Severe style

[2] The one exception to this general rule of uncertainty is the Tyrannicide group; a replacement for the bronze created by Antenor in 514 to commemorate the assassins of the tyrant Hipparchus was sculpted by Kritios and Nesiotes and dated in an inscription of 477/6 BCE.

This piece, now known only from Roman copies[3] preserves the poses and facial features familiar from archaic art and combines it with a novel treatment of multiple viewpoints, feeling for mass, and anatomical observation that distinguishes it as one of several Athenian transitional works.

Another is the Kritian boy, c. 480 BCE,[4] whose distribution of weight onto one leg, lowered right hip, and inclination of head and shoulders exceeds the formulas of the late Archaic kouroi marks a step toward the greater naturalism and individualization of the Classical – as B. S. Ridgway puts it: no longer a type but a subject.

Brunilde S. Ridgway identifies six traits that might serve to define the style: The Severe artists whose names have come down to us include the collaborators Kritios and Nesiotes; Pythagoras; Calamis; and most notably Myron of Eleutherae.

Or does only the strong freedom of movement in the figurative art of the Late Archaic period, the self-confident recognition of personal individuality, go back to a change in the sixth century, while the causes of the "purified world of forms" of the Severe Style are others?

Pharsalos stele , c. 470–60, Louvre
Taranto goddess, Pergamon Museum.
Cast of Apollo from Temple of Zeus, Olympia, original attributed to the Olympia Master, cast in the MFA Munich
A Roman-era bust of Themistocles in "Severe style", [ 5 ] based on a Greek original, in the Museo Archeologico Ostiense , Ostia, Rome , Italy. The lost original of this bust, dated to circa 470 BC, has been described as "the first true portrait of an individual European". [ 6 ]