Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone.
Why did the greeks use marble.
They used marble for some of them.
Early greek sculpture was most often in bronze and porous limestone but whilst bronze seems never to have gone out of fashion the stone of choice would become marble.
Gravestones statues and earth mounds were used to mark the grave and inscriptions were used to.
Large works of the archaic period were more or less all made from stone.
In the imperial roman period 31 bce 476 ad marble reproductions of bronze sculptures from greece became increasingly popular as rome s conquest of greece by the first century bc subjected roman artistic taste to the influence of greek style the british museum.
However the process of mining marble was quite lengthy.
Hammers and wedges were used to release marble from the earth.
The greeks certainly had a preference for marble at least for their public buildings.
It was then pulled from its source with the help of pulleys winches levers and wooden beams.
At all periods there were great numbers.
In many cases these marble replicas are particularly important to art historians as many of the bronze muses are no longer in existence.
The best was from naxos close grained and sparkling parian from paros with a rougher grain and more translucent and pentelic near athens more opaque and which turned a soft honey colour with age due to its iron content.
The greeks often considered the best sculptors of antiquity favored marble and referred to it as shining stone marble occurs as a metamorphosis.
Marble was everywhere wood and other materials were not.
Early 8th century bce temples were so constructed and had thatch roofs.
Architectural sculpture was mostly marble ie statues stuck to the sides of buildings.
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.
Ancient greeks are believed to be the culture that first used inscribed marble to mark their graves.
The greeks and romans chose marble for their structures due its beauty.
Limestone undergoes a process of recrystallization due to extreme pressure or temperature change to become marble.