The Parthenon (Acropolis)
History, Architecture of Ancient Greece.
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The Parthenon (Acropolis)
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Parthenon Temple (built 447-422)• Height of Classical
Greek Art |
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A masterpiece of Classical Greek architecture, the Parthenon, is the largest temple on the Acropolis - the flat-topped hill which overlooks the city of Athens. Dedicated to the Greek Goddess Athena, and named after the cult of Athena Parthenos ("Athena the Virgin"), it was constructed in the mid-5th century BCE as a replacement for the older Pre-Parthenon temple, destroyed in 480 by the Persians, and exemplies the Doric order, the most restrained of the three Classical Greek architectural orders. Designed by Greek architects Ictinus and Callicrates, and built from stone and Pentelic marble under the overall direction of the sculptor Phidias (488-431 BCE), this icon of Greek art has been eroded and damaged over the centuries, and has lost nearly all its decorative sculpture, but its basic structure remains intact. Originally, its peristyle - surrounded by 48 marble columns - contained two rooms, enclosed within solid ashlar walls. The larger room (naos) contained Phidias's massive chryselephantine statue of the patron Goddess Athena Parthenos - one of the finest examples of Greek sculpture, in an exceptional architectural setting. Behind the statue was a smaller square room (opisthodomus) containing the treasury of the Athenian League, some bronze sculpture and other votive offerings to the Goddess. Externally, like most temples, the Parthenon was decorated with different types of stone sculpture, pedimental works, and extensive frieze of low reliefs. At the time of its creation, the Parthenon was seen as the culmination of High Classical Greek sculpture, and a tangible manifestation of Greek culture. Recent research by the German archeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann shows that the entire Parthenon - the actual structure as well as the statues - was in fact painted, lending it an unforgettable shimmer of colour. All in all, there is no doubt that the temple was one of the greatest visual sights in the history of art, and a major reference point in the evolution of human culture. It had a major influence on Roman architecture and Roman attitudes to Greek art. For its later impact, see: Classicism in Art (from 800). |
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The first temple dedicated to the Goddess Athena was erected on the Acropolis in 550 BE. Other temples followed, including the "Older Parthenon" (begun 488) which was still being built when the Persians attacked Athens in 480 and demolished the Acropolis complex. The high cost of rebuilding the city postponed the reconstruction of the Parthenon until 447, when Pericles (495-429) - the 5th-century Athenian statesman who ruled the city during its golden age of peace and prosperity - appointed architects to design a new temple, and put Phidias in charge of the project. It was under Pericles that Greek art of classical antiquity (notably architecture and sculpture) reached their zenith, and he is famous for his program of public works (c.460-430) in which numerous sacred and municipal structures were commissioned. The new Parthenon, a peripteral Doric temple with some Ionic elements, was completed in 438, although sculptural decoration continued until 422. For the next thousand years, things remained as they were, until the 5th century CE, when the huge statue of Athena was removed and the Parthenon was converted into another form of religious art - this time a Christian church, dedicated to Parthenos Maria, the Virgin Mary. A thousand years later, during the Turkish conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire of Constantinople, it was turned into an Ottoman mosque, complete with minaret. Then in 1687 Athens was attacked by Venetians who bombarded the Parthenon with mortar shells, one of which ignited the gunpowder being stored inside the temple, causing a massive explosion. Many of the figures in high relief which had filled the metopes, and the long line of figures and horses in low relief which had formed a continuous frieze all round the outside of the cella, and the large figures in the round which had filled the pediments at each end, crashed to the ground. Years passed and the fragments of sculpture lay where they had fallen, to be joined from time to time by other pieces from the neglected building. Then in 1806, an Englishman, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, persuaded the Turkish authorities to allow him to take the fragments away, and they were brought to England and housed in the British Museum, where they remain to this day. These sculptures, known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles, remain the subject of a tug-of-war between the UK and Greece. Meantime, other items from the Parthenon have found their way to the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, and elsewhere, although many remain in Athens. |
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The design plan of the Parthenon is rectangular (102 x 226 feet) and built in proportion to the Doric ratio of 9:4. The peristyle is enclosed by a colonnade of fluted columns (carved in situ) with square capitals, resting upon a three-step base. The columns are topped by a wide capital and a slab of stone called an abacus, which helps to relieve the tensile forces in the beam. The Greek form of construction employed a simple post-and-beam (trabeated) arrangement, translated into stone from ancient principles developed in timber construction. The entablature, or roof structure, (comprised of lintels connected by bow-tie shaped iron clamps) consists of a plain architrave, a frieze of alternating triglyphs and metopes (plain panels with relief sculpture, now partly lost), and, at the east and west gables, a low triangular pediment, filled with relief sculpture (now mostly lost). The structure incorporates numerous architectural refinements. To begin with, the local, white Pentelic marble provided the ideal medium for the sharpness of detail required for the design and execution of the sculpted relief panels of the frieze and portico. The building was also subject to meticulous refinements of proportion and geometry, known as entasis, to maintain an appearance of exact alignment. Apparently perpendicular and horizontal lines are, in fact, set out within curved and inclining planes, to correct the optical illusion of perspective distortion. For example, the tapering columns are swollen in section, about