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Thearchaic smile was used by sculptors inArchaic Greece,[1][2] especially in the second quarter of the 6th century BCE, possibly to suggest that their subject was alive and infused with a sense of well-being. One of the most famous examples of the archaic smile is theKroisos Kouros, and thePeplos Kore is another.
By the middle of theArchaic Period ofancient Greece (roughly 800 BCE to 480 BCE), the art that proliferated contained images of people who had the archaicsmile,[1][2] as evidenced by statues found in excavations all across the Greek mainland, Asia Minor, and on islands in theAegean Sea.[1] The significance of the convention is not known although it is often assumed that for the Greeks, that kind of smile reflected a state of ideal health and well-being.[3] It has also been suggested that it is simply the result of a technical difficulty in fitting the curved shape of the mouth to the somewhat-blocklike head typical of Archaic sculpture. Richard Neer theorizes that the archaic smile may actually be a marker of status, since aristocrats of multiple cities throughout Greece were referred to as theGeleontes or "smiling ones".[4] There are alternative views to the archaic smile being "flat and quite unnatural looking".John Fowles describes the archaic smile in his novelThe Magus as "full of the purest metaphysical good humour [...] timelessly intelligent and timelessly amused. [...] Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is [...] When I die, I shall have this by my bedside. It is the last human face I want to see."
The Greek archaic smile is also found onEtruscan artworks during the same time period nearby on the west side of the Italian peninsula, as consequence of the influence of Greek art on Etruscan art. An example of this commonly featured in art history texts is theSarcophagus of the Spouses, a terracotta work found in thenecropolis ofCerveteri. It features a smiling couple reclined seemingly at a banquet. The slight geometric stylization, level of realism and physical scale are also strikingly similar to Greek works from this period featuring the archaic smile.
