Glossary Sculpture, figurines and art
Proto-Cypriote style
Also called: Proto-Cypriot style
The earliest of Einar Gjerstad's style groups for Cypro-Archaic sculpture, dated in his scheme to about the late seventh and early sixth centuries BCE.
Gjerstad of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition built his 1948 style sequence from the terracottas of Ayia Irini and extended it to limestone. Proto-Cypriote work shows strong links with Syro-Anatolian art. Tables of the scheme place a First and a Second Proto-Cypriote style between about 620 and 540 BCE, although the published tables do not agree on the dates.
The sequence runs Proto-Cypriote, Neo-Cypriote, then Archaic Cypro-Greek, with a Cypro-Egyptian style for Egyptianizing stone. Later scholars have questioned whether these styles are successive periods at all, and many now use them as broad descriptive labels. See how Cypriot figurines are classified.
Full entry: How Cypriot Figurines Are Classified
Related terms
- Neo-Cypriote style
One of Einar Gjerstad's style groups for Cypro-Archaic sculpture, following the Proto-Cypriote and dated in his scheme to about 560–520 BCE.
- Cypro-Greek style
Gjerstad's name for Cypriot sculpture from about 540 BCE onwards that engages closely with Greek art while keeping local forms and materials.
- Egyptianizing
Borrowing the look of Egyptian art (dress, poses, crowns and motifs) in objects made outside Egypt, often through Phoenician intermediaries.