Attic Votive Relief

myminifactory

Pentelic marble Attic votive relief. Below it has a four-sided peg for insertion into a base; along the two vertical margins are holes in which something was fastened with metal pins. These details and a comparison with votive reliefs in Athens permit of a reconstruction; at the bottom the relief was fixed in a pillar or a stele and on the three sides had a frame about the picture space of the same depth as the foot profile. What in the Bendis relief (No. 231) was executed in a piece of marble, here was pieced together of several parts. Originally on the lower part of the pillar were the names of the persons represented, the little founder on the extreme left, only a fragment preserved, and the four godly persons who occupy the chief position. The relief was acquired in Athens in 1895 and is reputed to have been found in Piraeus. It is a very handsome votive relief, strongly influenced by the art of the Parthenon frieze but somewhat later, about 420 B. C. The figures are doubtless the Eleusirie divinities: in the middle the two goddesses Cora (Persephone) and Demeter, on the right Asclepius or perhaps more likely Pluto, leaning on his staff, on the left Triptolemus placing a myrtle wreath on his head. In Phalerum there was an Eleusinium, and the relief may have come from there (cf. Kuroniotes, Eleusiniaka (1932) p. 173-189).