Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (World of Art)

Just got around to reading this book for an Art history class, and was completely disappointed when I found out some images missing due to torn pages. Received the book as so. Needed to study some images and the pages with the figures were missing.

This is great as a nice introductory survey of artwork, some myth, and some history of ancient Greece. Carpenter divides the book into chapters and sections according to important characters (heroes, Olympian gods) and events (Trojan War and its aftermath). In each, he provides a good overview, brings in historical and contextual information to provide narratives to the relevant artworks he provides at the end of the section (which is rather inconvenient to have to keep flipping the pages if you don't know what he's referring to). Themes, characterization, attributes, trajectories etc etc can all found in this book which is quite compact for the amount of information it provides.

A good undergraduate source of the visual images that are one survival form of the classical myths. Basic information about ancient art gives the reader just enough knowledge to understand technically why certain traits appear, such as the different "color" of males and females. Packed with pictures, it is an excellent source for both classical studies and art history at the undergraduate level.