ACROPOLIS MUSEUM, Second Floor Parthenon Frieze Second Part

Take your time walking round the perimeter to look at this frieze. You’ll see the finest youths of the time advancing towards the door of the sacred temple with an offering to Athena: a peplos woven by young Athenian noblewomen and embroidered with gold thread. Phidias prepared the drawings for the frieze, but he only sculpted some parts of the sequence himself, bringing a sense of human warmth and harmonious rhythm and beauty to the whole work: until then, nothing so beautiful and, at the same time, so natural had ever been seen.

If you follow the movement of the figures, you’ll see there’s a wave running along the frieze that links them, with accelerations and pauses. There’s a smooth rhythm throughout the composition, especially evident in the horse race, where you can observe some marvelous detail in the movement of the animals’ legs and in the youths’ expressions. This is an anthem to the horse and to the eternal appeal of youth....