The Bassae Frieze is the high relief marble sculpture in 23 panels, 31 m long by 0.63 m high, made to decorate the interior of the cella of the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassae. It depicts various scenes of Greeks fighting centaurs or Amazons. It was discovered in 1811 by Carl Haller and Charles Cockerell, and excavated the following year by an expedition of the Society of Travellers led by Haller and Otto von Stackelberg. This team cleared the temple site in an endeavour to recover the sculpture, and in the process revealed it was part of the larger sculptural programme of the temple including the metopes of an external Doric frieze and an over-life-size statue. The find spots of the internal Ionic frieze blocks were not recorded by the early archaeologists, so work on recreating the sequence of the frieze has been based on the internal evidence of the surviving slabs and this has been the subject of controversy.
Archaeological research has determined that the site of the present ruin of the temple of Apollo was in continuous use since the archaic period,Discovered in 1959 by N Yalouris and confirmed by a subsequent dig in 1970, see Cooper, Bassitas:1, p.81 ff. the existing temple is the last of four on the site and designated Apollo IV. Pausanias8.41.7 ff. records that this last sanctuary was dedicated to Apollo Epikourios (helper or succourer) by the Phigalians in thanks for delivery from the plague of 429 BC.Contemporary with, but not necessarily related to, the Plague of Athens as Pausanias would contradict Thucydides 2.54.5 that the plague didn't affect the Peloponnese. This inconsistency has led Carl Peterson to propose a date of c. 420 for the dedication of the temple. See Cooper, Bassitas:1, p.75. The architecture of the temple is one of the most strikingly unusual examples of the period, departing significantly from the norms of Doric and Ionic practice and including what is perhaps the first use of the Corinthian order and the first temple to have a continuous frieze around the interior of the naos. From the style of the frieze it belongs to the High Classical period, probably carved around 400 BC. Nothing is known of its authorship: despite an ascription of the metopes to PaioniosMade by Hofkes-Brukker, principally in Die Nike des Paionios und der Bassaefries, Babesch, 36, 1961, see Madigan, Bassitas:3, p.34 (since refutedMadigan, Bassitas:3, p.35–6), the frieze cannot be associated with any sculptor, workshop or school. Instead Cooper identifies the artists of the frieze on morellian evidence as a group of three anonymous masters.Though the number is by no means agreed upon, Madigan:Bassitas:3, p.91, n.1 remarks that H. Kenner detects 9, Rhys Carpenter in unpublished notes finds 5, BS Ridgway 4 and U. Liepmann 3 groups with a pattern of influence working amongst them.
The frieze was bought at auction by the British Museum in 1815 where it is now on permanent display in a specially constructed room in Gallery 16. While the British Museum possesses most of the sculpture, eight fragments believed to belong to the frieze are in the National Museum, Athens.Cooper, Madigan, Bassitas:3, p.113 ff. Copies of this frieze decorate the walls of the Ashmolean Museum and London's Travellers Club.
History
As has been remarked the temple's existence had been known to scholars from the record in Pausanias but its location was uncertain until the accidental discovery in November 1765 by the French architect J. Bocher of the site, but he was unable to survey the place due to his murder on his second visit.William Bell Dinsmoor, "The Temple of Apollo at Bassae" Metropolitan Museum Studies 4.2 (March 1933:204–227) p 204, notes Bocher's drawings, acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1914. Though the temple was visited several times in the intervening years,Frazer, Commentary on Pausanias, vol. 4, p.404 notes 1808 by the English travellers Leake, Dodwell and Gell, but Cooper, Bassitas, vol. 1, p.13, n. 9 is more detailed. it wasn't until the expedition of 1812 that excavations began. Of the informal group of antiquaries who undertook the enterprisePeter Oluf Brondsted, John Foster, Georg Christian Gropius, Thomas Leigh, Jacob Linckh, von Stackelberg, Cockerell, Haller, Breymann and Koes. it fell to Haller to record the 1812 dig in his field notebook, the two copies of which are the only surviving details of the disposition of the intact site and finds since the drawings he made in 1811 were lost at sea.Dinsmoor 1933:205. However, though Haller's study was exacting by the standards of the day no record was kept of the findspots of the frieze, and only sketchy details that parts of the frieze were found on the paved floor of the cella, buried under other collapsed elements of the Temple, by Brondsted. Furthermore, the early explorers of the temple make little discussion of the sculpture in their subsequent publications, it was not until 1892 that they were formally published with Arthur Smith's catalogue of the British Museum's holdings.A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, vol. 1, p.270–288, (BM 520–542), 1892.
Twenty-three slabs of the Ionic cella frieze were removed in 1812 and transported to Zante along with other sculptures. The frieze was purchased at auction by the British Museum in 1815 from James Linkh, Thomas Legh, Karl Haller von Hallerstein, George Christian Gropius, John Foster and Charles Robert Cockerell who had bought it at auction.The Bassai Sculptures / The Phigaleian Frieze, British Museum, retrieved July 2010
Cockerell decorated the walls of the Ashmolean Museum's Great Staircase and that of the Travellers Club with plaster casts of the same frieze.
