Parthenon. North frieze. Block 26 (XXVI). Fragments

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Provision of image

Inventory number

Ακρ. 878

Artist

Pheidias' workshop

Category

Architectural sculpture

Period

Classical Period

Date

442-438 BC

Dimensions

Fragment of horse's head: 0.29 x 0.23 m
Fragment from the block's right side: 0.8 x 0.36 m

Material

Marble from Penteli

Location

Parthenon Gallery

Fragments from severely damaged Block XXVI adjusted to the plaster cast of the original one kept today in the British Museum in London. Τhe only parts preserved are the head of one of the horses to the viewer’s left, the tails of two of four chariot horses and part of the chariot. The arms of the charioteer and the right arm of the young hoplite mounting the wagon continue on the following Block XXVII (Ακρ. 872).

Block XXVI depicts a scene from the apobates race. The chariot horses gallop at full speed with all their legs in the air. The apobates holds on to the chariot with one hand and the charioteer would have held the reins once rendered in bronze.

This block was removed from the Parthenon in antiquity when the temple was converted into a Christian church so that a window was opened in its place.

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.

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