two-fifths of the way up, to correct the illusion of a concave profile that a staight-sided shaft would produce. Furthermore, the end columns have a closer spacing and thicker diameter than the main columns and incline diagonally towards the centre of the temple to counteract their appearance of outward inclination. The other columns are inclined inwards, 2.4 inches from the vertical. Lastly, the three steps of the base have a curved profile, rising towards the centre. The treads are set with a slight upward tilt. The devices of perspective-correction produce a complex geometry for construction. The whole scheme of decorative sculpture was intended to illustrate how great this Goddess of the Athenians was. In the two pediments she was depicted with her father, Zeus, and with the other gods. The east pediment sculpture illustrates the birth of Athena from out of the head of her father, Zeus. The west pediment portrayed the contest between Athena and Poseidon to become the city's patron. Both appear at the centre of the composition, with Athena holding the olive tree and Poseidon raising his trident to strike the ground. They are flanked by two groups of horses drawing chariots, while a crowd of celebrities from Athenian mythology populates the side areas of the pediment. One of the most complete figures and the only one which still has its head, is a reclining male statue which is usually called the 'Theseus'. Three beautiful female statues, clothed in graceful draperies, are known as 'The Three Fates'. For earlier works, see: Daedalic Greek Sculpture (650-600) and Archaic Greek Sculpture (600-480). The 92 metopes over the outer colonnade (designed by Kalamis [active 470-440] partly in the Severe style) show scenes of combat, carved in high relief, in which men were overcoming the enemies of wisdom, goodness and civilization. On the east side is represented a battle between gods and giants (Gigantomachy); on the south side we see the Lapiths helped by Theseus fighting against half-man, half-horse Centaurs (Thessalian Centauromachy); while on the west side, Greeks battle Amazons (Amazonomachy). Almost all the relief sculpture on the north side - featuring the sack of Troy - has been lost. The exterior walls of the cella were decorated with an Ionic frieze - a brilliant composition carved in low-relief, and one of the longest works in the history of sculpture. It comprised a narrow band, some 4-feet high and 523-feet in length, which encircled the temple cella at a height of 39-feet from the stylobate. Illustrating the Panathenaic procession from the Dipylon Gate in the Kerameikos to the Acropolis, it starts at the west end of the Parthenon, and - depicting maidens, men on horseback, chariots, musicians, and various participants in the sacrifices - proceeds along the northern and southern sides, until at the eastern end is shown the head of the procession, the waiting officials, the priest and priestess of Athene and a group of the principal gods. Through it all there is a flow of movement, akin to the crescendo and diminuendo in music, ending with a final chord. (See also the Pergamon Altar of Zeus.) The large room inside the temple was dominated by the statue of the patron Goddess Athena. Lit by the rising sun from the central, east-facing doorway, the 42-feet high statue was made of gold and ivory. A master of both carving and goldsmithing, Phidias sculpted Athena's skin from ivory and used gold fabric for her clothes. There were no windows in the room: light came only from torches or through the open entrance. A pool of water in the floor reflected shimmering light up onto the statue. For slightly earlier works, see: Early Classical Greek Sculpture (480-450). For later works, see: Late Classical Greek Sculpture (400-323). We often hear the Parthenon sculpture spoken of as 'Phidian' - in other words, as being the work of Phidias. But there is no real evidence that Phidias worked on the statues at all or even designed them. All we know is that when the Parthenon and other buildings were being erected in Athens after the Persian war, Phidias, as well as being commissioned to create a statue of Athene, was put in charge of all the work as a kind of supervisor. The work on the Parthenon therefore must have received his approval and it is certainly not impossible that the stonework, ivory carving, or reliefs - or some of them - may have been done in his workshops to his designs. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that the scheme was the work of a very great master, and that the men who carved the figures and reliefs (for the actual work, of course, must have been done by a number of carvers) were very fine craftsmen indeed. By this time sculptors no longer had any difficulty in carving splendid men and women in all kinds of attitudes. They knew quite well, too, how to represent a number of men or animals standing side by side and partly hiding one another from the spectator. The most complicated folds into which fabric could fall when it was draped around bodies or limbs, or was blown out by the wind or by rapid movement, held no terrors for them. If you visit the British Museum and see these extraordinarily majestic and dignified figures (which influenced Roman works like the Ara Pacis Augustae), try to imagine how they looked to the Athenians themselves. They did not see any of them, as we do, indoors and near eye-level. In their original positions the carvings were 40-60 feet above the ground. They were designed to be seen from below and in the clear sunlight of Greece. Remember, too, that they were coloured and the reliefs stood out against a coloured background. The bridles on the horses were of actual metal.
Other Classical Greek Sculptors As well as Kalamis and Phidias, the greatest sculptors of Classical Greek sculpture included: Pythagoras (active c.440-420), Kresilas (c.480-410), Myron (active 480-444), Polykleitos (active c.450-430), Callimachus (active 432-408), Skopas (active 395-350), Lysippos (c.395-305), Praxiteles (active 375-335), and Leochares (active 340-320). They and others were responsible for much of the greatest architectural sculpture that decorated temples and buildings such as the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (468-456), the Temple of Hephaistos (c.449), the Temple of Athena Nike (c.427), and the Theatre at Delphi (c.400). From 323 BCE, the classical period of Greek plastic art was followed by the era of Hellenism. See Pergamene School of Hellenistic Sculpture (241-133 BCE). For more details about the arts of ancient Greece, see the following list of resources: - Greek Pottery
(c.7,000 BCE onwards) |
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