Because of the current start of ruin of the Parthenon in Athens, many theories about how it would originally have looked are somewhat speculative. The fact that Lord Elgin removed many of the sculptures, in no way helps either.

While looking for something else, I came across information on Emory University’s Parthenon Project. They were aiming to try & see how the frieze on the Parthenon might have originally looked from ground level. This fascinated me, as I spent a lot of time creating 3D models to research this same aspect of the building in 2000.

The viewpoint taken by many, is that due to its location & restricted viewing angle, the frieze would have been barely visible to people viewing the Parthenon on the Acropolis, if they did not already know about it. Even then, their views would be limited, because it would be seen from such a steep angle.

With their Parthenon Project, Emory University’s students aimed to use the replica of the Parthenon in Nashville to test out the various theories about the visibility of the frieze.

Although Nashville’s Parthenon is a close replica of the actual Parthenon, it never had the frieze installed due to a lack of funds. This meant that the first task for the students was to recreate the frieze panels. They did this in a variety of ways, creating them flat & in relief, in colour and in black and white. This use of colour is a very interesting step. We know that the panels were originally painted, but when we visualise them, we still tend to see them as they are today in the Acropolis Museum & British Museum, where the detail on them is formed by the shadows cast & therefore becomes more visible when the light is less diffuse. What had not been tested before was how the painting on the surface of the sculptures would have helped to define them more clearly, making the fine detail far more apparent even in the comparative gloom of the location of the frieze (compared to the metopes which were in bright sunlight).

I would be interested to see this experiment re-attempted in Athens – although I’m not sure where it could be done, as the Parthenon now has no roof. The attic sunlight is breathtaking in its sharpness & I wonder whether the sculptures would still be as clear to see on a summers day there as they were in the Nashville experiment.

Visit the website for the project for far more detail about its aims & the issues they encountered in trying to recreate what was originally there.

From:
Emory University

The Problem: the Visibility of the Parthenon Frieze
By Bonna D. Wescoat

The Parthenon is the most famous ancient Greek building, and its celebrated frieze, dispersed between London, Paris, and Athens, is one of the icons of western art. We view the frieze today at eye level within a museum setting, but originally it was placed at the top of the cella wall behind the surrounding colonnade. The location has baffled scholars, who find a serious disjunction between the high level of articulation and meaning, and the low level of visibility. Scholarly opinion on the visibility of the Parthenon frieze is universally negative. The frieze is described as illegible and fragmented, its position dark and cramped. Photographs tend to confirm the awkwardness of the position. In making this assessment, we are of course seriously hindered by the state of the remains. The reliefs are no longer on the building, and the building no longer has its ceiling and roof.

Scholars and the general public have long admired the precise replica of the Parthenon built in the 1920s in Nashville because it allows us to recapture some of the experience of being in an ancient Greek temple. But there is one very important way in which scholars have not yet mined the value of the Nashville Parthenon: it has the capacity to serve as a crucial tool for understanding the visibility of the Parthenon frieze.
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The Parthenon frieze today, whether you look at it in the New Acropolis Museum or the British Museum, is on full display, easily observed by any visitors who stand in front of it. When it was on the Parthenon though, it was a much harder entity to observe – hidden high up, inside the outer columns & thus blocked by the outer beam containing the metopes.

Because it is hard to get access close to the Parthenon because of the restoration works, it is not so easy to see today, just how obscured the sculptures actually were in ancient times. I first looked at this as part of my university thesis, twelve years ago, when I noticed this issue from looking at sectional drawings through the building & then later on a 3D CAD model that I constructed.

It was not a completely unplanned problem though, as the depth of the relief of the carving of the frieze is carefully graded from top to bottom, to enable them to be ore clearly seen from below.

At the time that I was researching the issue, I came up with possible theories on why they might have created such a large amount of sculpture that was almost hidden in this way – but was unable to prove any of them & reached no firm conclusions on the subject. I’m very interested to see what other ideas come up as a result of this new research project into this aspect of the Parthenon’s sculptures.

You can find out more about Emory University’s Parthenon Project here. As with the Caryatid Hairstyles Project, that I mentioned a few days ago, its great to see that so much research is being made into the art & architecture of ancient Greece – and that even with sites as intensively studied as the Parthenon, it is still possible to rediscover many more new things from its ruins.

From:
The Tenessean

Parthenon puzzle is doozy
Art students try to solve mystery behind frieze
3:06 AM, Nov 11, 2012

It’s one of the mysteries of the ancient world, an architectural enigma that has puzzled art historians for centuries.

And one that a group of students were trying to solve on Saturday in Centennial Park.

The original Parthenon in Athens, Greece, was an architectural triumph devoted to the goddess Athena. And in spite of being held up as a masterpiece of the Classical Era, art historians for centuries have wondered why its designers hoisted an immaculately sculpted frieze to a spot partially obscured by the Parthenon’s iconic columns.
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Nashville has the only accurate full size replica of the Parthenon anywhere in the world (although it looses a lot from lacking the context of the Acropolis to surround it). A new exhibition there, looks at some of the history behind this monument.

From:
News Channel 5

Exhibit Exploring Parthenon’s History Opens Tuesday
Posted: Nov 08, 2011 12:22 PM GST Posted: Nov 08, 2011 12:22 PM GST

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A new permanent exhibit exploring the Parthenon’s history will open on Tuesday.

It houses artifacts from the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition, which is when the Parthenon was first built out of plaster and wood as the Fine Arts Building. After the Exposition, which celebrated Tennessee’s hundredth year as a state, the Parthenon was in danger of being torn down.
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Mention the Parthenon to someone in Tennessee & it is likely that they will think you are referring to the copy in Nasahville, rather than the original in Athens. The Nashville copy is the most complete replica of the building, but it entirely lacks the imposing context of the original, being located in a flat park. There is another less known copy – the Walhalla in Germany, that whilst not being an exact copy of the building, enjoys a far more similar location, & as a result manages to recapture some of the magic of the Athenian Acropolis.

From:
Guardian

Welcome to Nashville, home of rhinestone, cowboys…
…and the Parthenon. Jonathan Glancey on the Athens of the south
Jonathan Glancey
Monday June 11, 2001
The Guardian

Subtract Elgin marbles from Parthenon and what do you get? Trouble, on a suitably epic scale. The battle for the return of the Parthenon frieze to its original home in Athens has been, to say the least, protracted. This summer it enters a fresh phase as 14 firms of architects around the world, but mostly in Greece, prepare designs for the new Acropolis museum – a cluster of three modern pavilions, one of which will be reserved for the Elgin marbles. How long it will stay empty remains to be seen. The position of the British government is that the marbles will stay in London.

Some 20bn drachmas (£36m) have been promised for the winning design team. The result will be announced later this year, and work is due to begin on the building at the start of 2002. One answer might be to reproduce the marbles. Well, maybe not. Everyone wants the real thing, and, in this case, the real thing is of undimmed magnificence – unlike the tourist-besieged Parthenon itself, which continues its long, slow decline, ravaged by pollution.
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