Furtwängler’s Athena (Athena Lemnia)
- Title:
- Furtwängler’s Athena (Athena Lemnia)
- Collection:
- Cornell Cast Collection
- Creator:
- Unknown (Roman copy)
Pheidias (Greek original)
- Photographer:
- Mericle, Danielle
- Date:
- ca. 1890-1900
1st or 2nd c. CE (Roman copies)
ca. 450-440 BCE (Greek original)
- Site:
- probably Italy or Greece (original)
- Location:
- Goldwin Smith Hall lobby, NW niche
probably Italy or Greece (original) - ID Number:
- CCC_0689
- Accession Number:
- 671
- File Name:
- CCC_0689.tif
- Original Measurements:
- 219 (H of composite) cm
- Culture:
- Roman, after Greek
- Style/Period:
- Roman Imperial, after Greek Classical
- Work Type:
- casts (sculpture)
- Materials/Techniques:
- plaster cast (sculpture)
marble sculpture in the round (original) - Subject:
- Athena (Greek deity)
- Image View Type:
- overall
- Image View Description:
- from front
- Measurement:
- 207 x 8.5 (plinth) x 57 x 48 (centimeters, height x height x width x diameter)
- Description:
- This is a cast of a composite statue of Athena known as Furtwängler’s Athena or Athena Lemnia. The body is housed in Dresden and the original of the head is housed in Bologna. The goddess stands upright placing much of her weight on her straightened right leg. She wears a peplos that is belted at the waist and displays pronouncedly vertical folds to the floor. Slung over her right shoulder is an aegis. She is missing her arms from just below the shoulder (in the original, as here), but is conjectured to have held a spear upright in her left hand and her helmet in her right. She turns her head to her right. Her face is typically Classical, with almond-shaped eyes, a long, straight nose, and full lips. Her wavy hair is bound by a thick fillet. The cast has been painted a shiny brownish black to recall the appearance of Pheidias' bronze original, even though it is derived from Roman marble copies of that lost statue. The aegis, headband, and sandals are colored metallic copper. The marble head and body of the statue from which this cast derives were fitted together by Adolf Furtwängler in the late 19th c. but probably belong to two separate Roman Imperial marble copies of a lost bronze Athena attributed to the famous 5th c. BCE sculptor Phidias. It is also possible that neither the head nor the body derive from the lost work attributed to Pheidias by Pausanias (1.28.2), Lucian (Imagines 4 and 6), and Himerios (Oratio 68.4). The appearance--and therefore the identification of a type--of the statue of Athena made by Pheidias and dedicated by Athenian colonists at Lemnos on the Athenian Acropolis remains debated by scholars.
- Notes:
- Items in the Cornell Cast Collection are meant for inventory and reference purposes. Metadata may not be complete in all cases.
body: no. Hm 49
no. G1060 - Bibliography:
- Rune Frederiksen and R. R. R. Smith, The Cast Gallery of the Ashmolean Museum. Catalogue of plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture (Oxford: The Ashmolean Museum, 2011), 143, C 25
Andrew Stewart, Greek Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 261, figs. 313-314
Kim J. Hartswick, "The Athena Lemnia Reconsidered," AJA 87 (1983), 335-346
Adolf Furtwängler, Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik (Leipzig: Giesecke & Devrient, 1893), 4-36, pl. 1
John Boardman, Greek Sculpture. The Classical Period (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), 204, fig. 183 - Repository:
- Cornell University (current)
Dresden, Albertinum
Head: Bologna, Museo Civico (original) - Collecting Program:
- Cornell Collections of Antiquities
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The images in the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Casts are protected by copyright, and the copyright holders are their creators, generally Cornell University Library, Annetta Alexandridis, and Verity Platt. This collection of plaster casts owned by Cornell University was photographed by Cornell University Library, Alexandridis, Platt, and Andreya L. Mihaloew from 2010-2015, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Annetta Alexandridis. Cornell is providing access to the materials for research and personal use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Please contact Annetta Alexandridis and Verity Platt for more information about this collection, or to request permission to use these images.