The Parthenon Frieze

The Parthenon Frieze PDF Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521684026
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
While the sculpted Ionic frieze of the Parthenon with its galloping horsemen and classically portrayed gods is reproduced in every art history text and has been much studied by scholars, no single book has yet been devoted to all its myriad aspects. This study by classical archaeologist and art historian Jenifer Neils breaks new ground by considering all aspects of this complex and controversial monument. Although the frieze has been studied for over two hundred years, most scholarship has sought an overall interpretation of the iconography rather than focusing on the sculpture's visual language, essential for a full understanding of the narrative. Neils' study not only decodes the language of the frieze, but also analyzes its conception and design, style and content, as well as its impact on later art. Unusual for its wide-ranging approach to the frieze, this book also brings ethical reasoning to bear on the issue of its possible repatriation as part of the on-going Elgin Marble debate. As one of the foremost examples of the high classical style and the finest expression of mid-fifth century Athenian ideology, the Parthenon frieze is without doubt one of the major monuments of western civilization, and as such deserves to be understood in all its dimensions. The accompanying CD-ROM contains a virtual reality Macromedia Director movie of the complete frieze, based on the plaster casts in the Skulpturhalle in Basel, Switzerland. Developed by Rachel Rosenzweig of the Department of Greek and Roman Art of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the casts are arranged in conformity with Neils' reconstruction and enable the user to view them in succession, as if walking around the Parthenon. The CD-ROM requires a computer running either MAC OS 8.01 or later, or Windows 95 or later.

The Parthenon Frieze

The Parthenon Frieze PDF Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521684026
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book

Book Description
While the sculpted Ionic frieze of the Parthenon with its galloping horsemen and classically portrayed gods is reproduced in every art history text and has been much studied by scholars, no single book has yet been devoted to all its myriad aspects. This study by classical archaeologist and art historian Jenifer Neils breaks new ground by considering all aspects of this complex and controversial monument. Although the frieze has been studied for over two hundred years, most scholarship has sought an overall interpretation of the iconography rather than focusing on the sculpture's visual language, essential for a full understanding of the narrative. Neils' study not only decodes the language of the frieze, but also analyzes its conception and design, style and content, as well as its impact on later art. Unusual for its wide-ranging approach to the frieze, this book also brings ethical reasoning to bear on the issue of its possible repatriation as part of the on-going Elgin Marble debate. As one of the foremost examples of the high classical style and the finest expression of mid-fifth century Athenian ideology, the Parthenon frieze is without doubt one of the major monuments of western civilization, and as such deserves to be understood in all its dimensions. The accompanying CD-ROM contains a virtual reality Macromedia Director movie of the complete frieze, based on the plaster casts in the Skulpturhalle in Basel, Switzerland. Developed by Rachel Rosenzweig of the Department of Greek and Roman Art of the Cleveland Museum of Art, the casts are arranged in conformity with Neils' reconstruction and enable the user to view them in succession, as if walking around the Parthenon. The CD-ROM requires a computer running either MAC OS 8.01 or later, or Windows 95 or later.

The Parthenon Frieze

The Parthenon Frieze PDF Author: Ian Jenkins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780714122373
Category : Friezes
Languages : en
Pages : 119

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Book Description
Jenkins reconstructs the Parthenon frieze in its entirety according to the most up-to-date research, with a detailed scene-by-scene commentary, and the superb quality of the carving is vividly shown in a series of close-up photographs.

The Parthenon Enigma

The Parthenon Enigma PDF Author: Joan Breton Connelly
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385350503
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West’s ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it? In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible. The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.

The Parthenon Frieze

The Parthenon Frieze PDF Author: Ian Jenkins
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
The artistic genius of Athens in the fifth century BC reached its peak in the sculpted marble reliefs of the Parthenon frieze. Designed by Phidias and carved by a team of anonymous masons, the frieze adorned the temple of Athena on the Acropolis and represents a festival procession in honour of the Olympian gods. Its original composition and precise meaning, however, have long been the subject of lively debate. Most of what survives of the frieze is now in the British Museum or the Acropolis Museum in Athens; the rest is scattered among a number of European collections. This book reconstructs the frieze in its entirety according to the most up-to-date research, with a detailed scene-by-scene commentary, and the superb quality of the carving is vividly shown in a series of close-up photographs. In his introduction Ian Jenkins places the frieze in its architectural, historical and artistic setting. He discusses the various interpretations suggested by previous scholars, and finally puts forward a view of his own.

