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Athena Parthenos: a nineteenth-century forger's workshop*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

A. J. N. W. Prag
A. J. N. W. Prag
Affiliation:
The Manchester Museum
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Extract

While piecing together information on some of the copies of the Athena Parthenos for the recent congress in Basle, I looked again with slightly wiser and perhaps sadder eyes at a small terracotta from the collections of the Manchester Museum that I had published in this journal some eleven years ago (plate XIIb). I found her interesting because apart from such features as the triple-crested helmet, the snake lurking within her shield, and the Nike poised upon her right hand, which identified her beyond doubt as a copy of the Parthenos, she rested her right hand on a plain column with torus mouldings. There is another figurine from the same mould in the museum in Geneva, and a third from a parallel mould in Exeter, and I concluded that they were Romano-Gallic ‘souvenirs’ of the second century ad. I was convinced of the authenticity of the type, not least because of the pedigree of the Geneva figurine. However, several scholars have had their reservations, right back to the first appearance of the Geneva example, and so at the initiative of Dr R. A. Higgins the Manchester figure was tested for thermoluminescence at the Research Laboratory of the British Museum.

Type
Notes
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 103 , November 1983 , pp. 151 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1983

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References

1 Manchester Museum 20,001; Geneva, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire 7464; Exeter, Royal Memorial Museum 5/1946/778; Leipen 11 nos 42, 44, figs 44, 45; Prag 96–102, pls xix–XXII.

2 Deonna, W., ‘Une nouvelle réplique de l'Athéna Parthénos’, REA xxi (1919) 20–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 I am most grateful to the Trustees of the British Museum, and to Dr Higgins, Mr B. F. Cook, Dr A. E. A. Werner and Dr M. Tite for their permission and assistance in having the tests carried out on the Manchester and Exeter figures, and to Mrs M.-A. Seeley and Dr S. G. E. Bowman for performing the actual tests; to Miss S. M. Pearce, Curator of Antiquities at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, for allowing tests to be made on that figure; to Mlle C. Dunant and Mr F. Schweizer of the Geneva Museum for making similar arrangements for their figure, and to Dr M. J. Aitken and the Oxford laboratory for carrying out the tests. A second figurine in Exeter, like the first from the Montague collection, no. 5/1946/592 (Leipen 11 no. 45: inv. no. incorrectly given), already condemned by Dr Higgins as a forgery on archaeological grounds but iconographically related to the first, could unfortunately not be made available for comparative tests.

4 The problems of dating and firing temperatures arising in the notorious Glozel affair were hardly reassuring: see McKerrell, H., Mejdahl, V., François, H. and Portal, G., ‘Thermoluminescence and Glozel’, Antiquity xlviii (1974) 265–72 (esp. 268) and xlix (1975) 267–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with rets; id., ‘Études sur Glozel’ in Rev. Arch, du Centre lvii–lviii (1976) 5–30; most recently Mejdahl, V. in Archaeometry xii (1980) 197–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar (I owe these references to Dr J. Tate of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, Edinburgh).

5 Bailey, D. M., ‘Roman Lamps—Reproductions and Forgeries’, Museums Journal lx (1960) 42, 44Google Scholar fig. 5c–d, g. The whole group will be fully published by MrBailey, in BMC Lamps iiiGoogle Scholar, but I am most grateful to him for drawing my attention to the lamps, for discussing them with me in detail, and for allowing me to describe them here. Another ex-Wellcome lamp from the workshop has now come to Manchester: woman moving left,? naked man moving right. Cf. Ephesus, Artemisium column?

6 Museums Journal lx (1960) 44 fig. 5gGoogle Scholar; Robertson, M. and Frantz, A., The Parthenon Frieze (London 1975)Google Scholar, south frieze slabs xxxix–XL; Brommer, F., Der Parthenonfries (Mainz 1977) 100–2, pls 154–5, 158–9, 162Google Scholar.

7 Museums Journal, loc. cit. fig. 5d.

8 Ibid. fig. 5c; Ancient Marbles in the British Museum (London 1820) pl. xixGoogle Scholar: Smith, A. H., BMC Sculpture i 286 no. 538Google Scholar; Hofkes-Brukker, C. and Mallwitz, A., Der Bassai-Fries (Munich 1975) 85–6, H21–538 (illus.)Google Scholar. Mr Bailey tells me of a similar lamp in the Leicester Museum, decorated with figures from the other end of the same frieze.

9 Bailey (n. 5) 44.

10 Richter, G. M. A., Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks 4 (New Haven etc. 1970) 216–17, fig. 594Google Scholar; Imhoof-Blumer, F. and Gardner, P., Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias (London 1887) pl. Z nos 1–11Google Scholar. That the identification of this type with the Promachos has been disputed, e.g. by Lacroix, L., Les Reproductions de statues sur les monnaies grecques (Paris 1949) 281–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and by the authors quoted by Richter, loc. cit. n. 13, is immaterial to the present discussion. On the fondness of the lamp-maker for imitating coin-types, Bailey (n. 5) 42. On the Romanized dress, Prag 99.

11 REA xxi (1919) 20–6Google Scholar, summarized at Prag 96–7.

12 Deonna (n. 11) 22.

13 On the history of forged Greek terracottas, e.g. Kurz, O., Fakes: a Handbook for Collectors (London 1947) 144–8Google Scholar.

14 Archäologische Zeitung xv (Sept. 1857) 66–7, pl. cvGoogle Scholar; Michaelis, A., Der Parthenon (1870–1871) 272–3, 279–80, pl. XVGoogle Scholar; Leipen 9 no. 35, fig. 37.

15 Leipen 11–12 nos 43, 46–8, figs 46–7; contrast Prag 108–9, pl. XXIII (Romano-Egyptian terracotta of Athena).