The Parthenon Marbles (or Elgin Marbles) Restoration to...
Rated • 5 reviews • activism, architecture, the parthenon • parthenonuk.com
THE PARTHENON (447BC - present)
It was built by the famous architects Iktinos and Kallikrates under the general supervision of the sculptor Pheidias .
The Parthenon was the first monument of the Periclean programme for the Acropolis in classical times. It was a wondrous building because of its proportions and its excellent construction, but also because of the brilliant decision to place it at the top of the Sacred Rock. It is preserved with pronaos, cella and opisthonaos (room at the rear of the temple), with a door opening into the opisthonaos. It is of the Doric order, but it has features characteristic of the Ionic order too, such as the sculptured frieze, the Ionic columns that supported the ceiling of the opisthodomos, and others. Within the cella, surrounded by a double-storeyed colonnade, stood the colossal chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of the goddess Athena Parthenos, splendid creation of the sculptor Pheidias.
As an architectural work, the Parthenon was famous for the so-called refinements or curves through which, rather than being static and lifeless, the building resembled a living thing breathing an inner life. Yet above all it was the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon that made it famous, its pediments, metopes and frieze.
When the Parthenon was built between 447BC and 432BC, three sets of sculptures, the metopes, the frieze and the pediments, were created to adorn it. Of these, the metopes and the frieze were part of the structure of the Parthenon itself. They were not carved first and then put in place, high up on the Parthenon, but were carved on the sides of the Parthenon itself after it had been constructed. The metopes were individual sculptures in high relief. There were 92 metopes, 32 on each side and 14 at each end and each metope was separated from its neighbours by a simple archtitectural decoration called a triglyph, The metopes were placed around the building, above the outside row of columns and showed various mythical battles. The north side showed scenes from the Trojan war; the south side showed a battle between the Greeks and the Centaurs -- part man, part horse; the east side showed the Olympian gods fighting giants and the west side showed a battle between Greeks and Amazons.
The frieze , 160 metres long, was placed above the inner row of columns, so it was not so prominently displayed. It is one long, continuous sculpture in low relief, showing the procession to the temple at the Panathenaic festival.
