La figura humana en la Antigüedad (II): Grecia · La March

Today I want to guide you through a tour that we are going to do through the images to explain how the Greeks configured an image of the human body that has been qualified by many, and I share it, as the most important legacy that antiquity has left us.

because, among other things, such attention was paid to the body in ancient Greece that the separation principle was allowed, for example, between body and soul, which, as you know, a few centuries later will be central in the Christian religion. But also this legacy has taught us to look at ourselves, it has taught us to look at the human body in the present. To the point

that 2,700 years later there are many young people who want to have the body of the Greek statues. We call these bodies sculptorical.

They are sculptural bodies because they resemble the ancient Greek sculptures. What I will try to demonstrate this afternoon here is how the Greeks invent two absolutely amazing things. On the one hand, a public gaze towards the human naked body, which has not happened in the history of humanity, as you will see throughout the conference. And they also invent an impossible and real body,

which has enjoyed such popularity that it has become a feat of the Rigos that to this day our beautiful young people resemble the sculptures of the ancient Rigos. This is the panorama that we find, for example, in the Archaic period, in the sixth century BC. Representations of naked men and women dressed.

The naked female body will appear much later, but the naked male body appears from the very origin of Greek art. The reason why this happens is not sufficiently well explained yet, we do not know it quite well. The fact is that from the very beginning, from the first sculpture, the Greeks represent the naked man. Why? Or what does this mean? This is what we are going to try to elucidate this afternoon.

The Greek naked is this one you see here. There is not much variety. It always represents the body of a young athletic man, we would say, with the muscles marked, but concrete parts of the body are pointed out, which is what the artist, the spectator, wants to observe. That is, it is the body of a young man trained in the gym. The Greeks

they did naked sports. It doesn't mean they weren't dressed. Greek society was a dress-up society. People went out on the street dressed. But to exercise in sports, in the gym, they were naked. "Gymnos" is the Greek word for "naked", for which there were special places for it, which are the gymnasiums. And men

were the only ones to undress, as you can see, women didn't do it. And the Greeks were the only ones to undress, their neighbors, Persians, for example, were quite fascinated with this Greek custom. And the Greeks also missed that the Persians didn't undress even in front of their friends. It seemed very curious to them.

And also, only the one who has free time to go to the gym and do exercises and get a body like this is the one who is represented naked. That is, the Greek "naked" is a dress, because it differentiates ethnic groups, only the Greeks get naked, it differentiates social classes, only an aristocrat or a citizen

free and with enough money and leisure to go to the gym, they get naked, not a slave or a craftsman. And only men get naked, not women. So it works partly as a dress. How is this body that represents us over and over again? Well, they focus attention on some of the parts. It is practically the same model always.

They are bodies with wide shoulders, as you see, with a strong chest, where courage, courage and vigor are housed in the Greek thought. We also pay a lot of attention to the knees from the beginning, the articulated knees, where the virile force is concentrated. The gesture of asking for mercy, for example, in Greece is to embrace the knees of a man to ask for mercy.

and some parts of the body are accentuated. The guinal fold is an absolute obsession. The end of the thoracic box is also always indicated in the clavicles and these bodies are full of waves. They also have strong legs and strong glutes.

The origin, I already told you that from the very beginning they appear naked. This is a very ancient statue from the late eighth century made with a technique called spirelatum because on a wooden soul are placed bronze sheets that are hammered, spira in Greek is hammer, they are hammered, naturally the wood has disappeared and only the bronze sheets have remained.

But look at this sculptural group, which is a cult group, they are cult statues, they represent Apollo, Artemis and Leto, the triad of gods that were worshipped in Delphi. They come from Crete. And the two women are obviously dressed, but he, much taller, Apollo, appears naked.

and these distinctive features of the Greek bodies appear. It is indicated, look, at the end of the thoracic box, simply with an incision and, of course, the pleuris. The model, the first conference of this cycle, was taught to us the other day, it is Egyptian. The Greeks also told us the other day, with their presence in Egypt, for example, in the city of Naukratis, from the seventh century BC,

learn from Egypt the size of the stone and this Egyptian influx is the moment that makes the size of the stone stand out, both in the temples, the temples begin to petrify, as in sculpture. Sculptures are no longer made of small size and bronze, as we have seen, of hedrers, but they are made in enormous sizes and even of stone.