Reconstruction in the British Museum The frieze was constructed between 420 and 400 BC. Unlike the rest of the temple, the blocks were carved from marble. Each of the 23 stones shows sections of the frieze but it is rare to find any continuation of the design from one stone to the next. It has also been proposed that the stones were not eventually installed as they had originally been proposed in the Temple of Apollo. These two complications are important as when the stones were found they had already fallen to the ground and they were already mixed in with other building rubble. So the stones are arranged in one logical way, but it is not clear if the frieze was actually either intended or designed to be as it now appears.Plaques on exhibit, Room 16, British Museum, seen June 2010
The room where the frieze is displayed was specially constructed to be the same size as the main room in the Temple of Apollo. However, in the original placing they would have been seven metres in the air and close to the ceiling. The reconstruction puts the frieze at an easily viewable height.
The table below shows the various proposals for how the frieze may have been originally designed to be displayed. There have been a number of ideas as to how the frieze should be arranged. The arrangement made by the British Museum follows that proposed by Peter Corbett, but others by the American scholar W.B. Dinsmoor and that proposed by Haller are amongst the conflicting theories shown below.Greek architecture and its sculpture, Ian Jenkins, Harvard University Press, 2006, p.134 In some cases the authors disagree not only about the order but also about which pictures were displayed on which wall. In this case the block positions are labelled E, W, S, and N to indicate the wall.
Image Description Smith Ashmolean Foster Hahland Dinsmoor Hofkes-Brukker Felton Harrison Cooper BM/Corbett 520 Centauromachy BM520 21 05 09 01N 17W ( ) 05E 01N 01N 521 Centauromachy BM521 18 09 04 22W 15W 16E 03N 02N 19W 522 Centauromachy BM522 16 06 04 19W 09E 17E 06E 04N 18W 523 Centauromachy BM523 13 01 03 04N 15W 12S 04E 03N 04N 524 Centauromachy BM524 19 02 11 05E 11E 14S 07E 10W 21W 525 Centauromachy BM525 17 04 10 21W 10E 20E 01N 09W 23W 526 Centauromachy BM526 23 07 02 20W 14S 18E 23W 11W 17W 527 Centauromachy BM527 14 10 08 02N 08E 15E 21W 06W 02N 528 Centauromachy BM528 15 11 06 03N 18W 21E 22W 07W 03N 529 Centauromachy BM529 20 03 07 18W 12S 19E 20W 05W 20W 530 Centauromachy BM530 22 08 01 23W 13S 13S 02N 08W 22W 531 part of the Heraklean Amazonomachy BM531 03 20 16 16W 21W 11W 15W 16E 13S 532 The attack on the Greeks at Troy by Amazons under Penthesilea BM532 01 12 15 06E 04E 05W 09E 22E 08E 533 The first casualty of the Heraklean Amazonomachy. note – incomplete BM533 02 13 20 11E 06E 08W 10E 18E 11E 534 part of the Heraklean Amazonomachy BM534 08 17 19 07E 22W 07W 16W 17E 10E 535 part of the Heraklean Amazonomachy BM535 11 22 18 07E 23W 09W 18W 12W 16W 536 one Amazon and one Greek. First part of the Heraklean Amazonomachy (see other picture too) BM536 06 15 17 10E 20W 06W 11E 19E 07E 537 The death of Penthesilea at the hands of Achilles after the attack on the Greeks by Amazons. (incomplete picture) BM537 04 21 22 12E 19W 03N 08E 21E 09E 538 The attack on the Greeks at Troy by Amazons under Penthesilea BM538 12 19 21 08E 05E 10W 17W 23E 12E 539 The attack on the Greeks at Troy by Amazons under Penthesilea BM539 07 14 23 17W 07E 02N 19W 20E 06E 540 part of the Heraklean Amazonomachy BM540 05 16 12 13S 01N 01N 12S 13S 05E 541 part of the Heraklean Amazonomachy. note – see this picture too BM541 09 18 13 14S 02N ( ) 13S 14S 14S 542 Heraklean Amazonomachy BM542 10 23 14 15S 03N 04W 14S 15S 15S
Recreation John Henning's masterpieces were the one-twentieth scale models he created of the Parthenon Frieze and Bassae Frieze, which took him twelve years to complete.John Henning's miniature casts of the Parthenon frieze, British Museum, retrieved June 2010 John and his son, also John, used this work to install recreations of both friezes on other buildings.John Malden, 'Henning, John (1771–1851)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 accessed 10 June 2010
Description
Of the 23 slabs of the Ionic frieze 11 depict Greeks fighting centaurs and 12 represent Greeks fighting Amazons. Cooper and Madigan make a further distinction of the Trojan and Heraklean Amazonomachies following on from their determination of the blocks' arrangement. Yet contrary to customary practice these three scenes are not on separate sides of the building, but run continuously around the entablature with the only clear disjuncture at the northwest corner. This description follows Cooper and Madigan's reconstruction.
Trojan Amazonomachy