A smile that belongs to one century
Walk through the Archaic rooms of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and you will notice it on face after face. The statues of youths and maidens of the sixth century BCE stand frontally, with little movement, yet, as the museum’s own guide puts it, “they all smile at us”. The corners of the mouth turn upwards, and the expression is the same whatever the statue was for.
The smile is a mark of time and style. The catalogue of the Heraklion Archaeological Museum calls it a characteristic of the Archaic art of the sixth century BCE, found on the funerary kouroi of Attica and of the islands. It even appears on a small clay kouros from Praisos, in Crete, of about 575 BCE, of which only the upper half survives, 28 cm high.
Why does a grave statue smile?
This is where the smile becomes strange. Many kouroi and korai stood on graves. The kouros known as Kroisos marked the tomb of a young man who, according to the verse on its base, was killed by Ares in the front ranks of battle, and still he smiles. Korai offered to Athena on the Acropolis, the Peplos Kore among them, wear the same expression; hers has lips painted red. So the smile can’t mean “this person was happy”: it appears whatever the occasion, on the living and the dead, on the mourned and the offered.
What did it mean? Four explanations
As far as we know, no ancient writer explains the Archaic smile, so every explanation is modern. These are the ones you will meet:
- A sign of life: the smile makes a block of marble look alive and present, which a grave marker or an offering needed to be.
- A sign of well-being or divine favour: the figure is shown at its best, healthy and blessed, whatever its fate.
- An ideal of beauty: like the regular hair and the modelled muscles, the smile is part of the perfect young body.
- A carving habit: for some, it is simply the way sculptors of the time carved a mouth on a block of stone.
Which is right? Probably more than one, and none can be proved. What the evidence does show is that the smile was a convention of a period, shared from Attica to Crete, and that it was used on statues with very different jobs. Treat any single, confident explanation with caution.
When the smile disappears
The smile belongs to the Archaic period, and it fades when the Archaic formula ends. After 480 BCE the Kritios Boy from the Acropolis, the model of the so-called Severe Style, no longer stands like a kouros: he rests his weight on one leg. Put his face beside Kroisos’s and judge the change for yourself. With Classical sculpture, expression becomes calmer and the body, more than the mouth, carries the life of the figure.
Where to see it
Rooms 8 to 13 of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens hold the great kouroi and korai, from Sounion to Kroisos; the Acropolis Museum has the korai of the Acropolis and the Kritios Boy; the clay kouros of Praisos is in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. Check opening times before you go.
Sources
- National Archaeological Museum, Athens, “Sculpture Collection”.
- Heraklion Archaeological Museum, collection record Π2035 (terracotta kouros from Praisos).
- Acropolis Museum, Athens: Peplos Kore (Acr. 679); Kritios Boy (Acr. 698).
- Inscriptiones Graecae I³ 1240 (epitaph of Kroisos).
