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GIGANTOMACHIA RELIEF, C. 10 BCE. CENTRALE MONTEMARTINI The other piece of the frieze from the Theatre of Balbus is even more reminiscent of the Great Altar of Pergamon, with its dramatic flutter of draperies. This female figure facing right, with a velificatio or cloth billowing over her head to indicate her divinity (rather like a halo in Christian art), is Athena, holding a spear or a huge arrow. She is represented uncanonically, without armour, helmet, Gorgoneion and the rest - here she is a wild maiden with her curly hair flying around her head, and her violent movement and athletic stance shows her fully engaged in battle. To her left is the drapery of another female divinity, creating a swirl of energetic movement that, especially with its original paint, must have been quite a distraction to theatre-goers.
A #ReliefWednesday add-on: a second piece of the huge #relief of the war of the gods and giants from the scenæ frons of the #Theatre of #Balbus in #Rome, a fantastic churn of draperies which has nothing to do with #Augustan sobriety and everything to do with #Pergamene sculpture.
FRIEZE WITH GIGANTOMACHIA, C. 10 BCE. CENTRALE MONTEMARTINI An excavation in 1887 in the area of the Colosseum uncovered a kiln and, next to it many Luni marble fragments, waiting to be burnt to lime powder. Pieced together, the fragments showed a badly damaged but magnificent frieze of the gods defending Olympus from the rebel giants. This section shows, from right to left, the foot and hand of Hephaestus, holding a hammer; a female figure, probably the Titaness Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis, and at left Artemis herself, unexpectedly winged but reaching to pull an arrow from her quiver. At far right, a low relief of a laurel tree implies the proximity of Apollo. Literary sources describe such a relief on the scenæ frons of the theatre of Balbus, so these pieces may have been brought into the wilderness near the Colosseum for burning after the city centre, and especially the Calcararia or lime-burners' district on the site of today's largo Argentina, abutting the theatre of Balbus, was already built up in the later C14.
#ReliefWednesday takes us all over #Rome, from the #CentraleMontemartini where this splendid relief is displayed, to the #Colosseum where it was discovered, and possibly all the way to the #theatre of #Balbus from which it originated. The indifferent ferocity of the lime kilns devoured so much.
