Greek architecture and its sculpture /

Jenkins is a competent guide to the major monuments of Greek architecture and sculpture in Greece and Western Asia Minor from the 6th to the 4th century BCE, as represented primarily in the British Museum, where he is a senior curator. Omitted, however, are contemporary monuments in Magna Graecia and examples of civil, urban architecture, and Jenkins stops short of the complexity of the Hellenistic period. Excellent illustrations and informative drawings accompany a clearly written text, beginning with the evolution in masonry of temple architecture, the development of plans and the architectural orders, and the role of sculptural decoration and color in enriching the visual presence of these monuments. Jenkins continues with the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Parthenon and the monuments of the Athenian Acropolis, the Temple of Apollo at Bassae, the Lycian tombs and the Nereid Monument from Xanthos, and the Mausoleum at Halikarnassos, and he concludes with the Temple of Athena Polias at Priene. This line-up constitutes, in effect, highlights of Greek architecture in the East. Up-to-date notes and bibliography add to the value of this reliable, if traditional, account of Greek sacred and funerary architecture over two centuries of achievement. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through graduate students. R. Brilliant emeritus, Columbia University

This overview aimed at the general reader is dense but fast-moving, despite its occasional detours into musty scholarly controversies. Jenkins focuses almost exclusively on temples and tombs whose artifacts can be seen at the British Museum, where he is senior curator in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. This arbitrary framework turns out to be as good as any for a long view of ancient Greek buildings and sculpture, given the breadth of the museum's holdings. Jenkins's accounts of the Parthenon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos and half a dozen other sites are wrapped in deft capsule histories of the political situations that gave rise to them. Hundreds of mostly color photos and diagrams, smartly laid out for easy reference to the corresponding text, usually make the most obscure of his points comprehensible-his theory of how the drainage from the roof of the Artemision Temple worked, for example. A few times Jenkins discusses, in somewhat excruciating detail, questions unlikely to excite the nonspecialist (e.g., the apparently passionate debate among scholars about exactly how many columns were in that same Artemision Temple). But for the most part, the smart design and the author's obvious enthusiasm for his subject make this an accessible and lively survey. (Jan. 15) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved