In: Duveen Gallery (Elgin Marbles) British Museum, at the bottom of the steps leading to the East Pediment.

At: POSTPONED INDEFINITELY DUE TO COVID-19 OUTBREAK.  Email NK for to express interest, or for more information - Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Lunch at the Court Café in the Great Court at 12:30.

It is highly probable that the west pediment of The Parthenon is a Roman reproduction of the original Greek Classical work. The seminar will be led by Nigel Konstam who published his discovery of two industrial sized chimneys used by Phidias for melting bronze in The Oxford Journal of Archaeology in 2002. One chimney is on the Acropolis rock only 150 m down-wind from The Parthenon. Konstam believes that this chimney was the source of the prolonged pollution that invaded The Parthenon long before the damage caused by the Venetian bombardment of 1687; that pollution would have been short lived. The black is deeply embedded in the stone and is still very evident on the east pediment but not on the west. Yet the west pediment should have received more damage being closest to the chimney; hence the need for a seminar. The soot is still obvious today after many attempts to clean the sculptures.

The seminar will assemble in the Duveen Gallery (Elgin Marbles) and visit the evidence. It is hoped that any doubters will attend and debate with Konstam in front of the evidence. Afterwards, if there is time and interest we will proceed to room 70 where Konstam will explain his geometrical analysis of the bust of Hadrian and how three dimensional geometry developed through copying sculpture, and has since influenced the better part of European drawing - with examples from Holbein, Rembrandt and Degas. (This is the subject of chapters 2 & 9 of the ebook)

Nigel Konstam is available as tutor in sculpture, drawing and Alternative Art History at The Verrocchio Arts Centre, near Siena, Tuscany.
www2.verrocchio.co.uk