Who is elgin

Lusieri then asked Lord Elgin to request a firman, a special permission from the sultan himself. Finally in , the huge collection of marbles was packed up into about two hundred boxes, which were then loaded onto wagons and transported to the port of Piraeus to await their passage to England. Any answer to this question, one which has bedeviled British-Greek relations for years, is based on interpretation of the document at the heart of the affair: the firman, the decree issued by Sultan Selim III to Elgin, which was used as a justification to take the marbles.

Despite the ambiguity of the language in the firman, the landmark study by British historian William St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles, concludes that the sultan did not allow the removal and export of statues and reliefs from the Parthenon. Later, Elgin and his associates would recognize before the parliamentary committee that this act was probably illegal, but they justified it as a way to save the pieces from the damage and looting to which they had been subjected under Ottoman rule.

They also took feet—just under half—of the total frieze, as well as removing one of the caryatids female sculptures from the nearby portico of the Erechtheion, and four fragments from the frieze of the temple to Athena Nike.

Transporting the marbles to the United Kingdom was beset with problems from the outset. Hostilities with France, and the possibility of the hoard falling into French hands, led Elgin to request that a British warship docked in the port of Piraeus near Athens take the heaviest sculptures from the Parthenon pediments. Elgin had managed to keep the marbles from the French, but the same could not be said about his own person: Crossing France on his homeward journey to London, he was impris- oned and remained in custody in Pau near the Spanish border for three years until Once back in London, he began new negotiations to get the Ottoman government to authorize the second shipment of statuary, which left Piraeus in Elgin hoped to re-create the missing sections of each piece.

To carry this out, he put forward the name of the most important neoclassical sculptor of the time, Antonio Canova. The display was a sensation, attracting a huge number of artists and academics. Despite his title, Elgin was not a very rich man, especially after when he faced a ruinous divorce settlement.

Feeling the pinch, he put pressure on the British government to buy the collection. In he deposited the marbles in the home of the Duke of Devonshire and mobilized his contacts to talk up the value of the pieces and warn against the danger of them falling into foreign hands. The country was divided among those who considered they should be bought for the nation, those who considered them a waste of money, and those like the poet Byron who excoriated Elgin for taking them in the first place.

Negotiations for the sale of the Parthenon sculptures to the British crown unleashed a blazing controversy about the artistic value of the pieces. Should they be bought with public money? And was it even legal to take them out of Greece in the first place? How Much?! I have bought them on purpose for you!

Never think of Bread when you can have Stones so wondrous cheap!! And had rather not buy them at present. Give us Bread! Parliament approved the sale by a very tight margin: 82 votes in favor and 80 against. Taking the long view, he was justified in anticipating the sense of national pride Britain would feel for the marbles, and in time it became commonly accepted that the nation had purchased them for a song.

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Peter Harrington Limited. All rights reserved. Autograph Materials. Performing Arts. Private Press. Works by Women. Gift Ideas. It is about feet Construction of the temple started in B. There are three main types of sculptures on the exterior of the Parthenon that are now part of the Elgin Marbles.

Pediments are large triangular shaped niches, which contained impressive sculptures, located high up on top of the Parthenon. One pediment is located on the east side of the building and another on the west.

The sculptures on the east pediment tell the tale of the birth of the goddess Athena, while those on the west depict a battle between Athena and the god Poseidon to determine who would be the patron deity of Athens. The size of the sculptures varied depending on how close they were to the apex the highest point of the triangle. The most impressive pediment sculptures that are part of the Elgin Marbles come from the east side and illustrate reactions to the birth of Athena.

According to myth, Athena was the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Metis. Zeus was afraid that Athena would become more powerful than him so he swallowed Metis whole while she was pregnant.

In , he negotiated what he claimed was permission from the Turks - who then controlled Athens - to remove statues from the Parthenon. The document upon which Elgin claimed legality has been cited by campaigners on both sides of the argument, whose interpretations of it inevitably differ.

The British Museum maintains that Elgin was an official diplomat and had acted with the permission of Turkish authorities. Greek campaigners argue that the Turks were a foreign force acting against the will of the people they had invaded. The opposing sides agree on only one thing - that the Elgin Marbles form one of the most important collections of classical art in existence. The Marbles which were taken to Britain include about a half some 75 metres of the sculpted frieze that once ran all round the building, plus 17 life-sized marble figures from its gable ends or pediments and 15 of the 92 metopes, or sculpted panels, originally displayed high up above its columns.

Plundering classical art was common practice in that era, which saw those on the Grand Tour regularly pilfer "souvenirs" from ancient sites. Fragments from the Parthenon alone ended up in some 10 European countries, or were lost altogether.

On his return to England, Elgin told a Parliamentary inquest that a desire to protect what was left of the treasure was part of his motivation in taking them. The Turks, he claimed, had been even grinding down the statues to make mortar.