Author: Angelos Delivorrias, Professor, f. director of the Benaki Museum | Photographs: Socratis Mavrommatis
MELISSA Publishing House
192 pages,120 duotone photographs, hardback, 24x33 cm, english
The text accompanying Sokratis Mavrommatis' superb photographs proposes a new reading of the sculptural composition of the Parthenon frieze. A general introduction is followed by chapters dealing with: the planning, carving, and dating of the frieze; the effects of time and the ruthlessness of historical fate; the structural continuity and thematic coherence; the presentational organization; the structuring of narrative groups and the ordering of figures; problems of interpretation and research hypotheses; the frieze’s theme as dialectic culmination of the messages emitted by the decoration of the monument as a whole in relation to the worship of the goddess Athena in Athens; the content of the Pana-thenaic procession and the deeper significance of the offering of the peplos; technical issues and aesthetic approaches.