Art and Myth in Ancient Greece by Thomas H. Carpenter

Art and Myth in Ancient Greece Reviews

• 
  Monty Milne

  This is an enjoyable book but it sets out its limited scope in the preface: it is about identifying myths, not explaining them or theorising about them. I must admit this was a bit disappointing – it would have been so interesting to have something deeper than just identification, description, and art. But, of course, this would have been a completely different (and much bigger) kind of book.
  
  The really fascinating discovery for me was to realise just how much we don’t know because of gaps in the surviving literature. An example would be Jason and the Golden Fleece: there are many depictions of a dragon swallowing Jason and then vomiting him up again. These are all definitely Jason the Argonaut (Carpenter points out the obvious iconographical clues which show why) but none of the literary descriptions we have say anything about the vomiting dragon, whose role in the myth therefore remain mysterious and unknown. There are many other examples, and many pictorial representations which we assume represent myths which have been lost, but must have once been familiar to those who produced them and saw them. This is all intriguing stuff. (And why is that some myths became hugely popular at certain times and places, only to fall out of popularity later and be replaced by others? What is it that caused these changes in fashion? This too raises many interesting questions, not explored here).
  
  Nevertheless, within its limitations, this is an excellent book and as handsomely produced and illustrated as everything produced by the estimable Thames & Hudson.
  
• 
  Linniegayl

  I read this for a class project. It was an interesting summary of the depiction of key Greek myths and mythological characters on ancient art and architecture.
• 
  Maria

  "Art and Myth in Ancient Greece" (1991) by Professor Emeritus at Ohio University Thomas H. Carpenter.
  
  With chapters with the themes of:
  1. Introduction
  2. A Demonstration of Method: The Return of Hephaistos; Troilos and Achilles
  3. Portraits of the Gods
  4. The Ascendancy of the Olympians
  5. Perseus; Bellerophon
  6. Herakles
  7. Theseus
  8. Argonauts; Calydonian Boar Hunt
  9. The Trojan War
  10. The Aftermath of the War
  
  
  
  Confusing how the book is set up. In each chapter it's structured by around 15 pages of only text followed everytime by several pages with lots of reference pictures to the connected chapter. To understand fully what is written about, you have to flip pages constantly to have any idea about what Carpenter is writing about. Would rather have the reference near the text, so you don't have to constantly search for answers.
  
  Carpenter delivers what the title of the book is, greek mythology in ancient greek art. You get a feel for the myths and the art pieces, but if you want more information about the different topics and art pieces, you have to read about that somewhere else especially for analysis purposes.
  
  A different layout and more in depth descriptions, and it would have gotten a higher rating.
• 
  Gavin White

  I read this ages ago and have occasionally come back to it to explore certain chapters. The author takes various myths or heroes and explores them from an artistic and literary perspective. For me the real value of this book is that it shows that written myths and ancient art often don't correspond with each other. Greek artworks often show that there were alternative versions of myths known in ancient times with different protagonists or events. Sometimes one icon, for instance Pegasus and Medusa, can even have different interpretations applied to it. The book really helped me to start thinking about myths in very pictorial terms; and to concentrate on this as the central proposition conveyed by the text.
• 
  Margaret Sankey

  Carpenter explores how changes in the visual representation of myths parallels the changing perception of the stories by Greek people--for example, Theseus' evolving role from killer of the Minotaur (establishing Athens over Crete) to hero of the Centaur War (establishing Athens over Persia) and then the backstory and emotional shading added by classical dramatists who took the material and ran with it.
• 
  Lynn

  As per the introduction, this book gives a very topical, general gist of Greek myths and their respective depictions. The book is good for its purposes. You would have to look elsewhere for further analysis of any particular myth/artwork.
• 
  Xander

  Information dump followed by an image dump in all chapters. Not particularly fluid and not a great writing style. Overall, some good choices of images and some good info. Will come in useful for later referencing.
• 
  Rosa

  Information dump that manages to be both incredibly banal and confusing simultaneously
• 
  Ingrid

  This book was not the easiest to follow due to it's images set in clumps that one has to refer back to in order to understand the text. It would benefit much from having the image right next to the text. Someone reading this would need to have a clear knowledge of the myth behind the artwork to fully grasp the meanings of the readings. This would be a good book to pull images and text from for an in-class shared experience for the students.
• 
  Molly Ringle

  I didn't read every word of all chapters; I skimmed some. But this was an interesting and different angle from which to come at Greek mythology, as well as serving as a useful bit of ancient art history. At least I now can use terms like "red-figure" and "black-figure," and have a better idea of why the scenes are often all jumbled together with lots of action seemingly happening at once. (Answer: because they didn't know about comic-book-style frames yet to separate one scene from another.)
• 
  Seda

  I use this book for a art history class and it is very beneficial. Great pictures of the Ancient Greek arts and neatly captioned and very explanatory. If you are majoring in art, or interested in Ancient Greek art I highly recommend this book.
• 
  Manuel Vega

  The best are the pictures, grouped in myths. Really extensive. Unfortunately, the author avoids entirely other discussion than the artistic.
• 
  Inez Beall

  Love Medusa.