David Prudames, British Museum

In AD 79, late in the year, two cities – Herculaneum and Pompeii – along with various small towns, villages, and farms in the south of Italy were wiped out in just 24 hours by the catastrophic eruption of the nearby Mount Vesuvius. This event ended the life of the cities, but preserved them to be rediscovered by archaeologists nearly 1,700 years later.

These were not extraordinary cities; they died in an extraordinary way, but they were ordinary ancient Roman cities, and because of this they have been able to become a lens through which we can see and understand a whole civilisation.

Portrait of baker Terentius Neo and his wife. Pompeii, AD 55–79. © DeAgostini/SuperStock

In spring 2013, these two cities and their unique story will be explored in a major exhibition at the British Museum, that will – in the words of Museum Director, Neil MacGregor – be a chance ‘to visit the cities and to visit the houses in the cities; to be inside a Roman household, inside a Roman street; to know what it felt like, to know what was going on.’

Through objects from the British Museum collection and an immensely generous loan of 250 objects from Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum – many of which have never been seen outside Italy – the exhibition will focus on the daily lives of the ordinary people who lived there.

Exhibition curator, Paul Roberts explained how in exploring daily life we have a chance to see how people like us would have lived in an ancient reflection of our own lives:

‘Daily life; the home, and domestic life, it’s something that we all share. The home gives us a wonderful opportunity to explore how people like us lived in Roman times: perhaps they didn’t all go to the baths, or the amphitheatre, but poor or wealthy they all had a home.’

Through some of the most famous objects to have emerged from the two cities, and finds unearthed during recent archaeological work there, the exhibition will look at the make-up and activity of homes – and the people who lived in them – at both Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Gold bracelet in the form of a coiled snake, 1st Century AD, Pompeii

Often the stories revealed are surprising. For example, from Pompeii, the large industrial centre of the region with a population of around 12-15,000, comes a statue of a woman commemorating her funding – with her own money – of the largest building in the forum, the heart of the city. This, in a male-dominated society where women might not usually be known as the rich patrons of civic monuments.

While at the same time, the more mundane elements of life are revealed in objects such as an extraordinarily well-preserved loaf of bread that, in Paul’s words, ‘went in the oven in AD 79 and came out in the 1930s’.

But of course the reason we know this story and can see these wonderful objects is because of the tragedy which struck in AD 79. Incredible finds from Herculaneum, a smaller seaside town of some 4-5,000 inhabitants, include food, leather, and wooden furniture – from a table to a baby’s cot – and survive only because they were carbonised (turned into charcoal) by the 4-500 degree Celsius volcanic avalanche that engulfed the city.

As Paul explained:

‘We can’t imagine the horror of that day, but we can see what people did. Some of them were practical, taking a lantern or a lamp to help them stumble through the total darkness of the volcanic blizzard. Other people took gold and silver in the form of coins or jewellery. One little girl took her charm bracelet with pieces from all over the Roman world and beyond, such as cowries from the Indian Ocean, amber from the Baltic, rock crystal from the Alps, faience from Egypt. She had this with her when she died on the beach at Herculaneum with hundreds of others.’

Some 2,000 years later that charm bracelet will be among the objects on display at the British Museum next year, allowing us as it does to recall and remember the real people whose lives we are so privileged to be able to see and understand:‘We had to have the death of Pompeii and Herculaneum to know so much about the people who lived there, but it’s their lives that we will be celebrating in this exhibition.’

Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum is open from 28 March 2013.

The exhibition is sponsored by Goldman Sachs.
In collaboration with Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.

Tweet using #PompeiiExhibition and @britishmuseum

Thomas Kiely, British Museum

Upper part of a colossal limestone statue of a bearded man

This colossal limestone statue of a worshipper – identified by the elaborate wreath of leaves and berries around his head – was found in the ruins of a sanctuary near the village of Dali in central Cyprus in 1869. His missing left arm once held a laurel branch, another sign that he is taking part in a religious ritual, perhaps in honour of a god of the countryside. The costume, facial features and beard combine early classical Greek and Persian styles in an eclectic manner very typical of Cypriot artists who drew widely from their neighbours to create a unique Cypriot look.

The size of the figure and the high quality of the carving suggest this is an image of a king or priest. During the first millennium BC Cypriots erected thousands of large-scale images of themselves in sanctuaries to ensure their prayers to the gods continued for eternity. Cypriot sanctuaries were typically open air enclosures with few grand buildings such as temples. The sanctuary at Dali honoured a male god, depicted as a lion killer who protects humans from the wild forces of nature. He was later associated with the Greek Apollo and Phoenician Reshef who had similar attributes. This ‘Master of the Animals’ also acted as the patron god of the ancient city of Idalion where his sanctuary was once located.

