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Amethyst is a violet variety of quartz.The name comes from the Koine Greek αμέθυστος amethystos from α - a-, "not" and μεθύσκω (Ancient Greek) methysko / μεθώ metho (Modern Greek), "intoxicate", a reference to the belief that the stone protected its owner from drunkenness. [1]
The Greek name amethystos alludes to the popular belief that amethyst prevented intoxication; as such, drinking vessels were made of amethyst for festivities, and carousers wore amulets made of it to counteract the action of wine. [6] The amethyst is a brilliant transparent stone of a purple color and varies in shade from violet purple to rose.
Greek art, especially sculpture, continued to enjoy an enormous reputation, and studying and copying it was a large part of the training of artists, until the downfall of Academic art in the late 19th century. During this period, the actual known corpus of Greek art, and to a lesser extent architecture, has greatly expanded.
The oldest known example of a Corinthian column is in the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae in Arcadia, c. 450–420 BC, but the order was used sparingly in Greece before the Roman period. The Romans elaborated the order with the ends of the leaves curled, and it was their favourite order for grand buildings, with their own invention of the ...
The following list of art deities is arranged by continent with names of mythological figures and deities associated with the arts. Art deities are a form of religious iconography incorporated into artistic compositions by many religions as a dedication to their respective gods and goddesses. The various artworks are used throughout history as ...
The engraving of gemstones was a major luxury art form in the ancient world, and an important one in some later periods. [ 2 ] Strictly speaking, engraving means carving in intaglio (with the design cut into the flat background of the stone), but relief carvings (with the design projecting out of the background as in nearly all cameos ) are ...
The fullest surviving and most famous ancient work about transformation in Greek myth is Roman poet Ovid's epic the Metamorphoses. Throughout history, the Metamorphoses has been used not only as a compendium of information on Ancient Greek and Roman lore, but also as a vehicle for allegorical exposition, exegesis, commentaries and adaptations ...
Polykleitos: The Doryphoros, the summary of the aesthetic idealism of Classicism. The sculpture of Classicism, the period immediately preceding the Hellenistic period, was built on a powerful ethical framework that had its bases in the archaic tradition of Greek society, where the ruling aristocracy had formulated for itself the ideal of arete, a set of virtues that should be cultivated for ...