Athena Sculpture the Hope Athena Sculpture History

¶ … Athena Sculpture

The Hope Athena

Sculpture History

According to the Greek mythology, the people that resided in a place called Attica (Greece) derived the name to the current, capital city of Greece (Athens) in honor of the Goddess Athena. People from Athens built a brilliant temple on the Acropolis, which they then called the Parthenon. The word 'Parthenos' stands for maiden when translated into Greek. An ancient myth stated that the gods established a decree that the goddess Athena was supposed to remain single and virgin. The myth is has been proven true as its perceptions realistically happened. The Hope Athena sculpture was excavated together with another statue (Hygeia) in the year 1797, in the port of Rome at Ostia (Murrin 2007). Thesis- The Hope Athena is a sculpture is a representation of ultimate impersonation, predictability and innovation towards Greek history. The assumption underlain by the sculpture's stylistic nature is depictive of the issues of patronage, visual portrayal and subjective Greek themes.

Athena's Patronage

Athena is an important goddess for the Greek whose patronage is greatly respected by the Greeks for being a goddess of wisdom, as well as a goddess of war. She was noted for her compassion and liberty, and so she was a goddess of peace. People also considered her to be a goddess of arts and crafts, more specifically when it came to weaving and spinning. Goddess Athena was looked to as a guardian of cities in Greece, remarkably in Athens, which was the capital of Greece, where the Parthenon temple was erected in her honor. Athena once contested with Poseidon (god of the sea) regarding to dominion over Attica and made an olive tree grow on the Acropolis as Poseidon made a salt-water stream gush from the Acropolis, a ruling was made in favor of Athena by the other Olympians. Despite being a virgin, Athena was greatly concerned with issues concerning fertility all for the benefit of her worshipers. Goddess Athena's patronage drove Athens to prosperity and managed to be more influential city in Greece. The worship of the goddess Athena was conspicuously maternal at Athens and Elis.

Display and Style

The Hope Athena sculpture has perspective representations from its display and addition artifacts attached to it. The goddess figure displays a cultural exhibit of the historic attributes of the Greek. Similarly, its outward expression towards its viewers is dependent in defining the characterized presentations it displays. According to Palagia et al., the Greek people due to humane condition that was portrayed in counterpoints exponentially valued the existence of the gods' sculpture. The physical display of goddess Athena instigated worship practices that revolutionized the Athenian status and insured the endurance of identity and race. It was to bring favor among the people, though other rituals were conducted at the presence of such sculptures (Palagia et al. 50).

The statue of Hope Athena is a classical art being a Roman copy of Greek originality. It is widely known Hope-Farnese Athena, named after Los Angeles County Museum of Art's (LACMA's) sculpture, which was once owned by Thomas Hope; and the other fair version in Naples, which came from the princely Farnese family (Baker 24).

Classically, the Hope Athena sculpture stands out facing forward with signature armor; the aegis that included a gorgon's head made using ivory in the middle and its fringes fashioned of snakes. She wears an elaborate helmet decorated with sphinx in the middle and Pegasos constitutes the other side of it. There is an outstretch of the right arm, whereby its holds a Nike representation (Pope 16). The symbol depicts the characteristic of victory as a goddess. Her left arm on the other side holds the rim of the shield she carries with her while supporting the hand on a lance. The centre of the shield is decorated with the image of the scene of a battle between the Giants and Olympian gods, the rim of the shield contained details of a fight that was between the Greeks and the amazons. Between the goddess and the shield, lies a coiled snake, which is made of gold.

In the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) display room, the statue stands on the far end of the Parthenon's inner room surrounded on three sides by a two -- story Doric colonnade. A shallow pool of water is situated directly in front of the sculpture with its image often reflected from the water. On top of its large size, statue of Athena attracts attention because of gold and ivory used to sculpture it.

In addition to its size, Athena's statue would have been arresting because of its use of gold and ivory. Sculptor Phidias used gold and ivory and created an eye-catching effect. Instead of carving small-scale images using ivory and then adding gold accents, he established a technique that allowed him to bend the ivory and then used the bent pieces to create a large-scale image. Using this technique, he rendered the flesh of the statue in ivory and then used gold veneer for dressing and armor: her clothing and aegis shine in gold. Athena's arms, feet, and face appeared in the bright white of ivory. The face has inlaid stones for the eyes giving it added realism. The sculpture is built around a wooden core under which lies a base made of dark blue and limestone. The base was as well adorned with scenes so descriptive: Gilded figures depicting the birth of Pandora with 20 other Greek gods and goddesses surrounding her (Quinones 281).