But the first thing the Greek does is to take off his skirt, undress him. And immediately, from the beginning, these obsessions of the Greeks are marked, as you can see. At the end of the thoracic box, the abdominal muscles begin to be marked.

This has never happened in the history of humanity, never. No people dressed represents their gods or their naked heroes. And it does not represent an anomalous body, which is a body that belongs to a minority.

I will show you some examples, for example, in this Hindu triad, of course they are dressed and they do not see any muscle representation or anything like that. The same happens, for example, in the Sumerian world or in the Egyptian world. They always wear a jean skirt and there is no trace of muscles. In the pre-Columbian world,

even in Africans. Africans do represent themselves naked, they are naked societies, so they represent themselves naked, but there is no trace of these obsessions that the Greeks had from the beginning, neither the inguinal fold, nor the abdominal fold, or anything like that. So, for what reason, what happens to the Greek world, what do these statues mean, that have had this development,

as spectacular as they have taught us to look at today. We do not miss anything at all, we take it very naturally to find a nude sculpture and offered to the public eye. Many of these sculptures, this one specifically, is a funeral sculpture, it was crowning a tomb. Others are sculptures of gods, they are worshiped inside a temple. We will even see that the first female nude is a statue of worship.

Imagine, I'm telling you this so you can get an idea of how amazing this subject is, that the Greeks started, that we went out into the street and found the statue of a naked politician, Mariano Rajoy, for example.

or in a church, we would enter and find the figures of the Virgin Mary, of Christ, whatever, naked. It is something that we would miss a lot. This amazing thing is what the Greeks do. And they represent...

the same body over and over again. Of course, styles vary and times vary, but you will see that the basic lines are always the same. They all have this body that I just mentioned, the glutes, the virile strength that resides in the knees, in the thighs, the end of the thoracic box, the pre-inguinal, the width of the back, and of course the muscles.

Muscles, at one point, I'll go back to the previous one, don't know that there are muscles. That's why some authors prefer to talk about waves rather than muscles, because in reality, muscles have not been invented, they are not yet.

are not part of anatomy, the notion of anatomy does not exist. The word "muscle", "mis" in Greek, appears very sporadically in the writings, for example, of Plato, Aristotle,

and all the authors of the sixth, fifth centuries, etc. Even Galen, who is the change of time, does not appear in the notion of anatomy. The Greeks of this time thought that the human body was composed of nerves, bones and flesh, the neuroi, sarx,

and coca, the bones. It is a mixture of these. So they are not representing an anatomical study, which is what we find many times in books that talk about Greek art, which are statues of anatomical studies. It is impossible because, first of all, no human body has this plenum, which is unreal, impossible, in the human body

of nature is cut at this height, it does not form a triangle. The end of the chest is always represented, the abdominals are always represented and a tremendous emphasis is always made on the knees.

And the backs, here you have the Heracles Farnesio, it is a Roman copy, the previous ones we have seen were Greek originals, this is already a Roman copy of a Greek original from the 4th century BC, from Lysippos, which represents an old, tired Heracles, he is older but absolutely

full of muscles, who has just achieved the last of the works and hides behind his back, as you can see here, the apples of the garden of the Sperides, which will give him immortality. But he is leaning on his nail and on his lion's skin, absolutely exhausted. The same obsessions are repeated, even in this more mature body: the end of the chest, the bent knee, the width of the

of the back, of the chest and also look at the back, that the Greek statues also make the back one and again always the same, that is, they are not looking at a human model, they are not looking at a model that they copy, the model is the statue of another sculptor. So all Greek sculptures have

the groove of the vertebral column that reaches practically to the collarbone and these indentations that are sometimes called "venus wells" that are always represented and have a fairly exaggerated lumbar curvature. It is possible, of course, there are human bodies that are like that,

but it has been calculated that, for example, the venus wells, which are much more frequent in female anatomy, in male anatomy do not reach even 8% of the population. So it is very rare to repeat the same model over and over again. Here you see it, for example, on the back of the Riachi bronze, again. And I have obtained from the internet the back of a man. And the back of this man, as you can see, the chiseling

the back of the back does not reach as low as it reaches in the Greek sculpture and this is also badly positioned too high of what it is in anatomy and this in the 8% of people and without further ado the Greeks make this same model over and over again.

