Understanding Heritage: Monuments, Sites, and Art History

Posted on Mar 11, 2025 in Arts and Humanities

Monuments, Sites, and Natural Heritage

Monuments: Architectural works, works of monumental sculpture and painting, elements or structures of an archaeological nature, inscriptions, cave dwellings, and combinations of features, which are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art, or science.

Groups of Buildings: Groups of separate or connected buildings which, because of their architecture, their homogeneity, or their place in the landscape, are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of history, art, or science.

Sites: Works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas, including archaeological sites, which are of outstanding universal value from a historical, aesthetic, ethnological, or anthropological point of view.

Natural Features: Consisting of physical and biological formations or groups of such formations, which are of outstanding universal value from an aesthetic or scientific point of view.

Geological and Physiographical Formations: Precisely delineated areas which constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals and plants and are of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation.

Natural Sites: Precisely delineated natural areas of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science, conservation, or natural beauty.

International Organizations for Heritage Management

International Organizations of Heritage Management (1):

• The Committee, The General Assembly, The Centre, The Advisory Bodies:
• UCIN; ICOMOS; ICCROM
• Associated Organisms: ICOM; OCPM; OEA; RIPM

Council of Europe (2):

• European Heritage Day, Faro Action Plan, European Cultural Itineraries
• The Committee of Cultural Heritage, The General Assembly

Intangible Heritage

Intangible heritage represents inherited traditions from the past but also contemporary rural and urban practices in which diverse cultural groups take part:

• Traditions or living expressions
• Performing arts
• Social practices, rituals, festive events
• Knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe
• Knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts

Prehistoric Art

Not “Art for Art’s Sake”: It wasn’t about creating a beautiful thing; they simply did it because they wanted to.

Totemism and shamanism. Parietal art: made directly on stone or other terrain materials.

Mobiliary art: small objects that can be moved.

Paleolithic: Knapped Stone. Hunting, Fishing, Gathering. Nomads

Neolithic: Polished Stone. Farming, Raising livestock. Sedentary

Artistic Techniques of Parietal Art

• Digital drawing on clay (macaroni) or hard rock (incisions with flint)
• Reliefs (low and high)
• Sculpture in the round (also called freestanding sculpture)
• Used brushes, furs, etc. Did not use blood; they used natural materials for colors.

Supports and Colors

• Bones, antlers, and horns
• Lithic: taking advantage of the forms that the rocks gave them.
• Figures: single color, but there are dichromatic and even polychrome.
• Colors: red, black, and also white.
• Volumes: scraping, washing of dyes, profiling figures.

Aegean Civilizations

Cycladic Civilization: Early Bronze Age culture. Flat female idols carved out of white marble. Female, nude, arms folded across the stomach, with the right arm held below the left.

Minoan Civilization: Aegean Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and other Aegean islands (3650 -1400 BC). Minoan = King Minos. Description applied to the pottery of this period. Minos is associated with the labyrinth and the Minotaur. Cities were connected with stone-paved roads, formed from blocks cut with bronze saws. Streets were drained, and water and sewer facilities were available to the upper class through clay pipes. The lower walls were constructed of stone and rubble, and the upper walls of mudbrick.

Mycenaean Civilization: Last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece (c. 1600–1100 BC). The first advanced civilization in Greece, with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, and writing system. Examples: Mycena, Tiryns, and Thebes.

Greek Art

• Archaic period: From 1100 to 461 BC. Approach to the foundations and principles of Greek architecture and sculpture.
• Classical period: From the 5th century BC to 323 BC. Pericles.
• Hellenic period: From 323 BC to 146 BC. Diffusion of the Hellenic world by the Orient.

Greek Art Characteristics: Study of nature, reality, and knowledge, Applied Mathematics in Art, Study of the human body, Ideal of beauty, Rationalism.

Archaic Period (800-479 BC)

Organization of the Polis, Commercial colonization extended throughout the Mediterranean, Greek character was consolidated, Four Panhellenic games founded, Contacts with the East and with Egypt, Ended with the Persians being ejected from Greece for good after the battles of Plataea and Mykale in 479 BCE. From wood to stone, From Megaron to Temple, First statues of great proportions. Use of Bronze, first black-figure pottery and then red-figure pottery. Stone stylobate and lower wall course, wood column, and stone.

Influenced by Egyptian sculpture, Faces with “Archaic smile”, Human proportion and anatomy, Frontality and Hieratic position, Materials: stone, terracotta, and bronze, Rough and poorly detailed anatomical representation, Long, geometric, and curly hair.

Classical Period

Athens, The main contribution of sculpture: “Canon of Proportions” with “ideal human body”.

Civil Architecture: Development of the polis, hypodamic plant, Organization of public space: Agora and Stoas, Two important buildings: Stadium and Theatre.

Religious Architecture: Topics: proportion, rhythm, symmetry, Styles: Doric & Ionic. Painted Temples.

Sculpture: Man as protagonist, Natural and colossal measures, Male nude = exaltation of beauty, Movement, Loss of frontality, hieratic and archaic smile, Conquest of 3D.

Hellenistic Period

Mixed Styles, Movement and hard expression, figures twist in all directions, 3D, Sculptural Groups in pyramidal form, Expression on faces.

Roman Art

Soldiers and magistrates, spirit of political and economic domination. Pragmatic and practical spirit, art is its expression. Importance of family. Patrician Family. The man is a soldier, politician, or in commerce. Preference for what is specific and current, Preference for colossal things and their verticality, Greek influences: sculpture, poetry, philosophy, literature. Imperial period: from II CE to III CE, Polytheists. Class society: Patricians

Architecture: Demonstrate grandeur and power of Rome, desire to impress—magnificent works of engineering and building, arch, vault, and dome. Military and civil art. Doric + Ionian + Corinthian. Temples, basilicas, amphitheaters, triumphal arches, monuments, public baths.

Romanesque Artistic Changes

• Wooden to stone vaults.
• Stone vaults on arches.
• Composite pillar.
• Free column.
• Barrel or tunnel vaults.
• Groin Vault.
• Fully monumental sculptural decoration.
• Latin cross plant.
• “Chevet” with Apse.
• Crypt and pilgrimage plants.