© Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University

ClassificationsWorks of Art on Paper

West Facade of the Parthenon

Dateca. 1865

Credit LineGift of William Knight Zewadski

Object number2002.011.020

Label TextThe Parthenon is so named because it housed the sculptor Pheidias's gold and ivory statue of Athena Parthenos, or Athena the Virgin. It was the first building begun under the Periklean program of renewal and was constructed of Pentelic marble between 447 and 432 BC by the architects Iktinos and Kallikrates. Its exterior colonnade is in the Doric order, but several features of the Ionic order were also incorporated. Much of the Parthenon's appeal through the ages is credited to the enlivening "refinements"-the slight upward curvature of its platform and the subtle swelling and tapering of the columns-employed by the architects. It became a Christian church in the fifth century AD and then a mosque, following the Ottoman conquest in the sixteenth century. The building was preserved in good condition until 1687 when, under bombardment by a force led by the Venetian general Morosini, it was hit by a shell that ignited the gunpowder magazine which the Turks had stored within its walls. Much of the sculptural ornament was lost in this explosion, and its original appearance can now only be conjectured. Much more of the sculpture was removed by Lord Elgin in 1801-05 and is now in the British Museum in London.
Exhibition HistoryAn Eye for Antiquity: Photographs from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. William Knight Zewadski, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, Florida, October 25 - December 13, 1991
The Eye of Greece: Athens in Nineteenth-Century Photographs, Michael C. Carlos Museum, September 25 - November 24, 2004
Published ReferencesMCCM Newsletter, September - November 2002.

ProvenanceEx coll. William Knight Zewadski, United States.

Status

Not on view

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