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It was only last year that the Louvre Museum fascinated Japanese art fans with its famous 19th-century French paintings in an exhibition in Yokohama and Kyoto. This summer, the museum hits Japan once again with its ancient Greek art, the origin of Western culture, with an exhibition in Tokyo and Kyoto.

About 130 items, including large sculptures, are on show in Ancient Greek Art from the Louvre Museum. Most of the items are being exhibited in Japan for the first time.

In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., Greece was said to have been at the peak of its creativity. Greek culture in those years, from the start of the Greco-Persian Wars to the death of Alexander the Great, is called the Classic period, and the exhibition aims to explore ancient Greek culture through artworks from this period.

While ancient Greek art sometimes seems to have been deified, and while scholars obsess about minute questions of style, this exhibition is an attempt to draw a bigger picture of the period from a broader point of view, said Jean-Luc Martinez, the Chief Curator at the Department of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities at the Louvre, which holds 45,000 items.

The exhibition is divided into four sections: Classic-period Athens, life in ancient Greece, sporting spirit in ancient Greece, and gods and religion.

The sporting spirit section shows how ancient Greece’s liking for sport and competition helped in the development of artists.

“One characteristic is that artists competed against each other and created great works. Artists felt very responsible for their creations, and clients tended to contract artists who had won fame through artistic rivalry,” Martinez said in French through an interpreter.

The exhibition also features a new take on the depiction of women in Greek myth. Exhibits include painted pottery that depicts a weaving woman in a section on ancient Greek life, and various Aphrodite sculptures in the gods and religion section. Aphrodite was a goddess whom the Romans later called Venus. According to Martinez, the ancient Greeks believed that she dated from the creation of the universe, her role being to connect the different parts of the cosmos.

“People back then saw women as having great power,” Martinez said.

Other items on show include a wide variety of pieces, from masterpieces such as the Venus of Arles, a sculpture once displayed at the Versailles Palace, and the Ares Borghese, which Napoleon purchased, to unique items such as a pitcher illustrated with images of owls, a symbol of Athena, goddess of wisdom. The lineup also includes works made in ancient Rome that imitate Greek art.

Martinez explained the significance of the Roman copies, saying: “They’re not just imitations. Some of them used Greek materials and others were made by Greek sculptors.”

His favorite is a relief of Hermes, Orpheus and Eurydice based on the mythological tale of how the musician Orpheus goes to the underworld to bring his wife Eurydice back to life. Hades, god of the underworld, and Queen Persephone are moved by Orpheus’ music and agree to let Eurydice go with her husband. The only condition is that Orpheus should not look back to see her until they see the light; if he breaks the promise, she will be lost to him forever. Predictably, he does look back.

“Orpheus’ horror at realizing he will never be able to see his wife again can be seen in little details like the way he holds his hand,” Martinez explained. He also likes the fine lines of the folds of the clothes. As a curator and as an individual, the ancient Greek culture is something in which I can find myself, and find a meaning for life,” he said.

Martinez was born on March 22, 1964, the day Venus de Milo landed at Yokohama Port for her first outing to Japan. “Maybe I was fated to oversee this exhibition,” Martinez says.

Ancient Greek Art from the Louvre Museum. Through Aug. 20, open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed Mondays (except July 17) and July 18. University Art Museum of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, a 10-minute walk from JR Ueno Station. Admission: 1,300 yen for adults, 1,000 yen for university and high school students, free for middle school students and younger. For more information visit > www.ntv.co.jp/louvre or call (03) 5777-8600. The show will move to the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art in September.