The Piraeus Athena is a bronze statue dated to the fourth century BCE. It currently resides in the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus.
The Piraeus Athena is a bronze statue dated to the fourth century BCE. It currently resides in the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus.
The statue is an over-life sized representation of Athena, with a height of 2.35 meters (approximately 8 feet). She stands contraposto and wears a peplos that is open on the right side. She also wears a Corinthian helmet decorated with griffins on the sides of the helm and owls on the cheek pieces; the crest of the helmet has a serpent wrapped around its base. [1] She also has an aegis strapped diagonally across her torso, which has a miniature Gorgon's head on it along with a border of snakes. The small size of the aegis indicate that it is likely to be a marker of Athena's identity than an actual piece of armament. [2] The position of the lower right arm, reached out and palm up, indicates that she was originally holding something. Suggestions as to what it could have been include her holding out an owl, a small statue of Nike, or an offering bowl. [3] The idea that the figure could have been an owl, however, is considered unlikely by Olga Palagia, based on the fact that no contemporary statues of a standing Athena show her holding an owl. [4] Her left arm is posed to hold a spear. The cloth of the peplos appears heavy, as evidenced from the deep cloth lines in the sculpture. [5] The attention to detail at the back of the statue and her slight stoop suggest a possibility that she was designed to be placed on a central pedestal rather than against a wall. [6]
The Piraeus Athena has been determined to be an original, and currently the only existent statue thought to be based on it is the Athena Mattei currently in the Louvre, despite the position of the right arm on the Louvre statue being different. [7]
The Piraeus Athena was discovered in 1959, by workers who were drilling underground to install pipes. The excavation of the site was led by Ioannis Papademitriou, head of the Greek Archaeological Service, and Mastrokostas Euthymios, the Epimelete of Attica. [8] The excavations uncovered an ancient warehouse that had been burned down, and which containing two groups of statues and other artefacts. [9] Athena was found along with a not-quite-life-size bronze statue of Artemis, a large, bronze tragic mask, a herm, two bronze shields, two marble herms, and a small marble statue of Artemis Kindyas. [10] [11] The room the statue was found in was very close to the main harbour and the statues appeared to be packed ready to be shipped when the warehouse burnt down. [12] [13] The whole collection is now known as The Piraeus Bronzes.
There are several theories as to why the statue would be packed ready to be shipped. The first is based on the fact that Piraeus was captured by Sulla in 86 BC. This would suggest that the statues were being shipped in order to save them from the Roman attack. [14] This in turn indicates that the original location of the statue may have been either in Piraeus itself, or locations in its vicinity - including the Port of Athens, which was nearby.
Other scholars, however, believe that the statue may have come from Delos. This identification is based on the fact that three of the statues found with the Piraeus Athena were of Artemis, who was believed to have been born at Delos. [15] Further evidence for this suggestion is the capture of Delos by the Romans in 88 BC. If this was the case the statues could have been part of the collection that Mithridates’ general had sent to Athens after the capture of the island. [16] This theory is supported by the fact that a coin was also found somewhere near the statues with a date equivalent to 87/86 BC on it and a picture of King Mithridates VI. [17]
Several pieces of evidence date the creation of the statue to around the late 4th Century. Firstly, several elements of the design of the statue also aid in dating its creation. One such element is the Corinthian helmet she wears - a style which became very popular in fourth century BC. [18] A second factor is the style of the peplos worn by the statue. It depicts a heavy material - a style that became fashionable later during the second half of the fourth century, indicating a date range of the creation of the statue to that period.
There are currently two theories as to the maker of the statue. According to Geoffrey Waywall, the drapery bears similarities to a statue of Eirene holding a baby Ploutos which is thought to have been made by Cephisodotus the Elder. This identification is based on the fact that Pausanias states that Cephisodotus made a statue of Peace and Wealth for the Athenians. [19] [20] Pliny the Elder states that Cephisodotus was active during the 102nd Olympiad - equivalent to 372-368 BC. [21] This tallies with the time period in which the Corinthian helmet and heavy peplos style were popular. [22] Waywell identifies what he considers to be multiple areas of similarity between the two statues:
There are remarkable similarities in stance, general pose, proportions, treatment of face, hair, and limbs, and above all in the treatment of the drapery. [23]
Waywell points to details such as the way the falls of the drapery are disturbed by the position of the supporting foot, and the way the lifted leg is revealed through the peplos and its interactions with her knee, outer calf and ankle. Compare also the smoothness of the modelling of the free leg through the drapery, the heavy fold which falls from the knee. He also argues that the two statues share the same style of severe vertical folds in the clothing at the side and back. [24]
Olga Palagia, however, argues that there is not much similarity between the style of the two statues:
The only stylistic similarity to the Athena is offered by the position of the bent leg not only drawn back but also set to the side, and by the folds of the skirt which form bands instead of fluting. [25]
Palagia rejects the evidence of the similarities between the skirt of the statues, arguing that it is unreliable due to the way in which copyists often blurred the original rendering. Instead, she highlights several differences between the styles of the two statues. Firstly, there are slight differences between the poses; secondly, there are further differences between other elements of the clothing of the two statues, such as the fact that the overfall of Athena's peplos hides most of her girdle from the front view, whereas the overfall of the peplos on Eirene has a short overfall that finishes just above the girdle, leaving the kolpos visible. [26]
Instead of Cephisodotus, Palagia suggests Euphranor as the sculptor, based on the similarity of the Piraeus Athena to the Apollo Patroos - another statue known to have been created by him. The two statues share similarities in how the skirt drapes over the bent leg and in the fullness of the faces. [27] Further, both share the same type of stance - the raised arm is on the opposite side to the bent leg, though the bent leg and arm are the opposite between the two statues. [28] Euphranor was active during 104th Olympiad - equivalent to 364-361 BC, and thus also fits within the time frame afforded by the popularity of the Corinthian helmet and heavy drapery. [29]
Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attica sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue. While no indubitably attributable sculpture by Praxiteles is extant, numerous copies of his works have survived; several authors, including Pliny the Elder, wrote of his works; and coins engraved with silhouettes of his various famous statuary types from the period still exist.