Another funeral, this one was also pointing to a tomb a little later, from 490, we find the same thing that I have commented on. It is exactly the same, it is an original, this is a Greek original. Again the obsession to mark the abdominals, the end of the thoracic box, etc.

And there is another issue, and that is the genital organs, it has always been said that they are very small, but it is not that they are very small, it is that they are infantile, they are morphologically the genital organs of a pre-teen. That is, they do not attack, they can be easily assumed by the public eye and they do not bother us at all.

As a test, I'll go back to this one, I'll put Antonio López, who is a real naked man, in which, in front of a nose-toddler like this one can have a coffee or tea, love it, but in front of Antonio López you look at him with a big eye because it's a bit uncomfortable. This is the model that repeats itself over and over again. When you see that the models of human bodies are the most varied, as it is natural.

The Greeks don't do this, they don't represent the variety of nature, they represent the same body over and over again, this muscular body, or full of waves, whatever we want to call it, which is the one that has come to this day. These statues that appeared the other day, also in the first of the conferences,

They are a sculptural group, as you can see, they are two young people, Cleobis and Viton, some statues of Argos that were dedicated to the sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi and that are currently in the museum of Delphi, still preserved. And Herodotus saw them and tells us a story about them that can help us understand something.

Look at the size, I have tried to put it, these first sculptures are very large, we are still very close to the Egyptian influence, which as you know are the Egyptian sculptures of a size higher than natural, but immediately, from the middle of the sixth century BC, the sculptures will reach the human size. These two, Cleobis and Viton, are included in a story that Herodotus tells us,

when Solon visits, the Atenean sage, who takes a few sabbatical years and goes on a trip around the world, and in one of these he falls in the kingdom of Lydia. And the king of Lydia, Creso, who was mythical for his wealth,

he makes him go through a lot of rooms with a lot of riches and such, he gives him food, drinks and on the second day or the third day he asks him who he is, this is the aristocratic hospitality. So he says: I am Solón. He says: Well, since I have you here, Solón, you are the wisest, tell me who is the luckiest man in the world. And then Solón begins to explain that the luckiest man in the world is a man

who no one knows, Theon of Athens, who is a man, and Creso is surprised. Why? Because this man got married, had children, saw his children grow, saw that his children had children, saw the children of his children grow, and finally died in combat defending the homeland. It is the beautiful death we will talk about now.

So Creso is a little surprised and says: "Well, tell me another one, the luckiest one in the world." So he tells him the story of Cleobis and Viton. These two were twins, they are represented like this, children of a priestess of Hera in Argos. And one day his mother, who had to go to the sanctuary, was left without a cradle, she couldn't go, and then the children told him: "Don't worry, mom, we'll take you."

They drove the car like they were oxen, 8 km away, and there is a considerable climb to the Sanctuary of Argos. When they arrived,

The mother is very proud of her children, everyone congratulates her, "What children you have, how wonderful!" And then she asks the goddess, of whom she is a priestess, Hera, to grant these wonderful children the best. Then the tired children go to sleep at the entrance of the temple and do not wake up again. The goddess rewards them with the beautiful death, the death in youth,

in the moment of beauty, which is precisely what these sculptures represent. Look, this is the statue that I put before Creso, that funeral statue that was found near Athens. It has an epigram, it has an inscription that says what you can see here. And it also has a height of 1.94, it is a heroic size. The gods are a little taller and the normal humans are a little lower.

Creso's epigram says that we must lament and we must cry before the grave. The works of Greek art always speak to us in the first person. The Greek vases speak to us in the first person, the sculptures too. So we must think as it has been thought that it was

this statue would be in the middle of the Attic field with other statues, probably a family mausoleum and a path through which people would pass and then the statue speaks to you and says: "Stop and cry in front of the tomb of Creso, look how handsome he is" among other things. He tells us that the furious Ares killed him while he fought with the first row, that is, he died in the war as a brave man because he was in the first row

and this is the most beautiful of the deaths, as we have seen with the story of Herodotus. How do you look at this iconographically, the images? You always pay attention to the size, that's why I've put them at the height, 194, how tall it is, and the hair,

These first Kuroids of the sixth century have long hair carefully combed and braided. It is the idea of ​​beautiful death that is absolutely central in the Greek world. I give you some examples of this, there are many. This is one of the most beautiful in this Caliphate crater.

of Euphronius, Sarpedon appears. Sarpedon was a hero who died in Troy. And look at the size, it's huge, how big it is, and in the hair. And the two demons, Hypnos and Xanatos, are carrying him, presided over by Hermes, who is the one who leads the dead to the beyond. So, it's full of inscriptions, here they put the names Hypnos and Xanatos, and here the name of Sarpedon.

