It was obvious to classical Greek artists that the beauty of the whole body depends on the harmony of its parts and that each of the parts depends on each of the others to achieve this harmony. Thus, Polykleitos put forth his canon of proportions in writing and it became the standard reference for creating artistic representations of the human body. But these principles did not only apply to depicting people but gods as well. The classical Greeks did not show their deities as half-men, half-animals like other cultures before them did. They used the portrayal of their gods as another opportunity to study the human form. It is this focus on the beauties of the human body and the shift to an experiential, optical worldview that characterize the art of Greece's Classical Period. The classical Greeks created the traditions that would become archetypal references for all successive artists.…
