Commentary Prepared by Dr. Julia Lenaghan, Ashmolean Museum

A 105
Erechtheion Caryatid (C). London

Late fourth century statue of a maiden (Kore) that served as a caryatid. With five similar statues, it functioned as column supporting the roof over the southwest porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis at Athens.

Marble
Architectural Figure
H 2.298 m, face from chin to hairline 20.9 cm

From the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in Athens. The statue was removed from its position in the porch at the southwest side of the building by Lusieri for Lord Elgin in 1803. It is not clear whether he chose it because even then it was the preserved or because its artistic individuality made it stand out.
United Kingdom, London, British Museum, 407
421-409 BC

Preservation:
The statue with the lower part of the capital was made from one piece of marble. The front half of the abacus has remained in situ. The back part which is in the British Museum shows deep drill channels where it was forcibly removed from the building. The back left quarter of the capital is missing. The wrists, hands, left foot, and second toe of the right foot are missing. In place of the second toe of the right foot is a round drilled hole. The face is battered and the nose and lips are destroyed. The locks of hair that escape behind the ears are in large part missing. There is a sizeable chip on the left shin and the front portion of the right sandal and foot are battered. There is also damage to the edges of many folds.

Description:
The statue was worked in one piece of marble with the lower portion of the capital. It shows a frontal female wearing a sleeveless belted garment. She has long hair and on top of her head is a unique column capital. Above the capital, is a fragment from a lintel. The statue stands with its weight on its straight right leg and the right hip sticks out. The left leg is bent, comes forward, and pushes through the folds of the dress. The shoulders are level and do not reflect the movement of the hips. Both arms fall naturally down to the sides. The left hand (no longer extant) apparently grasped the drapery near the left thigh. The head looks straight forward. The figure wears a primarily single garment (peplos). It is a broad rectangular piece of cloth, which is folded into two sections on a horizontal line parallel to the top edge. One of the sections is considerably larger than the other. The cloth is wrapped around the body; the crease of the fold is used as the top border. At the front of the shoulders the folded edge of the back is pinned to the folded edge of the front by two large brooches. The creased edge falls in a deep U shape between the two broaches and the material below the edge spills out in V shaped folds within the U shape. The longer folded section is closer to the body and extends to the feet; the shorter folded section (apoptygma) is on the exterior and its bottom edge is visible at waist level. The longer section, closer to the body, is belted near the waist. The belt, however, is concealed by material of the longer section (kolpos) which is pulled out and blouses over the belt. The blousing portion extends further down, just below the hips, at the sides of the body and rises at the center of the body. The material of the garment is remarkable. In some places it appears thin and transparent and in others heavy and concealing. Over the breasts one can see through the short folded panel to the crinkly material below; the material stretched over the forward right leg is likewise crinkly and fine. Yet the folds of the bunched material over the left leg are solid vertical lines. The garment outlines and accentuates the physical form of the body that it covers. The folds cling to the breasts and on the right side of the body they follow the ins and outs of the waist and hip. In addition to this garment, a mantle falls down the back of the figure; its upper corners were probably fastened by the brooches of the peplos. The mantle is folded down so that one edge crosses the body at the small of the back and the lower edge at the back of the knees. The feet wear thick-soled sandals of which little is preserved. On top of the head is a basket that takes an architectural form. Around the lower section of the basket runs a bead and reel motif and above that is a large egg and dart motif. The head has a solid rectangular shape and features long thick hair. The hair is parted in the center and brushed back off the face. It covers almost all of the ear; the lobes are visible. Most of the hair is gathered loosely at the nape of the neck. Directly behind each ear some hair is braided and the braids wrap around the head; they criss-cross over each other at the middle point of the back of the head. The two braids are wrapped together at the center of the front of the head; there together they run vertically up the part. In addition, four locks, two directly behind each ear, escape from the gather; the corkscrew ends of the four locks are visible near the brooches in front of the shoulders. The main portion of the hair, gathered at the nape, falls together down the back between the shoulders. Just below the shoulders it is bound by a band. Below the band the hair hangs in a pony-tail down to the middle of the back. The hair is rendered in thick long curly locks. They are delineated by sharp, broad, mainly parallel grooves cut into a raised mass on the head. The face features a tall broad forehead with nondescript eyebrows and large eyes. The upper eyebrow is a thick projecting roll and the convex curve of the eyeball continues below the lower eyelid. The mouth appears to have once had full lips. Below the lower lip there is still an indentation before the chin. The cheeks barely taper to the solid chin which is set in a square jaw line. On the neck is a ‘Venus’ line.