The Parthenon Sculptures

The Parthenon Sculptures PDF Author: Ian Dennis Jenkins
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674026926
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
The Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum are unrivaled examples of classical Greek art, an inspiration to artists and writers since their creation in the fifth century bce. A superb visual introduction to these wonders of antiquity, this book offers a photographic tour of the most famous of the surviving sculptures from ancient Greece, viewed within their cultural and art-historical context. Ian Jenkins offers an account of the history of the Parthenon and its architectural refinements. He introduces the sculptures as architecture--pediments, metopes, Ionic frieze--and provides an overview of their subject matter and possible meaning for the people of ancient Athens. Accompanying photographs focus on the pediment sculptures that filled the triangular gables at each end of the temple; the metopes that crowned the architrave surmounting the outer columns; and the frieze that ran around the four sides of the building, inside the colonnade. Comparative images, showing the sculptures in full and fine detail, bring out particular features of design and help to contrast Greek ideas with those of other cultures. The book further reflects on how, over 2,500 years, the cultural identity of the Parthenon sculptures has changed. In particular, Jenkins expands on the irony of our intimate knowledge and appreciation of the sculptures--a relationship far more intense than that experienced by their ancient, intended spectators--as they have been transformed from architectural ornaments into objects of art.

The Parthenon Frieze

The Parthenon Frieze PDF Author: Martin Robertson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Friezes
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description


Worshipping Athena

Worshipping Athena PDF Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 9780299151140
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Ten papers from 1992 symposia at Dartmouth College and Princeton University are augmented by an original chapter and a translation of a Greek article, to explore the myth and cult of Athena, contests and prizes associated with her worship, and art and politics generated around her. Among the topics are women in the Panathenaic and other festivals, the iconography of shield devices and column-mounted statues on amphoras, and the Panatheniaia in the age of Perikles. Paper edition (unseen), $22.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Parthenon

The Parthenon PDF Author: Jenifer Neils
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521820936
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
Provides an overview of a classical monument interjected with the discoveries of modern scholarship.

Becoming Good Democrats and Wives

Becoming Good Democrats and Wives PDF Author: Burkhard Fehr
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
ISBN: 3643999003
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
In this study, the analysis of the Parthenon frieze is based on the assumption that the pictorial narrative scenes of the Classical period were conceived with the intention of exemplifying comprehensive patterns of action which were related to ethical values and social status. In this way, it can be shown that - on the west, north, and south side of the frieze - the pictorial narration in several "chapters" demonstrates how the young male Athenians become qualified members of the citizenry, through a multi-stage process of civic education carried out by the democratic polis. The stages of female socialization are visualized on the east side, the goal being the status and responsibilities of a married woman who raises and educates her offspring in an Athenian oikos, as represented in the central scene of the east frieze. The messages of the other Parthenon sculptures, as well as of the colossal statue of Athena in the center of this sacred building, are closely related to this frame of reference. One could claim that the pictorial narrative of the Parthenon frieze is the first comprehensive discourse on democracy. (Series: Hephaistos. Kritische Zeitschrift zu Theorie und Praxis der Archaologie und angrenzender Gebiete)

The Elgin Marbles

The Elgin Marbles PDF Author: Christopher Hitchens
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859842201
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
The Elgin Marbles, designed and executed by Phidias to adorn the Parthenon, are some of the most beautiful sculptures of ancient Greece. In 1801 Lord Elgin, then British ambassador to the Turkish government in Athens, had pieces of the frieze sawn off and removed to Britain, where they remain, igniting a storm of controversy which has continued to the present day. In the first full-length work on this fiercely debated issue, Christopher Hitchens recounts the history of these precious sculptures and forcefully makes the case for their return to Greece. Drawing out the artistic, moral, legal and political perspectives of the argument, Hitchens's eloquent prose makes The Elgin Marbles an invaluable contribution to one of the most important cultural controversies of our times.