Where the inscriptions are placed is not random either. The sculptor, or in this case the alfarero or the painter, wants to place the inscriptions in the vital alit, from where the vital alit of the breathing of hypnosis and zanatos and the wounded chest that emanates from the brave Sarpedon.

The tension of the hair is also fundamental. Look how the hair was taken care of according to Diodorus, these warriors who made them seem more fearful and scared more with these

Or in this other beautiful cup in which the mother, in pain, takes her dead son in battle, who also has a huge size, is very tall, despite the fact that she is a goddess and is also very tall, because she is the aurora, Eos, holding her dead son Memnon. A piety, as you see, which has later also passed down the history of art.

In the Iliad, when Hector dies, because he dies in a heroic fight against Achilles, and then, you know, he is dragged to the battlefield and he goes around and takes him to the Achaean camp. The Achaeans go to see Hector dead and everyone says: "How handsome he is, what a size he has." They say: "How handsome he is, the poor thing, if they had dragged him three laps, how would he be?"

And this is the idea, this is one of the oldest and most ancient curos, the Curos of New York, it is 590 or so, the beginning of the sixth century. And look at this, how the inguinal fold is almost a cord that even turns around from behind, it accentuates the end of the thoracic box, it even puts a gargantilla in addition to the clavicles, the knees of course and the hair, the hair beautifully braided.

Here we no longer have an original, this is a Roman copy of the Dorifero of Polycletus, but it is one of the most famous and also most influential statues. The Canon was also called because Polycletus wrote a theoretical treatise not out of the desire to pass on posterity but out of a didactic desire.

had to teach his disciples and just as Ictinus, who made the Parthenon, also had disciples, both wrote a treatise on how to make a statue and what its canon was, a treatise that has not been preserved, more than very few lines. What does it mean? Why do they make this nude? For the Greeks something composed is beautiful and something simple is not.

The human body, not only the human body, any manifestation of Greek art is composed of parts, clearly separated parts from each other and that the separation is clearly seen. Not only the sculpture, the ceramics, for example, clearly separate the foot from the body, the body from the base, by chisels, mouldings, color changes.

in architecture it is obvious how the columns are separated from the fusts with collars, with bands of ovas, in short, all the parts that have to be clearly separated. This is the concept of diarthrosis, the separation of the parts. For the Greeks anything without separation of parts, for example, something

that a human body that does not have, for example, the body of the Sumerians that we have seen before, etc., that they did not have muscles or that they did not have these clearly separated parts, indicates softness, weakness. The female body is like that, the female body does not have any plegian, nor thoracic box, nor end of thoracic box, nor any of this. It is a soft body, for them it is moist and therefore fluffy and therefore

and the opposite is the male body. This male body indicates courage, courage, rivalry. Now we will see more examples. This is another original, I present you another beautiful original. Also look at the height, 192 cm, it is an original athlete found not long ago in Croatia.

and what is it that is cleaning him? He is a athlete who has just finished exercising and he is cleaning himself with the strigile. The Greeks did naked sports, we have said, but before doing sports they impregnated the body with oils. In fact,

Something fundamental to go to the gym is to bring an aríbalo, which is the little glass that contains the perfumed oil and that in some texts, already late, punish the robbery of the aríbalo of the gym with very serious penalties. After the oil is poured, that's why, look, it's difficult to find

traces of odors in history, how the ancient Greeks smelled, how we could know, in no way. However, now we know that the Greeks, the men smelled olive oil because it was what they put on the body to do gymnastics. Then they did gymnastics, they got dirty, they got stained with sweat and this paste that was left on their body they had to clean with a shingles, with a bronze object and then wash with a sponge. Well, this

This athlete, who is cleaning himself with the strigil, his body has all these qualities that Luciano tells us, right? Virile qualities and beauties of bodies. This is what resistance, the red, the rivalry, the indomitable wills, it is an articulated body. And everything contrary to this body, the body of the woman or the body of a worker or the body of a "escita", are disarticulated bodies, "anarthra" for the Greeks.

like a fetus, which is also anarthros, it is disarticulated. Muscles or waves, if you like, here, articulate the body in the same way that we, the articles, articulate the language, that's why they are called articles. Imagine a language without articles, it would be a disarticulated language and the Greeks would hear a kind of "barbarian", whatever the barbarians speak.

