ProvenioArt Intelligence
Sign InExplore
classical greece

Parthenon Frieze (Elgin Marbles)

Pentelic marble relief frieze from the Parthenon, Athens, 447–432 BCE, depicting the Panathenaic procession. Carved under the direction of Pheidias during the Periclean building programme. Now split approximately equally between the British Museum, London, and the Acropolis Museum, Athens, with further fragments at other institutions.

Scholarly Significance

Anchor the Ancient Greece cluster with the Parthenon frieze (Elgin Marbles), the defining monument of Classical Greek sculpture and the centre of one of the world's most prominent repatriation disputes.

Notes

  • ·Carved in Pentelic marble quarried from Mount Pentelikon, approximately 15 km north-east of Athens.
  • ·The Ionic frieze ran along the top of the outer wall of the Parthenon's cella (inner chamber) inside the colonnade, approximately 12 metres above ground level.
  • ·Pheidias (c. 480–430 BCE) directed the entire sculptural programme; the individual carvers are anonymous workshop sculptors.
  • ·Constructed under the oversight of Pericles as part of the Periclean building programme on the Acropolis, alongside the Propylaea, Erechtheion, and Temple of Athena Nike.
  • ·Architects of the Parthenon: Ictinus and Callicrates.
  • ·The frieze is considered the supreme achievement of High Classical Greek sculpture, notable for its naturalistic rendering of movement, drapery, and physiognomy.
  • ·Removed from the Parthenon by Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, between 1801 and 1812 under permits from the Ottoman authorities; sold to the British Museum in 1816.
  • ·Greece has formally demanded the return of the sculptures since 1983 (Melina Mercouri's campaign at UNESCO).
  • ·The Acropolis Museum (opened 2009) displays extant frieze slabs alongside plaster casts of the London sections, making the fracture in the monument visible.