The Influence of Greek Sculpture

The Hellenistic period begins in 323 with the death of Alexander the Great and ends with the battle of Actio in 31 BC. While Philip of Macedon conquered and united the Greek city-states, his son Alexander the Great embraced on a campaign that found him the conqueror of a vast empire which included Greece, Persia, the Near East, and Egypt. During this period the city-states begin to give way to a more global culture, and the entire …

…the flow of history without breaking with the traditional values that made its existence possible. Hygea, the goddess of health, is created with all the subtleties of Classical aesthetic ideals, but her face manages to reveal an expression of concern and understanding towards a peson or a condition that seems to appear before her. Thus the viewer becomes the subject of her attention in a moment of self-consciousness and role reversal between observer and observed.