Athenian art of the sixth and fifth centuries BC offers the yardstick by which we judge the artistic achievement of the rest of the Greek world, and provides the models on which the later history of Greco-Roman art and much of the art of the later western world are based. The evidence is rich: some long known, like the Parthenon marbles, some fresh from the ground. These six essays, by prominent classical art-historians, British, German and American, explore some of the subjects and problems in the art of Archaic and Classical Athens which have exercised scholars in recent years. The essays are dedicated to Martin Robertson, formerly Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art in the University of Oxford, himself a leading scholar of Classical art, and author of the magisterial A History of Greek Art (Cambridge University Press 1976) and of A Shorter History of Greek Art (Cambridge University Press 1981).

A collection of essays dedicated to the memory of Eleni Hatzivassiliou (1977-2007). The range of subjects reflects her broad circle of friends. Many are her contemporaries, but many are very senior scholars; ages range from 25 to 80. It is truly remarkable that someone who had not yet reached her thirtieth birthday could have come to know so many scholars and win their admiration and affection. Contents: Editorial foreword (Donna Kurtz); Biography of Eleni Hatzivassiliou (Donna Kurtz); Tribute (John Boardman); Guide to readers; The origins of Greek myth (John Boardman); Homer and the Solymians (J.J. Coulton); Sappho's sensual world (Thomas Brisart); An early archaic sphinx from the Polis Cave, Ithaka (Stavros 59)(Catherine Morgan); The riddle of the sphinx: a Protocorinthian vase from Perachora and the sphinx in Corinthian art (Catherine Cooper); A Middle Corinthian puzzle from Isthmia (K.W. Arafat); Athens versus Attika: local variations in funerary practices during the late seventh and early sixth century BC (Alexandra-Fani Alexandridou); A chorus of women ololyzousai on an early Attic skyphos (Nassi Malagardis); Dead warriors and their wounds on Athenian black-figure vases (David Saunders); Towers, pillars or frames? (Elizabeth Moignard); Nikosthenes looking east? Phialai in Six's and polychrome Six's technique (Athena Tsingarida); Some fictile biographies from Naukratis (Alan Johnston) The painter of Rhodes 13472: observations on a vase-painter of the Leagros Group (Anna A. Lemos); Kalypso's conifers? (Elke Br); Attic, Boeotian or Euboean? An orphan skyphos from Rhitsona revisited (Victoria Sabetai); Bird-women on the Harpy Monument from Xanthos, Lycia: sirens or harpies? (Catherine M. Draycott); The asses' lot (Louise Calder); The mounds associated with the Battle of Marathon in 490BC and the dating of Greek pottery (Chia-Lin Hsu) A wild goose chase? Geese and goddesses in classical Greece (Alexandra Villing); Prometheus Bound and Unbound: between art and drama (Dyfri Williams); Comedies on South Italian vases (Thomas Mannack); The Derveni Krater (Michalis Tiverios); Private sentiments in public spaces: two votive groups from Epidauros (Olympia Bobou); Cretan nymphs: an Attic hypothesis (Milena Melfi); A banquet relief from Thasos (Konstantina Panousi); Sosilos' statue and nudity in public honorific portrait statues in the Hellenistic period (Stella Skaltsa); Ouaphres Horou, an Egyptian priest of Isis from Demetrias (Maria Stamatopoulou); Piecing it together: the fragmentary Hellenistic vermiculatum mosaic from Tel Dor (William Wootton); Designing the landscapes of the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta (Manta Zarmakoupi); The quality of virtand Jose Nicolsss de Azara in Rome, 1766-1798 (Alexandra Sulzer); 'Poor architecture of antiquity, what is it doing in such a climate as this?' Classical archaeology and its influence on nineteenth-century London monuments (Kate Nichols); Doing business: two unpublished letters from Athenasios Rhousopoulos to Arthur Evans in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Yannis Galanakis); Early visitors to the site of the Perachoran Heraion (Thomas R. Patrick); Sappho (and Sophocles) at King's College London (Michael Trapp).

This Oxford-centric' book explores the history of classical reception by focusing on objects in the Ashmolean Museum and assessing the development of classical art studies at Oxford University. The seven papers are based on a series of lectures given at the University in 2003 to complement the Master of Studies in Classical Archaeology course. Contents: The study of art at Oxford befroe 1955 (Donna Kurtz); An introduction to the reception of classical art (Donna Kurtz); Nudity in art (John Boardman); Medals and the reception of antiquity (Henry Kim); Renaissance istoriato maiolica (Kate Nichols); The reception of classsical art - neoclassical gems (Gertrud Seidmann); The Sackler Library (Robert Adam). Fully illustrated throughout with some of Oxford's treasures.

Plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculptures provided the principal means of studying classical works of art from the 15th century until the end of the 19th century. This fascinating and ambitious study presents a history of taste, beginning in late medieval Italy and ending in Oxford in 1897, which is also a history of Classical scholarship in Oxford. Illustrated throughout with photographs and drawings of statues, collectors, scholars, buildings and Oxford, Kurtz discusses early collectors of Classical art, Britain's earliest collections, the Grand Tour, 18th-century archaeology and the Classical museums and galleries of Britain. Scholars discussed include Percy Gardner, John Davidson Beazley, Bernard Ashmole, Martin Robertson and John Boardman. Includes a lengthy chronology.