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Parthenon Frieze
The Parthenon frieze is the high-relief Pentelic marble sculpture created to adorn the upper part of the Parthenon's naos.
It was sculpted between c. 443 and 437 BC,[1] most likely under the direction of Phidias. Of the 160 meters (524 ft) of the original frieze, 128 meters (420 ft) survives—some 80 percent.[2] The rest is known only from the drawings attributed to French artist Jacques Carrey in 1674, thirteen years before the Venetian bombardment that ruined the temple. Along with the 64 Metopes of the Parthenon and 28 figures Pediments of the Parthenon, it forms the bulk of surviving sculpture from the building.
All of the frieze has been removed from the Parthenon.
56 blocks of the frieze are at the British Museum in London (forming the major part of the Elgin Marbles); 40 blocks are in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, and the remainder of fragments shared between six other institutions.[3] Casts of the frieze may be found in the Beazley archive at the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, at the Spurlock Museum in Urbana, in the Skulpturhalle at Basel and elsewhere.[4] The part of the frieze in London has been claimed by Greece, and British and Greek authorities are negotiating over its future.[5] On March 24, 2023, a relief fragment of a young man from "Block 5" of the frieze was repatriated to the Acropolis Museum from the Vatican Museums.[6]
- ^ 438 was the year of the dedication of the Parthenon and is usually taken as an upper limit for completion of the frieze, see I Jenkins, The Parthenon Frieze and Perikles' cavalry of 1000, p149–150, in Hurwit, 2005, for a discussion of the dating problem.
- ^ Jenkins, 2002, p.49
- ^ 80m in London and 50m in Athens according to the Greek Culture Ministry's website accessed 27.6.2010. The six other museums being: Musée du Louvre; Vatican Museums; National Museum, Copenhagen; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; University Museum, Würzburg; Glyptothek, Munich, from the British Museum website accessed 27.6.2010
- ^ For example, in the Architecture Hall at the University of Washington, Seattle, in the Museum of the Center for the Acropolis Studies at Athens, at the Western Australian Museum in Perth, at Hammerwood Park near East Grinstead in Sussex, at the Nashville Parthenon, and at the University of Strasbourg (France)
- ^ "British museum says constructive discussions over Parthenon Marbles". Reuters. 4 January 2023.
- ^ "Permanent reunification of Parthenon fragments from the Vatican Museums to the Acropolis Museum | Acropolis Museum | Official website". www.theacropolismuseum.gr. Retrieved 2023-04-06.
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