Interior Corridor, South Side, Showing Elgin Marbles
In 1801, after the fragments of the sculptures had lain in the debris around the temple for approximately one hundred and fifteen years, Lord Elgin, Minister to Turkey from England, persuaded the Turks, who had again conquered the Greeks, to let him go to Athens and dig up all the sculptures that he could find around the ruins. He sold these fragments to the British government, and they are now the most highly prized possessions of the British Museum, known as the Elgin Marbles.
It is popular in some quarters to criticize Lord Elgin for his action in taking the fragments from the Parthenon to England. Some have gone so far as to say that he actually robbed the temple of its sculptures. Unquestionably, the correct view of the matter is that Lord Elgin did the world a great service in salvaging the fragments from the earth in which they had deteriorated for many years and, but for him, might have suffered greater injury.
In the west room of the Parthenon at Nashville and along the corridors of the east room may be seen casts which form the only complete set of the pedimental sculptures outside of the British Museum. Many isolated groups of these may be found in America and in Europe, but all of them may be seen only at Nashville. Here they are mounted on wooden bases forming a most interesting exhibit and were obtained through the courtesy of the British Museum.
In the east room of the Parthenon at the west end of the south corridor is the head of one of Selene’s steeds, considered by many as the finest example of a horse’s head in the world. Just beyond, through the door at the end of the corridor, is seen in the west room the figure of Heracles. It is interesting to note that in the report of the artists who passed on the value of the Elgin marbles a statement was incorporated to the effect that the back muscles of the Heracles represented the finest example of physiological art known to the world of that day. Another most interesting group of sculptures, the three Fates, is seen near by in the west end of the east room. This group, thought to be the work of Phidias, is generally regarded as one of the most beautiful examples of sculptural art existing today.
The casts of the Elgin marbles in the Parthenon at Nashville, which were made by the British Government, were not obtained primarily as an exhibit but as a study for the reproduction of those sculptures now on the building. However, it was not thought inappropriate to mount the fragments and use them as an exhibit so as to permit visitors to compare the completed figures with them. The comparison can only cover approximately half the figures on the pediments as the remainder have been lost beyond recovery. Quite naturally, the question arises in the mind of the reader as to how it was possible for the artists to reproduce all of them.
In 1674, just thirteen years before the explosion which destroyed the Parthenon, young Jacques Carrey, a French artist attached to the French embassay to Turkey, on a voyage from Paris to Constantinople with the ambassador stopped off at Athens and sketched the temple sculptures. These sketches are preserved in the National Library at Paris and were made available for the artists. From a study of the Elgin marbles and the Carrey drawings, supplemented by further study of Greek contemporary art and Greek history, the artists at Nashville succeeded in making a wonderful reproduction of the Parthenon’s sculptures.
Figures from the Ionic Frieze