Defining Beauty: The Body In Ancient Greek Art The British Museum, London - 'High passion for intimate curves and nudes'

• Defining Beauty: The Body In Ancient Greek Art
• The British Museum, London
• Until 5th July

The Greek writer Lucian tells the tale of a young man who fell madly in love with a statue of Aphrodite – the only female Olympian Goddess to be portrayed in the nude. So besotted was he that he locked himself, overnight, into the temple where she stood. Overnight he had his wicked way with her. But in the cold light of day he discovered that his antics had created a tremendous stain on the statue’s thigh. Overcome by shame he ran off, leaping to his death from a nearby cliff.

Such are the passions Greek sculpture has aroused in the past. Dashing examples abound in the new British Museum exhibition Defining Beauty: The Body in Ancient Greek Art.

Most of the works on display are assembled from the museum’s own collections. But there are startling surprises from museums further away, particular from Rome. The Vatican, The Capitoline and The Galleria Borghese are all represented in the new Sainsbury Exhibition Wing. The exhibition opens and closes with The Parthenon Illisos, one of a number of Elgin Marbles to appear here. Most prominent is beautiful Parthenon Iris, the messenger goddess whose vast bronze wings once stretched out on either side of her.

From a few feet away you can observe the still-thrilling intimacy of her curves. The exhibition lighting highlights the flowing, revealing drapery her creator cut out of an immense block of marble some two and a half thousand years ago. Even with her head missing she remains quite a catch.

Elsewhere Greek statues find themselves placed alongside more primitive examples which serves to highlight the triumph of the Greek approach to form. For instance, the Strangford Apollo made in Athens in the 5th Century BC, rubs shoulders with young men from Cyprus and Egypt - two nations who regarded nudity as shameful.

He by contrast, is stark naked. On the audio tour a writer for Men’s Health magazine chips in to say that the Strangford Apollo is the kind of statue you might want to take into the gym for inspiration. A fine idea, would the museum allow it.

Nearby a slightly later Athenian statue demonstrates how by the end of the 5th century BC Athenian sculptors had begun to work with figures in counterpose, shifting the weight of the body onto one leg, tilting the pelvis and sending a sweeping curve through the torso. The widespread influence of these works is examined as the exhibition continues. First with examples from modern Turkey and then showing how Alexander the Great’s later conquests carried the Greek approach to sculpture as far as India. Examples include a statue of Buddha made in Gandhara in the 1st Century BC. The gaze and diaphanous drapery are conspicuously Greek.

Iris: One of the Parthenon sculptures

The exhibitions closes with the Belvedere Torso, on loan from the Vatican Museum. As with many of the exhibits there’s a thrill to be had in walking around the sculpture. Getting up close the torso’s immense, muscular back is a reminder of Greek sculpture’s continuing ability to surprise.

It’s an opportunity to experience the scale of these works, which provided such inspiration to Michaelangelo all those centuries ago, and experience those moments of revelation where Greek sculptors, it’s been said, “invented the human body”.

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