Hellenistic sculpture in the context of "Historicism"

The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone: Archaic Greek sculpture (from about 650 to 480 BC), Classical (480–323 BC) and Hellenistic thereafter. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.

The Greeks decided very early on that the human form was the most important subject for artistic endeavour. Since they pictured their gods as having human form, there was little distinction between the sacred and the secular in art—the human body was both secular and sacred. A male nude of Apollo or Heracles shows only slight differences in treatment from a sculpture of that year's Olympic boxing champion. The statue (originally single, but by the Hellenistic period often in groups) was the dominant form, although reliefs, often so "high" that they were almost free-standing, were also important.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace, or the Niké of Samothrace, is a votive monument originally discovered on the island of Samothrace in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It is a masterpiece of Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic era, dating from the beginning of the 2nd century BC (190 BC). It is composed of a statue representing the goddess Nike (Victory), whose head and arms are missing, and a base in the shape of a ship's bow.

The total height of the monument is 5.57 metres (18 ft 3 in) including the socle; the statue alone measures 2.75 metres (9 ft 0 in). The sculpture is one of a small number of major Hellenistic statues surviving in the original, rather than Roman copies.

Heroic nudity or ideal nudity is a concept in classical scholarship to describe the un-realist use of nudity in classical sculpture to show figures who may be heroes, deities, or semi-divine beings. This convention began in Archaic and Classical Greece and continued in Hellenistic and Roman sculpture. The existence or place of the convention is the subject of scholarly argument.

In ancient Greek art, warriors on reliefs and painted vases were often shown as nude in combat, which was not in fact the Greek custom, and in other contexts. Idealized young men (but not women) were carved in kouros figures, and cult images in the temples of some male deities were nude. Later, portrait statues of the rich, including Roman imperial families, were given idealized nude bodies; by now this included women. The bodies were always young and athletic; old bodies are never seen. Pliny the Elder noted the introduction of the Greek style to Rome.

The Farnese Bull (Italian: Toro Farnese), formerly in the Farnese collection in Rome, is a massive Roman elaborated copy of a Hellenistic sculpture. It is the largest single sculpture yet recovered from antiquity. Along with the rest of the Farnese antiquities, it has been since 1826 in the collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli in Naples, inv. no. 6002, though in recent years sometimes displayed at the Museo di Capodimonte across the city. The sculpture in Naples is much restored, and includes around the base a child, a dog, and other animals not apparently in the original composition, which is known from versions in other media.

Pliny the Elder mentions what was presumably the prime version of it as the work of the Rhodian artists Apollonius of Tralles and his brother Tauriscus, stating that it was commissioned at the end of the 2nd century BC and carved from just one whole block of marble. It was imported from Rhodes as part of the remarkable collection of artwork and sculpture owned by Asinius Pollio, a Roman politician who lived during the years between the Republic and the Principate.