“Grand Style” in Bosporan art: evidence, origins and development

Abstract

Among the objects of greek art of the Bosporan production, greek archaic art basis is quite clearly observed. We can interpret it as the preservation of early aesthetic ideas in the perception of plastic form, a certain “manner of vision”, transferred with the Hellenic impulse to a new environment in the 6 BC. Over time, the plastic manner was modified, but the “archaic trace” in the sculpture was preserved. Undoubtedly, it became the defining basis of a peculiar local form, which was gradually filled with elements learned from subsequent masters of the new “classical” schools.
A relief with a battle scene (Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts) turned out to be a kind of key to understanding the bright variety of local art, which was proposed to be distinguished and designated as the “Bosporan style”. We can also refer to it a number of other monuments of monumental sculpture, both of the late 6th and 4th centuries BC, and later, including the widespread Bosporan tombstone steles of the Hellenistic and Early Roman era. There are reasons to assume the existence of the Bosporan style in the forms of architectural decoration, and in torevtik (gold objects from the Donetsk and Stavropol mounds: Perederieva Mogila and the mound, excavated in 2013 in Stavropol), and even in small forms – terracotta plastic – this style is reflected: the statuette of a horseman from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in the composition, flattened surface of the relief and characteristic details resembles the style of the Bosporan steles of late Hellenism. All this translates the phenomenon under consideration into the status of the so-called “Grand Style”, that is, an artistic manner that manifests itself in various categories of culture and for several centuries has determined the expressive appearance of the Bosporan environment.