This is the reason why the Greeks represent with this obsession these separations of the body so clearly. The ends of the thoracic box, the clavicles, the preguinal, the knees, they are marking, the preguinal separates the torso from the body and they are marking this articulated body. In Greece, beauty is expressed, beauty expresses virtue, the one who has this body is

a man possessing virtue, resistance, red, rivalry, courage and virtue is expressed in beauty. How to express the virtue of a brave body with this body? Here they have another very illustrative text of Tirteo, that in a young man everything is beautiful while he possesses youth. The bodies that are represented are young bodies, they are beautiful bodies.

and one of the features is his courage, the courage as we have seen in Creso, who died in battle. He remains in his position with his legs well open, like this bronze A, another spectacular original found in Riace, in southern Italy, which measures 1.98 meters in height. Firmly supported on the ground with both feet,

and biting the lip between the teeth and so in the front row you can endure the push of the enemies. It is the body of a brave man, of a man full of courage, so brave that he dies beautifully for his city. But no body can currently

to rival the body of any Greek statue. That is, no one has the guinea pig of the Hellenistic ruler, not even the Texas ruler. He does not get it.

Although these young people exercise in the gym wanting to look like these bodies, I mean, they exercise to get a huge plinthal, to get the abs, because the model is the Greek statue from much more than 2000 years ago. And what happens with women?

This one on the left is the first nude female statue of art history. It is a statue of a cult, an Aphrodite statue that ended in the city of Cnid in Asia Minor.

It is made by Praxiteles and Praxiteles made two Aphrodites, a veiled and a naked, and the veiled was sold immediately. But the naked one was not wanted by anyone because the feminine nude is a taboo and we are in the fourth century BC. Notice that it has been 400 years since they have been representing the naked bodies of the men.

and even so Praxiteles could not sell the statue of the naked goddess until in the end this small city was bought from Asia Minor, which is Ecnidus and it became a cult statue in its city and it became very famous, super famous. It is one of the most influential statues of antiquity. It is so influential that from this moment all the female statues

Greek women are the Aphrodite of Praxiteles. All of them represent the same thing and all of them represent Aphrodite. And the statue, look how it is conceived, is a naked woman but

by accident. She was going to bathe, that's why she wears a wad and a towel, because she was going to bathe, or was going to bathe, we don't know if before or after, but around the bathroom. And then the spectator surprises her and covers herself, but not much either. The difference is enormous with the male naked. The spectator becomes a voyeur, we are seeing a naked goddess, who also smiled slightly.

So, the success of this statue, it may be hard for us to understand it, but for the Greeks it was obvious. Excursions were made to Agnido. The public debt to Agnido was forgiven in exchange for the statue.

They would go to see them in groups, they said it is much better to go to see them in a group because it is a tremendous danger to go to see them alone. Because the story was told, Praxiteles conceived it in marble, this statue was made of marble and had a small vein in the marble somewhere. And then the lady who taught it explains to some boys who go a surprising story.

that explained the change of colour in the marble of the statue. A boy falls in love with the statue and locks himself in the temple. Now you will see a reconstruction of the temple. He is locked in the temple until everyone leaves. She is an Afro-Nadiomene, an Afro-Jardinian, surrounded by gardens. He is hidden in the gardens and when he is alone with the goddess, he makes love to the goddess. And that's where the stain comes from.

and the next day when he realizes what he has done, horrified, he goes to the sea and commits suicide. In reality, the story is a very

from the East, that is, the man who after loving the goddess goes to the beyond, to throw himself into the sea, the catapontism, the going to the sea is a way to death. So the goddess teaches him the way, in reality, is what supposedly the myth probably means. But in any case, seeing it

It's dangerous. People cried of emotion when they saw her. Some put on their knuckles and kissed her, others cried. They say that a couple of friends is going to see her and one is homosexual and the other is heterosexual and when she is in an atoll, in a circular space,

