Parthenon. South metope 20

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Provision of image

Inventory number

Ακρ. 1118

Artist

Pheidias' workshop

Category

Architectural sculpture

Period

Classical Period

Date

445-440 BC

Dimensions

Woman on the left: 0.775 x 0.29 x 0.225 m and 0.305 x 0.355 x 0.085 m
Woman on the right: 1.08 x 0.48 x 0.185 m

Material

Marble from Penteli

Location

Parthenon Gallery

Description
Bibliography

Fragments from metope 20 the subject of which is known by a drawing attributed to Jacques Carrey. Two women are depicted with their backs turned on each other. The woman to the viewer’s left holds an object interpreted either as a cloth or a pillow. The scene relates directly to the previous metope 19 (Ακρ. 8344) and thus those who see a connection between the central south metopes and Athenian mythology suggest that this woman removes from the loom the cloth which would be used for the Panathenaic peplos. In contrast to this view, the researchers who believe that the subject draws on the myth about the wedding of Peirithoos in Thessaly think that she holds a pillow which will be placed on the bridal bed. Accordingly they consider the rounded object in the hands of the second woman to be a wedding wreath.

The main theme of the thirty two metopes on the south side of the Parthenon is the Centauromachy, the mythical battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. The Centaurs, half-human creatures with a horse's body from the waist down, while attending the wedding feast of king Peirithoos, close friend of Theseus, became drunk and attempted to carry off the Lapith women.

Each metope on the south side depicts either a fight between a Centaur and a Lapith or the seizing of a Lapith woman by a Centaur. However, the nine central metopes (nrs. 13-20), portray different subjects which still cannot be easily interpreted. Some scholars connect them with Athens' mythical past, but it seems more probable that they are scenes of the marriage from inside the palace of Peirithoos in Thessaly.

The south metopes were not damaged by Christians as severely as those on the other sides of the temple. The bombardment of the monument by Francesco Morosini, in 1687 broke fourteen of them into fragments (nrs. 11, 13-25). In the beginning of the 19th cent. fifteen out of the eighteen best preserved were forcibly detached by Thomas Bruce, lord of Elgin, when Greece was under Ottoman occupation, and ended up in the British Museum in London (nrs. 2-9 and 26-32). Metope 10, which had originally fallen on the ground, after its many adventures, ended up in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Some smaller metope fragments have been dispersed in other museums abroad. The Acropolis Museum houses metopes 1 and 12 as well as fragments of nine further metopes, which were found scattered on the Acropolis and the surrounding area (nrs. 11, 13, 16, 17, 19-22 and 24). Their reconstruction was achieved with the help of the drawings attributed to the painter Jacques Carrey, who visited Athens in 1674, just thirteen years before its bombardment by Morosini.

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