Amazonomachy frieze from the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai
- Title:
- Amazonomachy frieze from the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai
- Collection:
- Cornell Cast Collection
- Creator:
- Unknown (architect: Iktinos)
- Photographer:
- Mericle, Danielle
- Date:
- ca. 1890-1900
ca. 400 BCE
- Site:
- Bassai, Greece (original)
- Location:
- Goldwin Smith Hall (second floor, top of stairwell), Cornell University
Bassai, Greece (original) - ID Number:
- CCC_0768d
- Accession Number:
- Sage no. 290
- File Name:
- CCC_0768d.tif
- Original Measurements:
- 135 (W) cm
- Culture:
- Greek
- Style/Period:
- Classical
- Work Type:
- casts (sculpture)
- Materials/Techniques:
- plaster cast (sculpture)
marble sculpture in relief (original) - Subject:
- Temple of Apollo (Bassai)
Amazonomachy - Image View Type:
- overall
- Image View Description:
- from front
- Description:
- This is a cast of a slab from the Ionic frieze of the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai showing a Greek and two Amazons, one of them mounted. At the viewer's left of the slab, a Greek in frontal view, nude except for the chlamys that billows behind him, braces himself with extended right leg and bent left and reaches with his left hand to pull the hair of a mounted Amazon to the right. The Amazon rides a horse, rendered on a slightly diminutive scale, that rears up as it moves right. She wears a belted chiton that leaves her right breast bare and she twists her torso to frontal. Her body is curved to the viewer's left as the Greek works to yank her from her horse by her hair. She reaches her arms out to grab his arm in an attempt to loosen his grip. To the right, an Amazon facing front holds her right arm up and back over her heavily damaged (in the original) head. She wears a belted chiton with cross cords over her chest and holds a shield on her outstretched left arm so that the inside of the shield is visible. Her right leg is bent and shown in profile, and her left leg is straightened. She is seemingly in the act of turning to defend herself from the Greek in the adjacent block (as installed in the British Museum gallery, not as installed in Goldwin Smith
adjacent block is SSID 512941
British Museum no. 1815,1020.13). The east and south sections of the frieze were devoted to scenes of battle between Amazons and Greeks. This block has been located on the east side of the frieze. Casts of slabs from the interior frieze of the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai are installed in the common spaces at the top (second floor) of the main stairwells in both the north and south wings of Goldwin Smith Hall. - Notes:
- Items in the Cornell Cast Collection are meant for inventory and reference purposes. Metadata may not be complete in all cases.
nos. 1815,1020.17, 1816,0309.1 - Bibliography:
- W. B. Dinsmoor, "The Sculptured Frieze from Bassae," American Journal of Archaeology 60 (1956), 401-452
Hedwig Kenner, Der Fries des Tempels von Bassae-Phigalia (Vienna: F. Deuticke, 1946)
Ian Jenkins, Greek Architecture and its Sculpture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 130-150 - Repository:
- Cornell University (current)
London, British Museum (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.