Archaic smile

The Archaic smile was used by Greek Archaic sculptors, especially in the second quarter of the 6th century BCE, possibly to suggest that their subject was alive, and infused with a sense of well-being. To viewers habituated to realism, the smile is flat and quite unnatural looking, although it could be seen as a movement towards naturalism. One of the most famous examples of the Archaic Smile is the Kroisos Kouros.

The dying warrior from the west pediment of the Temple of Aphaia, Aegina, Greece is an interesting context as the warrior is near death.

In the Archaic Period of Ancient Greece (roughly 600 BCE to 480 BCE), the art that proliferated contained images of people who had the archaic smile.

During those two centuries before the mid-5th century BCE, the archaic smile was widely sculpted, as evidenced by statues found in excavations all across the Greek mainland, Asia Minor, and on islands in the Aegean Sea. It is a smile which, to some modern interpreters, suggests a feeling of happiness via ignorance.. It has been theorized that in this period, artists felt it either represents that they were blessed by the gods in their actions, thus the smile, or that it is similar to pre-planned smiles in modern photos..