When they enter, the diaconess opens the door in front of them, then the heterosexual cries of emotion about how beautiful she is. She closes, they turn around and go behind, she opens it, then it is the homosexual who cries of emotion about how beautiful she is. And this is the Eknid, this is the temple of the Aphrodite Eknidia in Eknid. Notice that the Greeks had a tremendous skill to find wonderful places for their temples and this is the place of the goddess of love.

an atoll that in one of the exhibitions I did we tried to recreate. It is a circular space, women belong to the intimate, to the umbrian space and to the circular space, men belong to the outer space and the statues that I have shown before

that we have seen before, the Kuroi. I have already told you that they were many separators, sorry, tomb signifiers, or they are in the sanctuaries outdoors. She is not, she is in a closed place and circular, in a kind of oikos home. Part of the success that Cnidia had in antiquity can be explained by this tremendous taboo that there was of the feminine nude. Seeing a naked woman brings misfortune.

They tell the story of, for example, of Gilles and Candaules, a king and his general. The king tells his general, look, my wife is beautiful, she is great and such, and you have to see her naked. Of course, the other poor man is horrified, but what do you tell me, how am I going to do that? That if the king insists, you have to see her naked to see how beautiful she is, I don't know what.

And then the poor man says: "Well, what am I going to do?" When he goes to bed, you get into the rooms, you stay there hidden, and you see her and then you leave. And then the other obeys him. And the next day the queen calls the general: "Come here." He says: "Have you seen what you can't see?" Then two paths open for you: either you kill my husband and marry me, or I kill you. They will tell me what he chose.

Anyway, it's very dangerous to see a naked woman. And this is an example. For example, here you have in this red-patterned crater Actaeon. He's a hunter, he was hunting, the man, and he accidentally saw Artemis bathe naked.

and Artemis' revenge was tremendous. Her dogs confuse her with a prey, a deer, and they devour her alive. She is being devoured alive by her dogs, because neither Athena, who is seen here, nor Artemis, nor any goddess, obviously, can be seen naked. Athena was also surprised in the bathroom by Tiresias and the punishment was to leave her blind. So imagine seeing the goddess of love

that you caught naked in the bathroom and that on top of that you smiled and such. The success they had. And also the success for Praxiteles, because how well Praxiteles made the sculptures so that the goddess of love provoked love. It was the culmination of the good sculptors. And look at how the body is conceived. We have seen that in the male nude

to be accessible to the public eye without any kind of problem, is represented with children's genitals.

the same thing happens with the female nudes. It has been written a lot about the "pubis depilado" of the Greek goddesses. Also this model has passed the history of art as you know. Many female nudes have the "pubis depilado" but in reality it is not a fashion as some have thought or something like that, it is simply a

It is a child's body, or it is a child's genitals that do not cause rejection, nor discomfort, nor are they aggressive. It is exactly the same psychological phenomenon of male sculpture.

It is a sculpture with a small chest, it is not developed, it is not sensual, it is not hypersensual, but it follows the masculine model. Aristotle told them that the woman is the incomplete man and it is something similar to what happens here. All the Hellenistic Aphrodites, which are called pudic, because they cover themselves a little, because the viewer surprises them, all these Hellenistic Aphrodites

They do not share any of the features of the male nude that we have seen. They are always the representation of Aphrodite. The female nudes always represent the goddess of love or those of the circle of the goddess of love, the heteros or prostitutes. It has absolutely nothing to do with the male nude.

Milo's Venus is an Achnidia afrodite, like all the others, this series of afrodites that copy once and for all the Praxiteles afrodite that had this absolutely unmeasured success. However, the masculine nude is completely different.

It is the naked of the gods, here I have brought another original, the Posidon of Artemisium, which measures more than two meters in height, in this case because it is a god, the gods are much taller than the mortals.

and that it is Posidon that is in this sculpture is discussed if it can be Zeus or Posidon but with this hand that this one has is absolutely Posidon, that is, look, they have the index finger separated, if it were Zeus it would have a ray and would have the hand closed, what he is doing is throwing a javelin, the Greeks threw it with a kind of string to, I suppose, refine the tip,

then it is Poseidon without a doubt. This Poseidon, which is from the classical era, is the naked of a god. And when men are represented naked, these beautiful men, with a beautiful body, which presuppose an excellent virtue, they presuppose courage, courage, courage and all the qualities that one can expect from a man from classical Greece,

It is a naked man who elevates, heroizes, dignifies, that which is represented like this. It is the heroic naked man. All that which is represented naked is elevated and dignified. That is why sometimes the Roman rulers, for example, are represented in the Greek naked man, because he elevates, dignifies and heroizes.

