Editing Contrapposto (section)

==History==
[[Image:009MA Kritios.jpg|thumb|upright|''[[Kritios Boy]]''. c. 480 BCE, was the first known Greek statue to use ''contrapposto''.]]

===Classical===
Prior to the introduction of ''contrapposto'', the statues that dominated ancient Greece were the [[Archaic Greece|archaic]] [[kouros]] (male) and the [[Kore (sculpture)|kore]] (female). The first known statue to use ''contrapposto'' is ''[[Kritios Boy]]'', c. 480 BCE,<ref name=HF>[[Hugh Honour|Honour, H.]] and J. Fleming, (2009) ''A World History of Art''. 7th ed. London: Laurence King Publishing, p. 122. {{ISBN|9781856695848}}</ref> so called because it was once attributed to the sculptor [[Kritios]]. It is possible, even likely, that earlier bronze statues had used the technique, but if they did, they have not survived and [[Kenneth Clark]] called the statue "the first beautiful nude in art".<ref name=Clark>Clark, Kenneth. (2010) ''The Nude: A study in ideal form''. New edition. London: [[The Folio Society]], pp. 24-25.</ref> The statue is a Greek marble original and not a Roman copy.

According to the ''canon'' of the Classical Greek sculptor [[Polykleitos]] in the 4th century BCE, ''contrapposto'' is one of the most important characteristics of his figurative works and those of his successors, [[Lysippos]], [[Skopas]], etc. The Polykletian statues (''[[Discophoros]]'' ("discus-bearer") and ''[[Doryphoros]]'' ("spear-bearer"), for example) are idealized athletic young men with the divine sense, and captured in ''contrapposto''. In these works, the pelvis is no longer [[Axial skeleton|axial]] with the [[Kouros|vertical kourous archaic style]] of earlier Greek sculpture before ''Kritios Boy''.

''Contrapposto'' can be clearly seen in the [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] copies of the statues of [[Hermes]] and [[Heracles]]. A famous example is the marble statue of ''[[Hermes and the Infant Dionysus]]'' in [[Olympia, Greece|Olympia]] by [[Praxiteles]]. It can also be seen in the Roman copies of Polyclitus's ''[[Amazons|Amazon]]''.

Greek art emphasized humanism along with the human mind and the human body's beauty.<ref>{{Cite web|title = Greek Humanism|url = http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl257/Ancient/greek_humanism.htm|website = www.webpages.uidaho.edu|access-date = 2015-11-19}}</ref> Greek youths trained and competed in athletic contests in the nude. A great contribution to the ''contrapposto'' pose was the concept of a canon of proportions, in which mathematical properties are used to create proportions.<ref>Stanley, Max (2010). "The 'Golden Canon' of book-page construction: proving the proportions geometrically". Journal of Mathematics & The Arts. 4 no. 3: 137–141.</ref>

===Renaissance===
Classical ''contrapposto'' was revived in [[Renaissance art]] by the Italian artists [[Donatello]] and [[Leonardo da Vinci]], followed by [[Michelangelo]], [[Raphael]] and other artists of the [[High Renaissance]]. One of the achievements of the [[Italian Renaissance]] was the re-discovery of ''contrapposto''.

===Modern times===
The technique continues to be widely employed in sculpture.  Modern psychological research confirms the attractiveness of the pose.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Daley |first1=Jason |title=Why Viewers Are Drawn to Renaissance Artists' Go-To Pose |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-pose-preferred-renaissance-artists-so-appealing-180973417/ |access-date=3 November 2019 |work=[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]] |date=28 October 2019}}</ref><ref name=pazh1/><ref name=pazh2/>