Areia was a cultic epithet of the Greek goddess Athena, under which she was worshipped at Athens.
A draped garment is a garment that is made of a single piece of cloth that is draped around the body; drapes are not cut away or stitched as in a tailored garment. Drapes can be held to the body by means of knotting, pinning, fibulae, clasps, sashes, belts, tying drawstrings, or just plain friction and gravity alone. Many draped garments consist of only one single piece.
The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone: the Archaic, Classical (480–323) and Hellenistic. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
Kresilas was a Greek sculptor in the Classical period, from Kydonia. He was trained in Argos and then worked in Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian War, as a follower of the idealistic portraiture of Myron. He is best known for his statue Pericles with the Corinthian helmet.
The Antikythera Ephebe, registered as: Bronze statue of a youth in the museum collections, is a bronze statue of a young man of languorous grace that was found in 1900 by sponge-divers in the area of the ancient Antikythera shipwreck off the island of Antikythera, Greece. It was the first of the series of Greek bronze sculptures that the Aegean and Mediterranean yielded up in the twentieth century which have fundamentally altered the modern view of ancient Greek sculpture. The wreck site, which is dated about 70–60 BC, also yielded the Antikythera mechanism, a characterful head of a Stoic philosopher, and a hoard of coins. The coins included a disproportionate quantity of Pergamene cistophoric tetradrachms and Ephesian coins, leading scholars to surmise that it had begun its journey on the Ionian coast, perhaps at Ephesus; none of its recovered cargo has been identified as from mainland Greece.
The Lemnian Athena, or Athena Lemnia, was a classical Greek statue of the goddess Athena. According to geographer Pausanias (1.28.2), the original bronze cast was created by the sculptor Phidias circa 450–440 BCE, for Athenians living on the island of Lemnos to dedicate on the Acropolis of Athens.
The Artemision Bronze is an ancient Greek sculpture that was recovered from the sea off Cape Artemision, in northern Euboea, Greece. According to most scholars, the bronze represents Zeus, the thunder-god and king of gods, though it has also been suggested it might represent Poseidon. The statue is slightly over lifesize at 2.09 meters, and would have held either a thunderbolt, if Zeus, or a trident if Poseidon. The empty eye-sockets were originally inset, probably with bone, as well as the eyebrows, the lips, and the nipples. The sculptor is unknown. The statue is a highlight of the collections in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Kore is the modern term given to a type of free-standing ancient Greek sculpture of the Archaic period depicting female figures, always of a young age. Kouroi are the youthful male equivalent of kore statues.
Pliny the Elder records five bronze statues of Amazons in the Artemision of Ephesus. He explains the existence of such a quantity of sculptures on the same theme in the same place by describing a 5th-century BC competition between the artists Polyclitus, Phidias, Kresilas, "Kydon" and Phradmon; thus:
The most celebrated of these artists, though born at different epochs, have joined in a trial of skill in the Amazons which they have respectively made. When these statues were dedicated in the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, it was agreed, in order to ascertain which was the best, that it should be left to the judgment of the artists themselves who were then present: upon which, it was evident that that was the best, which all the artists agreed in considering as the next best to his own. Accordingly, the first rank was assigned to Polycletus, the second to Phidias, the third to Cresilas, the fourth to Cydon, and the fifth to Phradmon.
The Chalkeia festival, the festival of Bronze-workers, was a religious festival devoted to the goddess Athena and the god Hephaestus. It was celebrated on the last day of Pyanepsion. The festival celebrated Athena and Hephaestus, in honor of both gods as patron deities of Athens, and as deities of handicrafts.
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The Archaeological Museum of Delos is a museum on the island of Delos, near Mykonos in the South Aegean, Greece. It is noted for its extensive collection of statues unearthed in the surrounding area of the ancient site, which has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Although the museum has a considerable collection, it does not contain all of the items found in Delos: a large quantity are on display in Athens at the National Archaeological Museum.
The Temple of Apollo Patroos is a small ruined temple on the west side of the Ancient Agora of Athens. The original temple was an apsidal structure, built in the mid-sixth century BC and destroyed in 480/79 BC. The area probably remained sacred to Apollo. A new hexastyle ionic temple was built ca. 306-300 BC, which has an unusual L-shaped floor plan. Some fragments from the sculptural decoration of this structure survive. The colossal cult statue, by Euphranor, has also been recovered.
The Piraeus Apollo is an ancient Greek bronze sculpture in the archaic style from the 2nd or 1st century BC, exhibited now at the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus, Athens.
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The Varvakeion Athena is a Roman-era statue of Athena Parthenos now part of the collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. It is generally considered to be the most faithful reproduction of the chryselephantine statue made by Phidias and his assistants, which once stood in the Parthenon. It is dated to 200–250 AD.
The pediments of the Parthenon are the two sets of statues in Pentelic marble originally located as the pedimental sculpture on the east and west facades of the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. They were probably made by several artists, including Agoracritos. The master builder was probably Phidias. They were probably lifted into place by 432 BC, having been carved on the ground.
Olga Palagia is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and is a leading expert on ancient Greek sculpture. She is known in particular for her work on sculpture in ancient Athens and has edited a number of key handbooks on Greek sculpture.
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