The Marmoreal Marvels of the Earl's Expropriation

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n The artists of the Renaissance knew the works of thenancient Greek masters from Roman copies and from the few original works thatnhad been plundered from various sites but there was no real interest in thenoriginals until the German Johann Joachim Winckelmann began hisndifferentiations of Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art. I’ll return tonWinckelmann another day, but it may fairly be said that he was the father ofnHellenism, the study of the Ancient Greeks.

Winckelmann – Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks – 1765

nHis masterpiece, History ofnAncient Art (1764), and other writings were crucial spurs at the time andninfluenced other writers who were becoming interested in the Greeks.

Richard Pococke – A Description of the East and some other Countries – 1745

nRichardnPococke, an English prelate and traveller, had published an account of AncientnGreek architecture in his A Description of the East and Some Other CountriesnVol 2 Pt 2 (1745), which are just that – descriptions – and two other Englishmen,nJames Stuart and Nicholas Revett, made detailed measurements, descriptions andndrawings of ancient buildings in their The Antiquities of Athens (1762).

Stuart and Revett – The Antiquities of Athens – 1745

nThey were members of the Society of the Dilettanti and as early as 1744 othernDilettanti had begun to collect fragments from the Acropolis.

The Parthenon – from Richard Pococke – A Description of the East and some other Countries – 1745

nIn 1799, anthirty-three year old Thomas Bruce, 7^th Earl of Elgin, was appointedna special ambassador of the Great Britain to the Ottoman Empire of Selim III,nand prior to his departure to Constantinople Elgin approached several membersnof the British Government with inquires as to him procuring casts and drawingsnof the statuary of the Acropolis of Athens, but he was met with negativenresponses or disinterestedness.

Ruins of the Parthenon – E Dodwell – A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece – 1819

nUndeterred, Elgin enlisted two architects, anpainter, a sculptor and two moulders at his own expense, who were supervised bynGiovani Lusieri, a Neopolitan court painter, and on arrival in Constantinople henobtained a firman (a royal mandate), which gave his team unrestricted access tonthe Acropolis. When Elgin went to Athens himself, he arranged to purchase andndemolish two of the Turkish hovels built near the Parthenon. Beneath one werenmany fragments of the statues from the temple but there was nothing beneath thenother; Elgin asked one of the locals why this might be and was answered by ansardonic smile and a finger pointing to the walls – the marble statues werenbeing burned to provide the locals with building lime.

The Parthenon – from Stuart and Revett – 1745

nHe compared whatnremained with what Stuart and Revett had documented fifty years before and wasnshocked at the amount that had been destroyed or spirited away as keepsakes bynsightseers. Concerned that they might all be lost, Elgin revised his plans tonmerely document the statues and decided instead to remove them. With a sizeablenamount of bribery to local officials, Elgin applied an imaginativeninterpretation to the firman, particularly a clause that said no one should,

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n“…nhinder them from taking away any pieces of stone (qualche pezzi di pictra) withninscriptions or figures.”

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Elgin Marbles – Metopes

nElgin’s chaplain, Dr Phillip Hunt, immediatelyndespatched one of the carved metopes on board a ship bound for England and fornthe next year an army of between three and four hundred men were employednremoving marble figures and inscriptions from the Acropolis.

The Parthenon Pediments – Stuart and Revett – 1745

nSome of thenprincipal figures from the pediments, fifteen metopes and fifty-six slabs ofnthe frieze were removed from the Parthenon, together with numerous other loosenfragments; in addition, one of the caryatids was taken from the Erechtheion,nwith four sections from the frieze of the temple of Athene Nike, a number ofnarchitectural remains and more than a hundred inscribed stones making upnElgin’s booty.

Metope and Triglyph – Stuart and Revett – 1745

nIn 1803, he was recalled from his post and visited Athens on hisnway home, where two hundred crates were ready for shipment. Elgin left Lusierinto superintend matters and departed, but he was illegally detained by thenFrench and held in Paris for two years after a breakdown in the Peace ofnAmiens. The brig Mentor sank off Cerigo, taking a dozen crates to the bottomnand it was only with great effort, and expense, that they were eventuallynrecovered.

Elgin Marbles – Horse of Selene

nIt was not until 1812 that all of Lord Elgin’s marbles finally madenit to Britain, at a cost of over £70,000 but the British Museum refused to buynthem for such a large sum. In an attempt to recover his money, Elgin sued hisnwife’s lover, Robert Ferguson, for an appropriately high amount and laterndivorced her; she went on to marry Ferguson.

Elgin Marbles – ‘Theseus‘ – from east pediment

nIn their first few years innEngland, the crates were stored in the mansion of the Duchess of Portland, thennin Richmond Gardens, then at Elgin’s residence in Park Lane and finally atnBurlington House. Trouble then arrived from another quarter. Richard PaynenKnight, a classicist, collector and member of the Dilettanti Society, let it benknown that Jacob Spon, a traveller from some hundred and thirty years earlier,nhad seen the statues on the pediment of the Parthenon and thought them to benRoman additions from the second century.

Elgin marbles – The Fates – east pediment

nWithout even seeing the marbles fornhimself, Payne opined that Elgin had spent his time, money and effort onninferior works from a later date, and they were not worthy of consideration. Such was Knight’s authority and standing,nElgin found himself painted as an ignorant, tasteless vandal, as bad, if notnworse, than the souvenir keepsake-takers from whom he had sought to save thenstatues.

Elgin Marbles – Hera and Zeus – east frieze

nHe was nicknamed ‘Stone-monger’, ‘Marble-dealer’ and evenn‘Marble-stealer’; Lord Byron weighed in with lines in his Childe Harold,n

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n“The walls defaced, the mouldering shrinesnremoved

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nBy British hands, which it had best behoved

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nTo guard those relics ne’er to be restored.”

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Elgin Marbles – Preparing for Panathenaea – west frieze

nThings took a turn for the better for the 7^thnEarl following the visit of two foreign connoisseurs; Ludwig, Crown Prince ofnBavaria, who examined the marbles and declared the reliefs to be the ‘perfectionnof Art’, and Ennio Quirino Visconti, Director of the Musée Napoléon,nParis, the greatest living archaeologist in the world, who asserted thenimportance of the marbles to history and their significance to culture.

Elgin Marbles – Horsemen – east frieze

nW RnHamilton, Elgin’s former secretary and in 1815 the Under Secretary of State,nreissued a revised Memorandum on the subject of the Earl of Elgin’s Pursuitsnin Greece, which recommended that Parliament purchase the marbles for thennation.

W R Hamilton – Memorandum – 1815

nThings were postponed, momentarily, by the Battle of Waterloo but afternNapoleon had been satisfactorily seen off and England was safe once more,nnegotiations began again. After expert evidence was presented from, amongstnothers, Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy, and letters from foreignnexperts read, Parliament decided on June 7^th 1816, to pay Elginn£35,000 for his marbles.