The Statue of Athena Parthenos

What is the context and how did that influence the work?

As many people know, the Parthenos on the Acropolis of Athens was dedicated to the city’s patron deity, Athena. Completed in 438 BC by famous Grecian sculptor, Phidias, the statue was made entirely out of gold and ivory. It was originally made to house the statue of Athena that the master sculptor Phidias had created out of gold and ivory to commemorate Athena as the leader of the Grecian forces in the Persian Wars. It means Virgin Athena and was richly decorated on the outside. The temple was built to accommodate the statue, with the Parthenon meaning “house of Parthenos”. The sculptor, Phidias, was famous for his other colossal bronze state of Athena Promachos and was later commissioned by Pericles to create the Athena Parthenos, which was to be worthy of the greatest city in Greece. The statue was to be 11.5 meters tall and made of ivory for the flesh, about 1140 kilos, and gold for the rest. The statue ended up costing around 5,000 talents. In front of the statue, there was a large tank of water, which was to be for the benefit of reflecting light into the chamber and keeping a moist atmosphere for the ivory. After many centuries, it appeared that the statue had disappeared. The replica created in Rome shortly after the disappearance in Greece caused many controversies. Considering it occurred after Emperor Hadrian’s request to move the statue out of Athens, many questioned whether the statue was stolen and sold off to the Roman Empire, after the fall of the Grecian Empire.

 

What is the artist communicating and how?

The sculpture represented Athena in her full glory. She stood majestically and armed, while holding a four cubit tall statue of Nike and wearing a peplos tucked into her belt. She held a large shield in her left hand and a spear on her left side, with a coiled snake residing between her feet and the shield. Her helmet had a triple-crest, a sphinx and two griffins. Her sandals had the mythical battle of the centaurs and the Lapiths and the base of her state had the scenes of the birth of Pandora. All these symbols and stories represented on the statue were made to allow the statue to create a stronger deity for the city of Athens. For example, the snake represented Erichtonios, who was a legendary king. The Athena Parthenos was also created to represent the warrior goddess standing at full height over the Persian Wars, in which Athens triumphed. It literally held all of the cities wealth within and on the statue. It also was the center of a cult who praised and worshipped Athena on a regular basis and was incredibly powerful. Therefore the Athena Parthenos signified two major themes: power and wealth within the city of Athens and a symbol of victory over those who started wars with Athens. Because of the great power the city of Athens represented, replicas and copies were made of either the entire statue or parts of the statue in various cities.

 

Why do you find it beautiful?

For as long as I can remember, I have always found Ancient Grecian culture to be the most interesting thing in the world. This is why the majority of my blog will be about different pieces of art based on Ancient Grecian culture and mythology, starting with the Statue of Athena Parthenos. The Statue of Athena Parthenos is beautiful to me in so many different ways. The most prominent reason being that it is simply lost. By lost, I mean that the actual, original, physical statue is lost. Many might question why I find a lost sculpture to be so riveting and honestly, it doesn’t even make sense to me. How can a piece of art be beautiful if you haven’t ever actually seen it before? Well, like we discussed in Philosophy, just because we have no proof that it once existed and just because we have never seen the original sculpture, doesn’t mean that it is not beautiful. I think that art that can be recreated and re-imagined by another artist who has never seen it before, but believes that in some lifetime, that piece of art existed and was revered by many, is beautiful. In Philosophy class, we learned and interpreted the idiom, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, yet this sculpture was never seen by anyone, and was recreated in places all over the world. They based their sculptures on stories that were passed down by generations and created that sculpture in their own artistic style. One sculpture created a ton of copies, all trying to capture the beauty that the original sculptor, Phidias, created.