It is not the case of female sculptures that neither elevate nor dignify or anything like that, but only represent the goddess of love. They do not share an agenda, let's say, the two bodies, the masculine and the feminine. And it is the male body that has had that success and that tremendous transcendence

in Western art. To the point that Augustus himself, not that he represents himself naked, as you can see, because he is Augustus, has all these characteristics: majesty, dignity, the majesty, the dignity of the Roman emperor,

but also the civilization, the Kybilitas, and assumes the Greek nude. It is bare, for example. It is not represented nude, but with a crown that is the torso of the Polycletic Dorifero. The torso of the Polycletic Dorifero is going to become the model of the Roman statues, of the Roman crowns.

all the Roman collars represent that torso with the proportions or the canon of the polycletal dorifero. Even Claudius

Emperor Claudius is represented in the Greek nude. And here it is curious because the two traditions are mixed, the Roman and the Greek. Claudius' face is that of Claudius. And also, he even ages more because that way he is more venerable and has more authority and also more wisdom.

and yet, he is given a heroic nude, this nude that heroizes, elevates, dignifies. And many Roman emperors are represented in this way. Through Rome, therefore, we see how the path begins, that the Greek nude, this peculiar invention of the Greeks, goes through the history of art.

And in the Renaissance we find that this masculine classic nude is rescued, for example, in this sketch by Miguel Ángel, that these waves that the Greeks had imagined, they become, they expand everywhere. Look, there are waves of more, well, much more. Leonardo took his hair off, he said they looked like nuts, of course,

but it is the resumption of the idea of the Greek naked man and David. David has the end of the thoracic box, he has a pleated navel like the classical statues and he has the back that we have seen in the bronze A of the Riach. He has the groove that reaches practically to the rib, that is, he is not

copying a real human body, but rather copying the classical sculptures. They wondered at the first conference the other day how this was the Greek miracle, if the Egyptians spend four thousand years making the same sculpture all the time, and how it is possible that the Greeks in 100 years, 150, pass from one of these curos to the Myron's Discobol, for example.

One of the features is freedom. Of course, there were no priests in the Greek world who would tell the artists where to go. But not only this, but a fundamental engine is the competitiveness of the Greeks, which is also rescued in the current world. That is, the fierce competition to see who does it better. You do it like this, but let's see if I do it like that.

I do it better. So every time there was a discovery of a sculpture, it was transmitted and the workshop next door said: "This one is done like this, I do it like this". That is, the artists looked at the other artists, they were not looking to improve, if you want, the Egyptian model that was full of anatomical errors to correct all those anatomical errors. They don't look at a model

but they focus on what the other colleagues do. It is the same case of David. David is copying a classical statue and not a natural model. And this Greek body, which enjoys an incomparable fame, continues to be transmitted in the history of art

Here we have our Carlos V in the famous sculpture of the Furore, which is beautiful, in which the tradition of the Greek heroic nude is re-collected, exactly the same. Look at the plegian guinal and all the elements that we have mentioned, the knees, the torso, etc. The only thing that the Leoni

They don't end up getting it right, for example, in the genitals. They are small, yes, but morphologically they are not like those of David, for example, which are the same as a Greek sculpture, but they are morphologically those of an adult man, like Charles V, I don't know.

That's why it's strange. I remember the first time I saw it in El Prado, you were a little shocked because you say: "What's going on here?" until you realize that what's strange is that, a misunderstanding. But this body, I insist, transcends the whole history of art. We see it through this muscular body, full of waves,

up to today, in which the actors, the boys who go to the gym every day, talk about the Guinal plegian with, they call it the belt of Adonis or the flag of Apollo, trying to mold in their bodies something that is impossible because no one can be a Greek statue of the fifth century unless you are a Roman armor

or a superhero. And even the superheroes have reached this body that the Greeks invented in an extraordinary and amazing way. Thank you very much for your attention.