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The West Pediment of the Parthenon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

No artist will ever surpass Pheidias: progress may exist in the world, but it is not so in Art. The greatest of all sculptors will remain for ever without an equal’ (Rodin).

It is agreed that the sculptures of the Western pediment represented, at the centre, the Contest of Athena and Poseidon; that this central action was terminated by two chariot groups, one on the left, the other on the right; and that beyond these were spectators. Further, it is generally accepted that a pair of figures of an old man and a maiden on the left of the central action were meant for Cecrops and one of his daughters. Immediately to the left of Cecrops, between him and the first figure in the angle of the pediment, Nointel's drawing showed a void space, and in a nearly corresponding position in the other half of the pediment the same old drawing recorded another gap (X and Y in Fig. 1). It had been supposed by many students that both spaces might have been left void intentionally; Leake and others thought that one or both would have been filled.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1930

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References

1 See also the restoration of ‘the Fates’ as etched by Lucas: the arrangement of the arms shows consideration of technical requirements, but the right arm of the middle figure should be as I sketched in 1908 (Greek Buildings).

2 Furtwängler suggested that the figures in the right-hand angle were Butes and his wife: those to the left were Bouzyges and wife.

3 Harrison, , Myth. and Mon. of Anc. Athens, p. 442Google Scholar, fig. 44.

4 I wonder if Cecrops' daughter has been tested for this.

5 These puckered edges have been described as selveges, but I have just observed the wide hem of a piece of stuff which is so like what is represented that I cannot doubt such a hem was imitated in the sculptures.