The statue was discovered along with hundreds of others by Robert Hamilton Lang, then manager of the Imperial Ottoman Bank on Cyprus. Lang’s career is a typical example of nineteenth-century social mobility, from a relatively humble background in Scotland to being one of the most respected bankers and financial administrators in both the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. Lang’s interests in archaeology on Cyprus were encouraged by a Cypriot antiquarian, Demetrios Pierides, who introduced many foreign travellers and amateur archaeologists to the heritage of the island. Pierides lived in London for a time in his youth and, on return to his homeland, became a leading figure in Cypriot economic and intellectual life, helping to establish the Cyprus Museum in 1882.

The British Museum has benefited enormously from the generosity of more recent Cypriot entrepreneurs with close links to United Kingdom. The A.G. Leventis Foundation has supported the work of the museum for many years in displaying and studying what is recognised as one of the most important collections of Cypriot antiquities outside of the island. If the A.G. Leventis Gallery of Ancient Cyprus had provided a mirror to the extraordinary culture of the island in antiquity, then it also bears witness to the vibrancy and dynamism of the modern Cypriot diaspora in the United Kingdom.

This was first published in the London Evening Standard on 25 October 2012.

The Colossus of Dali is on display in Room 72: Ancient Cyprus

Vanessa Baldwin, exhibition project curator, British Museum

Many of the objects on display in the exhibition Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, are not artefacts, they are people’s possessions. The people living in these two cities saw them and used them every day; they commissioned them or bought them for each other, and for themselves.

After years of researching, planning, designing and building, the exhibition is now open and it’s all about the people – people going through their daily lives with no idea of what was coming; the volcanic eruption in AD 79 that destroyed their cities, their lives over in an instant.

My favourite object, at the moment – because it does change from moment to moment – is a marble plaque from Herculaneum. It was set up between two houses and on one side it reads: ‘this is the property of Marcus Nonius Dama, private and in perpetuity’. And on the other side it reads, ‘this is the wall of Julia, private and in perpetuity’.

Marcus and Julia were ex-slaves, and they were living next door to each other. They must have had some sort of dispute about the boundary between their houses and this plaque was set up to resolve it. The extraordinarily human stories like this one are what I love most in the exhibition: to know people’s names, know who they were living next door to, and how they might have lived.

Seeing the trucks full of objects arriving from Italy really took our breath away. To then see them emerge from their crates to become part of a design that we’d only ever seen on paper has been the most special experience.

Over the 15 months I’ve been working on the exhibition, it has been a privilege to share the process of staging an exhibition with the curator Paul Roberts and the many fantastic people in the Museum who’ve worked alongside us. To go from object research and selection to their arrival and installation has been a whirlwind that I’ll never forget.

And now we get to share the stories, the objects and the people of Pompeii and Herculaneum with everyone.

Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum is open from 28 March 2013.

The exhibition is sponsored by Goldman Sachs.
In collaboration with Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.

Tweet using #PompeiiExhibition and @britishmuseum

Vanessa Baldwin, exhibition project curator, British Museum

For many people visiting the exhibition, Life and Death Pompeii and Herculaneum, it may be the first time they have encountered the smaller city which lay west of Mount Vesuvius.

General view of Herculaneum with Vesuvius in the background © Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.

While Pompeii became a household name, immortalised in books, television and cinema, Herculaneum has remained relatively unknown in popular culture. In the exhibition we felt it was important to show why Herculaneum is just as important as its famous neighbour. The cities were destroyed by the same catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, yet at different times and under different circumstances. For these reasons Herculaneum differed from Pompeii, not only in its life as a smaller coastal city, but also in the incredible things that were preserved there. As a result it has different stories to tell.

Herculaneum was actually the first of the two cities to be re-discovered in the eighteenth century. In 1710 a well-digger chanced upon the theatre, where later finds included the bronze statue of the wealthy ex-slave and city benefactor, Lucius Mammius Maximus.

Bronze statue of Lucius Mammius Maximus © Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.

