Commentary Prepared by Dr. Julia Lenaghan, Ashmolean Museum
A 097
Figure M, Poseidon, from the East Pediment of the Parthenon. London and Athens
Colossal well-muscled male torso leaning to the its left with its right arm raised. From the center of the West Pediment of the Parthenon, dated ca. 430s BC
Marble (Pentelic)
Pedimental Figure
83 cm
From the Parthenon in Athens. The statue belongs to the center of the West Pediment. Morosini attempted to remove the statue in 1688; it fell and shattered during the attempt. The back portion was taken by Lord Elgin’s agent to London. The front half was excavated in 1835.
United Kingdom, London, British Museum
438/7-434/3 BC
Preservation:The torso is preserved the in three pieces: 1) the back slab, now in London, 2) the front half, Athens Acropolis 885, and 3) a small fragment of the lower abdomen, Athens Acropolis 959. The combination of the three pieces show a torso that is broken at the base of the neck, at the beginning of the right arm, just above the left elbow, and unevenly around the abdominal area. There is a metal pin in each shoulder. There is also a circular protrusion on the left shoulder blade; it looks like a broken strut. Above this area the shoulder is worked. On the upper back and the ridge of the right shoulder the surface seems to have been taken back.
Description:The colossal torso figure shows an extremely muscular nude male. It leans to its left. The right arm was raised. The anatomy of around the rib cage is crisply defined and veins, especially at the sides of the rib cage, are delineated.
Discussion:This torso, reconstructed from two large pieces, now in disparate collections, is all that remains of the figure of Poseidon from the West Pediment of the Parthenon. We are able to identify the torso as that from the center of the West Pediment by means of a drawing made by Jacques Carrey, the artist of the French Ambassador, in 1674.
The original pedimental sculpture of the Parthenon dates to the 430s BC; building records from the Parthenon allow us to place the sculpture perhaps as specifically as 438/7-434/3 BC. Pausanias (I.24.5), an author of the second century AD, identifies the scene depicted in the West Pediment as Athena and Poseidon vying for Attica and the city of Athens. Carrey’s drawing shows that in 1674 almost all the figures of the West pediment were still in situ and mainly intact. Clearly the two central figures in the drawing, corresponding to Pausanias’ description, are Athena and Poseidon. In Carrey’s drawing the figure of Poseidon, standing just to the viewer’s right of center, is almost entirely preserved; it lacks only the feet, the lower left leg, the right arm, and the left forearm. The figure probably held a trident in his right hand with its fork directed at the ground. This is the pose and gesture that Poseidon makes on vase paintings of the same scene.
The figure of Poseidon appears to have been destroyed between 1687 and 1688. In 1687 the besieging Venetians shelled and caused an explosion in the Parthenon which was being used as a powder magazine by the Turks. In 1688 the Venetian commander Morosini attempted to remove the central figures of the West Pediment and inadvertently smashed them. The Poseidon seems to have been damaged in Morosini’s removal attempt. In Richard Dalton’s rendering of 1749, the torso of the figure lies on the pediment floor. In the early 1800s Lusieri, Elgin’s agent, was able to recover the back of the figure in the foundation of a Turkish house near the west end of the Parthenon. He took that portion to England. About thirty years later, in 1835, the front portion of the torso was excavated. It remains in Athens. A smaller piece of the lower abdomen was found yet later.
Scholarly debate on the figure focuses on the odd round protrusion on the back below the left shoulder blade. Some, using the hydria in St.Petersburg that shows a similar scene, have suggested that it was a strut for a mantle. If that were the case, it should be pointed out that he mantle could not have gone directly over the shoulder since that area is fully worked. Others have suggested that perhaps the strut functioned as some type of structural support.
The image is copied in a series of three Tritons found in the Athenian Agora. Two are mirror reflections of Poseidon and one preserves the original position. This latter version even preserves its head the general appearance of which corresponds to the head of Poseidon as drawn by Carrey. It is worth noting that the figure of Poseidon was used for Tritons which, albeit related, are not the same. Thus, one should hesitate to conclude that Figure D of the East Pediment (cat.no. A 91) or Figure G of the East Pediment (cat.no. A 92) had to be Dionysos or Artemis because the body types of D and G are used elsewhere for Dionysos and Artemis.
J. Lenaghan
Bibliography:A.H. Smith,
British Museum. The Sculptures of the Parthenon (London 1910)
F. Brommer,
Die Skulpturen der Parthenon Giebel. Katalog und Untersuchung (Mainz 1963) 42-43, 107-110 pls.103-106
catalogue entry with full bibliography and scholarly opinions, lists other sculpture based on this figureF. Brommer,
Die Parthenon Skulpturen-Metopen, Fries, Giebel, Kultbild (Mainz 1979) 42 pl.12
essential information succinctly presentedB. F. Cook,
The Elgin Marbles (London 1984) 42 fig.49
succinct discussion in catalogue for general publicJ. Boardman,
The Parthenon and its Sculptures (London 1985)
O. Palagia,
The Pediments of the Parthenon (Leiden 1998) 47 figs.95-96
discussion preservation and historyM. Lagerlöf,
The Sculptures of the Parthenon: Aesthetics and Interpretation (New Haven 2000)
