Hellenistic art

Hellenistic art is the art of the Classical period dating from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to the emergence of ancient Rome as signified by the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE and the subsequent conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt in 30 BCE. A number of the best-known works of Greek sculpture belong to this period, including Laocoön and his Sons, Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

The term Hellenistic is a modern invention; the Hellenistic World not only included a huge area covering the whole of the Aegean, rather than the Classical Greece focused on the Poleis of Athens and Sparta, but also a huge time range. In artistic terms this means that there is huge variety which is often put under the heading of "Hellenistic Art" for convenience.

There has been a trend in writing the history of this period to depict Hellenistic art as a decadent style, following of the Golden Age of Classical Athens. Pliny the Elder, after having described the sculpture of the classical period says: Cessavit deinde ars ("then art disappeared"). The 18th century terms Baroque and Rococo have sometimes been applied, to the art of this complex and individual period. The renewal of the historiographic approach as well as some recent discoveries, such as the tombs of Vergina, allow a better appreciation of this period's artistic richness.