Inventory number
MV 1014
Category
Architectural sculpture
Period
Classical Period
Date
445-440 BC
Dimensions
0.25 x 0.215 x 0.152 m
Material
Marble from Penteli
Location
Parthenon Gallery
Fragment from the upper right corner of Block V depicting a youth. It was returned from the Vatican Museum in Rome and placed permanently at its place in the Acropolis Museum in March of 2023. The left part of Block V is a plaster cast of the original which is located in the British Museum in London.
According to the drawing attribute to the painter Jacques Carrey the block initially depicted three himatiophoroi young men carrying oblong objects on their shoulders. Today only the first one from the left and the head of the last one survive. They were tray-bearers carrying honeycombs for the bloodless sacrifice at the Great Altar outside the Temple of Athena Polias. In front of them there was a parade marshal (teletarch) who was mostly depicted on the previous Block IV (Ακρ. 860).
The frieze on the north side of the Parthenon depicts part of the procession formed by the people of Athens during the Panathenaic festival in honour of the protectress of the city, Athena. The procession's destination was the Temple of Athena Polias on the Acropolis. Its purpose was the transportation of the Panathenaic peplos destined to adorn the age-old xoanon of the goddess and the offer of a grand sacrifice of animals at the Great Altar outside of the temple.
On the north frieze the procession moves along the Panathenaic Way. On its head are youths that lead young cows and rams for the sacrifice followed by more young men who carry water and offerings. Behind them come musicians with flutes and guitars, elders, perhaps officials, holding olive branches, eleven chariots that participate in an equestrian event and finally sixty horsemen divided in ten groups.
The north frieze is fragmentarily preserved due to the explosion of the Parthenon by the Venetians under the command of general Francesco Morosini, in 1687, which damaged mostly the middle part of the long sides of the temple. The drawings attributed to the painter Jacques Carrey, who visited the Acropolis in 1674, just thirteen years before its bombardment by Morosini, are an invaluable resource for our understanding of a few parts of this side of the frieze (Blocks Ι-ΧΙΧ). Three blocks (X, XVIII and XXVI) were removed during the conversion of the Parthenon into a Christian church so that windows would be opened in the blocks' positions. Some of these blocks' fragments were later found on the Acropolis.
The initial length of the north frieze was 58.70 m and consisted of 47 blocks. Today the surviving blocks are divided between the Acropolis Museum and the British Museum in London, where they ended up after they were removed by Thomas Bruce, the lord of Elgin, in 1801-1804 when Greece was still under Ottoman occupation. In order to facilitate their transportation, Elgin's workmen, cut off with saws or crowbars only the faces of the blocks that bore the relief decoration. The Acropolis Museum exhibition includes the plaster casts of the faces of these blocks. On these casts some of the original fragments that fell off the monument, and thus escaped the looting, have been adjusted.
Kaschnitz-Weinberg, G., Sculture del Magazzino del Museo Vaticano, Monumenti Vaticani di Archeologia e d’Arte IV, Citta del Vaticano, 1937, σελ. 179-180, πίν. LXXIV, αρ. κατ. 399
Bowie, Th., Thimme, D. (εκδ.), The Carrey Drawings of the Parthenon Sculptures, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1971, σελ. 55, 74, πίν. 31
Brommer, F., Der Parthenonfries, Mainz, 1977, σελ. 28-29, 140, πίν. 57, αρ. κατ. 73
Berger, Ε., Gisler-Huwiler, M., Der Parthenon in Basel. Dokumentation zum Fries, Mainz, 1996, σελ. 64, πίν. 46-47
Korka, E., Fragments of the Parthenon Sculptures displayed in Museums across Europe (with the exception of the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum), Athens, 2017, σελ. 59-61, εικ. 47-48
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