Discussion:
The Kore or young maiden in the British Museum is one of six similar female statues that served as columns on the southwest porch of the Erechtheion, an unusual temple, on the Acropolis in Athens. From a combination of historical facts and building records, it is clear that the Erechtheion was begun after the Peace of Nikias in 421 BC and that the female statues were finished certainly by 409 BC and probably even by 413 BC. The statue in the British Museum is important because it is a securely dated late fifth century monument and because Lord Elgin’s removal of the statue in 1803 to England saved the statue from the almost two hundred years of weathering that its sister-statues have since suffered. The Erechtheion was a complex temple begun after the Peace of Nikias (421 BC) and finished in 406 BC after a brief interlude caused by the Athenian campaign and disaster in Sicily (415-413 BC). The building incorporated some of the oldest cult areas and ideas of Athens. These were articulated by varying architectural orders in several distinct zones and on several different ground levels. The old wooden cult statue of Athena Parthenos was set in the standard eastern section of the temple. The back (western) part of the temple was dedicated to Erectheus and to its north a porch enclosed the area struck by the trident of Poseidon. The area lying to the west of the temple was the so-called Pandroseum where the olive tree given by Athena was located. Southwest of the temple and extending under the southwest end of the temple was the site of an ancient structure considered by the Athenians to be the grave of the snaky-legged chthonic Kekrops. The porch of the Korai lies on the southwest side of the Erechtheion adjacent and partially above the Kekropeion. It is built against the temple’s south wall into which a doorway, that gave access to a staircase leading down, was cut. The other three sides of the porch were articulated by the statues of six maidens which stood on a tall orthostate base. Two maidens were located at the porch’s outer corners, two maidens on the long south side, and one maiden on each of the short (east and west) sides. They have been labelled A-F, beginning on the west side and ending at the east side. On the east side the orthostate ends directly behind the Kore. The statue in the British Museum is Kore C; it was originally located one in from the figure at the west corner of the south side. All of the figures faced south; they are all dressed the same and have the same hairstyle. Yet, A-C stood with their weight over the left leg and D-F with the weight over the right leg. In addition, each statue has small peculiarities that differentiate it from the others; for instance, the rendering of the mantle on the back of C differs from the mantle of the other five. The British Museum statue is the best preserved and is particularly fine in details. Elgin, who initially wanted all of the statues, chose this one either because even then it was the best preserved or because it was the finest artistically. The function and meaning of the porch and the Korai have been the subject of scholarly discussion for years. The Korai have been variously and unsuccessfully identified as the daughters of Kekrops (of which there were only three), the arrehphoroi (girls of about ten years of age who performed cult ritual), and nymphs. Recently, however, A. Scholl has very convincingly argued that the Porch itself is intended as a grave marker for the tomb of Kekrops (itself an old proposal but his argument includes new evidence) and that the Korai are intended to be young unmarried Athenian women who pour libations (choai) at the grave. His argument employs architectural evidence from contemporary and immediately ensuing grave monuments, literary sources, and an analysis of the iconography of the figures. The discovery of Roman copies of Korai C and D from the Forum of Augustus in Rome and Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli have allowed for the restoration of the missing features of the Erechtheion Korai. Principally the figures held elaborate, ornate phialai in their right hands, of the sort used to make liquid libations, the main act in funerary rites. In addition, the figures wore snake bracelets, a reference to chthonic deities and even Kekrops, on their wrists. The Korai’s long pony-tail hairstyle is typical in the late fifth and early fourth century and is associated with unmarried women. The peplos and the mantle hanging down the back are also features of contemporary dress for young women and are visible on figures of girls and young women on the east section of the Parthenon frieze and on grave reliefs. In addition, the building records of the Erechtheion refer to the statues as korai. Thus, Scholl’s point is that the statues, part of the architectural grave marker for Kekrops, represented young Athenian women in charge of carrying out eternally the rites for Kekrops. The particular archaic features of the Korai, such as the corkscrew locks falling down the shoulders and the hands gripping the dress near the thigh, were reminders of the venerability and timelessness of the cult and its care-takers. Scholl notes finally the subsequent use of similar figures on the Heroon in Limyra confirms the argument. Stylistically the Erechtheion Korai relate to the peplos-wearing figures of the Parthenon, some of whom also carry phialai, and to the similarly dressed figures of the Nike Temple Balustrade. Generally the Korai, which fall chronologically between the two, are said to show a level of stylistic development between the two. Kore C from the British Museum is often compared, particularly for the rendering of its back, to the statue group of Procne and Itys. Since Procne and Itys are generally ascribed--though not without difficulties-- on the basis of Pausanias to the sculptor Alkamenes, Kore C is also often attributed to him. The sculptor Agorakritos, another student and follower of Pheidias, is also frequently introduced in attempts to identify individual Korai with famous post-Pheidian sculptors. Although such sculptors may well have been employed, it is impossible to know and there is little to be gained by arguing about which sculptor might hypothetically have carved which Kore. J. Lenaghan

Bibliography:
L.D. Casey, N.H. Folwer, J.M. Patton, and G.P. Stevens, The Erechtheum (Cambridge MA 1927) especially 232-238 full documentation of building with out-dated discussion of caryatids
G. Gruben, Die Tempel der Griechen (Munich 1966) 187-199 discussion of the building
H. Lauter, "Die Koren des Erechtheion" (AntPl 16 1976) especially 21-24 and pls. 23-31 full documentation on this statue( as well as the other five caryatids) and on all aspects of the porch to which it/they belonged
B. S. Ridgway, Fifth Century Styles in Greek Sculpture (Princeton 1981) 104-108, 174, 176, fig. 83 clear stylistic presentation and discussion in conjunction with Alkamenes
E. Schmidt, Geschichte der Karyatide. Funktion und Bedeutung der menschlichen Träger- und Stützfiguren in der Baukunst (Würzburg 1982) 80-84 discussion in context of fifth century use of caryatids
M. Vickers, "Persepolis, Vitruvius, and the Erechtheum Caryatids" (RA 1985) 17-26 explanation of Erecththeion Korai with literal application of Vitruvius--Erechtheion korai were reminders of subjugation of Greek women by Persians
A. Stewart, Greek Sculpture. An Exploration (New Haven 1990) 167-168 brief comment
A. Scholl, "Choephoroi: Zur Deutung der Korenhall des Erechtheion" (JdI 110 1995) 179-212 excellent discussion of function of porch and meaning of korai
A. Scholl, Die Korenhalle des Erechtehion (Frankfurt 1998) Unable to consult so far.