The Elgin Marbles: Matters of Fact and Opinion

International Journal of Cultural Property

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 233-262

  Boardman, John ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0038038954     PISSN: 09407391     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0940739100771074     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. William St. Clair, The Elgin Marbles: Questions of Stewardship and Accountability, 8 International Journal of Cultural Property 397 (1999).
2. Elgin remarked that all privileges in Turkey have to be paid for on a scale “proportioned to the rank of the parties, the sacrifice to be made, and the eagerness shewn for the acquisition”: quoted in Arthur Hamilton Smith, Lord Elgin and His Collection, 36 Journal of Hellenic Studies 163, 310 (1916).
3. For this reason I do not give even a summary bibliography of the subject. Several friends have offered welcome corrections and suggestions, but the physical observations and opinions are my own. Ian Jenkins kindly arranged for the photography for plate 5.
4. Jacob Rothenberg, “Descensus ad terram”: The Acquisition and Reception of the Elgin Marbles (Garland, New York 1977), ch. 4A, is good on the quality and motivation of the early drawings.
5. There are also two metope heads in Copenhagen, a metope head in the Vatican and another in Würzburg, and a frieze fragment in Palermo.
6. William St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles (3d ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford 1998), describes the preliminaries in detail.
7. Possibly the best book on the matter, which also deals intelligently with eighteenth-century misperceptions of classical art and the effect the marbles had on scholarship and artists once they were displayed in London, is by Rothenberg, Lord Elgin and the Marbles, whose thesis deserves formal publication, not a photocopy of typescript
8. For the fullest modern account of the pediments see Olga Palagia, The Pediments of the Parthenon (E. J. Brill, Leiden 1993).
9. Korres, The Pediments of the Parthenon, at 156.
10. St. Clair, The Pediments of the Parthenon, at 399–401.
11. Count Choiseul-Gouffier's instructions to Fauvel in 1788: “enlevez tout ce que vous pourrez …, ne négligez aucune occasion de piller dans Athènes et dans son territoire tout ce qu'il y a de pillable …, n'épargnez ni les morts ni les vivants”: Ph.-E. Legrand, Biographie de Louis-François-Sébastien Fauvel, antiquaire et consul (1753–1838), Revue archéologique 57 (1897.[1]).
12. Fauvel himself was more circumspect: Luigi Beschi, L. S. Fauvel e il Partenone, in Parthenon-Kongress Basel 319 (ed. Ernst Berger, von Zabern, Mainz 1984).
13. Rothenberg, Parthenon-Kongress Basel, at 3, 7.
14. Ian Jenkins, Sir, They Are Scrubbing the Elgin Marbles!, 10:6 Minerva 43 (1999)
15. also, St. Clair, Minerva, at 411–414.
16. The colour question is discussed by St. Clair, Minerva, at 405–7, but his use of old photographs needs careful scrutiny.
17. Ian Jenkins and A. P. Middleton, Paint on the Parthenon Sculptures, 83 Annual of the British School at Athens 183, 203 (1988).
18. Id. at 198–199.
19. The case restated by Jenkins in his lecture at the conference, published now in What Happened to the Sculptures of the Parthenon in the 1930s? 11:2 Minerva 9 (2000). The importance of avoiding the glare may be exaggerated. There was no broad reflecting surface on the Parthenon. The columns were fluted and the plain walls behind them disguised by the columns and shadows. Articulated areas-the sculpture and mouldings-were coloured. People who live in bright countries do not need to blink at bright walls.
20. For these phenomena, differently explained, see Jenkins and Middleton, Minerva, at 188–190.
21. Id. at 198–199.
22. Id. at 188, 204–5; and 196, for the same sealing of pigment by the orange-brown accretion on slabs from the Mausoleum.
23. On the oxalates, id. at 200–7 (on rocks, 205).
24. St. Clair's, id, at 520, n. 252, sneer at Hinks over what is clearly just a missing word is unworthy.
25. For the carborundum, St. Clair, id, at 466 (rubber) and 473 (“piece of coarse …”).
26. Ian Jenkins, Acquisition and Supply of Casts of the Parthenon Sculptures by the British Museum, 1835–1939, 85 Annual of the British School at Athens 89 (1990). I am indebted to Dr. Jenkins for a tour of the nineteenth-century casts.
27. For Helios, St. Clair, Annual of the British School at Athens, at 426 and 428, plate 3
28. also, a good photo in Parthenon-Kongress Basel, Annual of the British School at Athens, plate 53.2.
29. Alison Frantz, The Hephaisteion Revisited, Archaeology 244, 246 (1954).
30. There were traces of colour beneath the black incrustation: Homer A. Thompson, Excavations in the Athenian Agora, 1953, 23 Hesperia 65 (1954). The marble is Parian, not Pentelic as on the Parthenon.
31. St. Clair, Hesperia, at 427.
32. On damage to Selene's horse, “skinned,” id. at 427.
33. Arthur Hamilton Smith, in his Summary Guide 51 (British Museum, London 1900), says, “the skin-covered arm is separately worked, and attached by rivets.”
34. Compare the north frieze slab with the old men shown in an 1850–55 photograph (Athens, 1839–1900: A Photographic Record no. 41 [Benaki Museum, Athens 1985]) with its present appearance: Frank Brommer, The Sculptures of the Parthenon plate 68 (Thames and Hudson, London 1979), for the degree of surface cleaning.
35. St. Clair, The Sculptures of the Parthenon plate, at 504, citing a Greek report comparing photographs and casts.
36. For the Lysikrates monument, photographs of casts and originals in W. Ehrhardt, Der Fries des Lysikratesmonuments, in Antike Plastik 23, 7 (Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1993); dolphin-man 31 has suffered horribly, the rest comparatively little.
37. For photographs of nineteenth-century casts of the west frieze, see Jenkins, Antike Plastik, plates 11–19
38. Jenkins, The Parthenon Frieze 105–11 (British Museum, London 1994)
39. a more telling comparison (because the casts are cleaner) of one slab in casts made in 1801 and 1872, shown in Smith, The Parthenon Frieze, at 349, figs. 12, 13 (see my Plate 13, comparing Plate 12).
40. The photographs used by Brommer were taken in the 1930s and are most accessible in his book of 1979, The Parthenon Frieze, plates 51–60.
41. Alison Frantz's photographs in Martin Robertson, The Parthenon Frieze (Phaidon, London 1975), were taken in 1958.
42. For a detailed study of the condition of the west frieze after its removal see A. Galanou and G. Dogani, The West Frieze of the Parthenon (Athens, 1993).
43. St. Clair, The West Frieze of the Parthenon, at 329.
44. On the restoration of the Parthenon frieze slab in the Louvre, see Jean Marcadé and Christiane Pinatel, Les avatars de la plaque des ergastines du Louvre au XIXe siècle, in Parthenon-Kongress Basel, The West Frieze of the Parthenon, at 338–342
45. for the Laborde head in the Louvre from a pediment, see Palagia, The West Frieze of the Parthenon, at 24–25.
46. I indicate several such in The Parthenon Frieze. A closer look, Revue archéologique 305, 305–30 (1999).
47. Rothenberg, Revue archéologique, at 349–350.