The Torso in the Athens National Museum Inv. No. 3045. Fragment of a Pediment Composition with the Birth of Athena?

Abstract

The torso in the Athens National Museum Inv. No. 3045 comes – as is commonly accepted – from a statue of Zeus seated on a throne. The shallow depth of the figure and the rough workmanship on the rear side show that the torso was part of the sculptural decoration of a pediment.Crucial for the interpretation is the complex system by which a heavy appendage was attached; part of the system is preserved on the back of the left shoulder. The author holds that a statuette of Athena was affixed here which was visible behind and above the left shoulder, and that we are consequently dealing with a depiction of the birth of Athena rendered in the Archaic manner. This interpretation leads the author to the hypothesis that the statue was part of a composition showing the birth of Athena  ek ths kephalhs tou Dios, which is attested by Pausanias 1, 24, 1 to the west of the Parthenon. The author links the torso in the Athens National Museum Inv. No. 3045 with the fragments of the quadriga horses in the Acropolis Museum, Inv. No. 6454 and 15244, which are also deemed to be part of a pediment composition on the Acropolis. He does not attribute them to a gigantomachy – as has been done in recent years – but rather to the centre of two compositions which were intended to replace the marble pediment of the Older Temple of Athena but were never completed. The two scenes, the birth of Athena and the epiphany of the goddess, were displayed behind the Parthenon or the Older Temple of Athena, as was the case with the pediment compositions of the Sanctuary of Aphaia on Aegina which stood on separate socles under a protective canopy to the east of the sanctuary.