarkable tendency toward balanced compositions and formal harmony, which can be seen in sculpture large and small.
Architectural and funerary sculpture in stone provides the best evidence for the sculptural style of this period. Under Perikles, the great Athenian statesman, an ambitious building program was undertaken on and around the Akropolis as a highly visible manifestation of the city’s greatness. The architectural and sculptural grandeur of this enterprise is epitomized by the Parthenon (constructed between 448 and 432 B.C.), the temple on the Akropolis dedicated to Athena, patron goddess of the city. An open-air theater dedicated to Dionysos was built on the south slope of the Akropolis where many of the most famous plays of classical antiquity were first performed. At the same time, valued for its tensile strength and lustrous beauty, bronze became the preferred medium for freestanding statuary. All the best sculptors, such as Myron and Polykleitos, worked in bronze; molds were made from their models, and then the statues were piece-cast by means of the lost-wax process. Unfortunately, very few bronze originals of the fifth century B.C. survive. Similarly, the finest cult statues of this time–colossal works of gold and ivory erected in temples in Athens, Olympia, and elsewhere–by such important artists as Pheidias are not preserved. Instead, what we know of these famous sculptures comes primarily from ancient literature and later Roman copies in marble.
The visual arts were a major part of a cultural revolution that has had a lasting legacy, even to the present day. The lyric poet Pindar; the young philosopher Plato and his teacher Sokrates; Herodotus the first Greek historian and Thucydides who pioneered the scientific recording of history; Hippokrates the father of modern medicine; and the famous dramatists Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophokles all lived in this golden age.
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