While these statues may well have held weapons once, the term contrapposto denotes a specific technique first used in ancient Greek sculpture. It describes a posture wherein most of a statue’s weight rests on one foot, leading to a more natural, relaxed pose. Contrapposto also usually results in a more lifelike stance for the torso and arms as well.

(Image taken from the public domain: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Reggio_calabria_museo_nazionale_bronzi_di_riace.jpg)

From the Archaic period on, many ancient Greek bronze statues were created using the complex, multi-step lost-wax casting process. In this process, a series of molds are created using wax and clay and molten bronze is poured into the final set of molds. This technique continues to be used today, and it often allows for greater creativity than earlier sculpting methods.

(Image taken from the public domain: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Reggio_calabria_museo_nazionale_bronzi_di_riace.jpg)

This statue, the Augustus of Prima Porta, is a classic Roman sculpture of the Emperor Augustus Caesar. Carved in marble, the statue presents Augustus in the armor of Roman General, but posed and shaped in a way as to evoke the Roman gods. The Romans had a belief that the Caesars became gods upon their death, a belief fostered by the construction of temples by their successors.

Image accessed through Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Statue-Augustus.jpg

Greek sculptures modeled their sculptures after young, Green athletes. The athletes competed in their sports naked, allowing the sculpture to see their strong, muscular, athletic form in motion.

Phidias is one of the most well-known Greek sculptors. Phidias was responsible for the strategy behind the decoration of the Parthenon. One of his masterpieces was the gold statue of Athena inside the Parthenon.

The statue's name is Winged Victory or Nike. In comparison to other statues at this time, this statue is significant due to the fact that the figure is in action or mid movement. The sense of motion and the swift movement of the figure are distinctive to this statue as well as the idea of the Nike brand.

Ancient Greek and Roman statues and architecture were, in their original form, painted in vivid polychrome colors. These bright colors, which decorated every aspect of 3D art in antiquity, largely faded by the time of a renewal in interest in classical art, during the eighteenth century. As such, many enlightenment-era figures wished to preserve the "pristine," but inauthentic, look of unpainted marble.

The piece Nike Adjusting Her Sandal is Classical Greek, as it comes from the temple of Athena Nike on the Athenian Acropolis, built in the fourth century. You can see the proportions of the figure clearly, as well, which is a hallmark of the period.

The key feature of ancient Greek sculpture was the monumental size of most of their pieces, as well as the dramatic depiction of heroes and gods. The statues therefore needed to be made of an extremely sturdy and dependable material. Marble proved the most durable and popular material among ancient Greek sculptors not just for the mentioned reasons, but because of its abundance in Greek lands.

The Geometric and Protogeometric were periods of Ancient Greek pottery. Sculpture in Ancient Greece consisted of three periods: the Archaic, the Classical and the Hellenistic periods. The first period of Ancient Greek sculpture, the Archaic period, is known as the period in which the Ancient Greek first began to sculpt and carve in stone.