Herculaneum was buried much deeper by the volcano than Pompeii, more than 20 metres in some areas, so the first explorations of the site were carried out by tunnelling through the hardened ash. Pompeii, on the other hand, was only buried by about 4 metres of ash in some places. This meant that in the months following the eruption people returned to the city to salvage statues, building materials and whatever else they could find. However, it also meant that when Pompeii was rediscovered in 1748, it was possible to excavate large areas relatively easily. Visitors preferred to wander the open-air streets, houses and public buildings of Pompeii, than clamber down dangerous tunnels in Herculaneum. So although many of the most impressive discoveries, such as the bronze and marble statues from the Villa of the Papyri, were made in Herculaneum, it was Pompeii that attracted the tourists. As Pompeii became the focus of the excavations of the Bourbon kings of Naples, the tunnels of Herculaneum were filled in and interest in the site waned until open-air excavations began years later. The creation of plaster casts of the victims of Pompeii by Giuseppe Fiorelli in the 1860s sealed its fate as the city which set imaginations alight.

Herculaneum was also the first of the two cities to be destroyed in AD 79. The initial surge of superheated ash, rock and gas, following the collapse of the 20 mile high cloud ejected by Mount Vesuvius, raced towards Herculaneum and wiped it out in an instant. The temperature during the eruption is could have reached 450°C in Herculaneum, which meant that organic material, like wood and foodstuffs, were preserved. At these temperatures, and encased in volcanic material which rapidly compacted and hardened to rock, wood did not burn, but was instantly carbonised – turned to charcoal. At Pompeii, where temperatures may only have reached a cooler 350°C, organic material has very rarely survived. It is Herculaneum that has yielded the furniture, the straw baskets and the loaves of bread.

Carbonised furniture and food © Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.

The archaeological site open to visitors today presents a striking scene: lying metres below the current ground level, with the modern town of Ercolano perching above it and Vesuvius still looming in the background. There are two-storey buildings, wooden doors, staircases and even racks holding amphorae, still in situ. Once an ordinary city of the Roman empire, its destruction and preservation have made it an extraordinary place which truly deserves the same renown as its counterpart.

Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum is at the British Museum until 29 September 2013.

The exhibition is sponsored by Goldman Sachs.
In collaboration with Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.

Tweet using #PompeiiExhibition and @britishmuseum

Tim Plyming, Head of Digital Media and Publishing,
British Museum

At time of writing we are under a week away from two live cinema events for the British Museum exhibition Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and I wanted to give you a bit more detail about what we are planning, as well as a glimpse behind the scenes at the huge amount of activity now taking place.

Pompeii Live presenters Bettany Hughes and Peter Snow

Our ambition from the beginning has been to provide an exclusive ‘private view’ experience of the exhibition. We realised the best way to experience the exhibition was to have a ‘private guided tour’ in the presence of experts able to bring the objects to life through the stories they tell. This ‘private tour’ experience is of course not one that we can offer every visitor to the Museum but through a special event such as Pompeii Live we can, for one night and using the power of live satellite broadcasting, bring that experience directly into cinemas across the UK.

We are thrilled at visitors planning to join us from as far afield as Thurso, Swansea, Belfast, Plymouth and Norwich. Over 80% of the available tickets have been sold, so we are telling visitors to make sure they have their ticket in advance if they want to join us live.

Preparations for the Pompeii Live broadcast

Over the 80-minute broadcast, visitors will be led by our main presenters, Peter Snow and Bettany Hughes. They will be joined by specialist contributors including historians Mary Beard and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, chef Giorgio Locatelli and, broadcaster and gardening expert, Rachel De Thame. We feel very privileged to have such an amazing line-up who will take us much closer to the people of these tragic cities and what their daily lives were like. Giorgio Locatelli, for example, has been experimenting in his kitchen in central London with a recipe for the carbonised loaf of the bread – one of the star objects in the exhibition.

Chef, Giorgio Locatelli and broadcaster Peter Snow making plans for the event

We have already started our rehearsals and preparations for the show and feel certain that audiences are in for a real treat when they join us live on the night. On Monday, the outside broadcast vehicles arrive at the Museum and we start the process of – overnight – building a live broadcast studio in the heart of the British Museum. On Tuesday 18 June we rehearse the event and are then live to over 280 cinemas across the UK at 19.00 BST.

Following the live broadcast, over 1,000 cinemas across the world in over 60 territories will show a recorded ‘as live’ version of the event. This will be shown in cinemas as far flung as China, India and the USA.

Preparations for Pompeii Live

In addition to our main broadcast event on Tuesday 18 June, our team has developed a live cinema event for school audiences. This will allow schools across the UK to go to their local cinema and be transported live to the British Museum to explore the objects in the exhibition as well as content designed to link to Key Stage two subject areas. They’ll be guided by presenters Naomi Wilkinson and Ed Petrie, as well as a cast of specialist contributors.

You can find your nearest participating cinema, in the UK and across the world, on our website at britishmuseum.org/pompeiilive and follow preparations for both live events on Twitter using #PompeiiLive.

Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum is at the British Museum until 29 September 2013.

Exhibition sponsored by Goldman Sachs.
In collaboration with Soprintendenza Speciale per I Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.

Tweet using #PompeiiExhibition and @britishmuseum

Mary Beard, Professor of Classics, Cambridge University
Did women in Greece and Rome speak? Stupid question; of course they did. They must have chattered and joked together, laughed at the silliness of their menfolk, advised (or chatted up) their husbands, given lessons to their children… and much, much more.

But nowhere in the ancient world did they ever have a recognised voice in public – beyond, occasionally, complaining about the abuse they must often have suffered. Those who did speak out got ridiculed as being androgynes (‘men-women’). The basic motto (as for Victorian children) was that women should be seen and not heard, and best of all not seen either.

This streak of misogyny made a big impression on me when I first started learning ancient Greek about 45 years ago. One of the first things I read in Greek back then was part of Homer’s Odyssey – one of that pair of great epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey that stand at the very beginning of the whole tradition of western literature.

Gold finger-ring with a seated woman, perhaps Penelope. Western Greek, around 400 BC – 300 BC, possibly made in Sicily. GR 1867,0508.402

I remember even now coming across an extraordinary passage in the first book of the poem. Penelope, who is waiting loyally for her husband, Odysseus, to return from the Trojan War, comes downstairs from her apartment in the palace to find a bard singing. His song tells of the terrible and deathly struggles the Greek heroes are having in getting back home after the war to conquer Troy. Not surprisingly Penelope, thinking of her own husband’s troubles, is upset and asks the bard to choose a happier theme. But no sooner has she spoken than her son Telemachus – not much more than a wet-behind-the-ears teenager – tells her to pipe down and go back upstairs to her weaving, “for speech is the business of men”.

It stuck in my mind (as I kid, I always rather admired the Greeks, but this seemed a terrible black spot almost to match slavery). I never imagined then that I would come back to reflect on this incident again, when I was thinking about how the voices of modern women have often been silenced too. Of course, that silence isn’t so dramatic. But when I agreed to give a London Review of Books Winter Lecture at the British Museum, on the public voice of women today, I kept coming back to the ancient world – and to the sense that women’s silence was very deeply embedded in our culture.

Edward Burne-Jones, Philomene, with a woman (Philomela) standing by her loom holding a shuttle in an interior, with a half-woven tapestry with the story of Philomene and Tereus, looking out of the window. Wood-engraving on India paper. Proof of an illustration designed by for the Kelmscott Chaucer, p.441, ‘The Legend of Goode Wimmen’. 1896. PD 1912,0612.372

It was fascinating (if slightly chilling) to collect some of the different ways that the Greeks and Romans so clearly paraded the idea that women should not speak out. These ranged from Ovid’s story in his Metamorphoses about the rape victim Philomela having her tongue cut out to prevent her naming her rapist (though she eventually managed to denounce him by weaving an account of what happened) to the abuse of one Roman woman who did get up to speak in the forum as a ‘barking’ (that is, non-human) androgyne.

Red-figured hydria, depicting the rape of Kassandra by the lesser Ajax, son of Oileus, in Athena’s temple at Troy. In the centre, the Trojan princess Kassandra kneels on the base of the statue of Athena, the Palladion. Attributed to the Danaid Group. Made in Campania, Italy. GR 1824,0501.35

In fact, it was hard to choose which examples to use for my lecture, and many people have written in since with even more, and sometimes even better, examples. One of the very best is the myth of the virgin prophetess Cassandra, the daughter of the king of Troy, who was – when the city fell – taken by king Agamemnon to be his concubine (she was eventually murdered, with the king, by his wife Clytemnestra). But before that, Cassandra’s lot was always to prophesy the truth but never to be believed. It is a wonderful twist on the idea that women’s speech is never authoritative: even when it really is true, it doesn’t seem so to listeners.

In antiquity, it is true that – almost without exception (perhaps the weird Diotima in Plato’s Symposium is one) – you only hear a woman speak when she is about to die, or when she is speaking up for the concerns of women and the home (as did Antigone, when she defends the proper burial of her dead brother). Otherwise, as Telemachus put it, speech is for men.

Now, of course, I don’t think that the classical tradition simply explains why many women have such a hard time getting their voice heard even now. We have come a long way since then. All the same, my lecture does argue that if we want to do something about some of the current issues women face when they try to speak up, it’s important to think of the very long western history of women being shut up.

Ian Jenkins, Exhibition Curator, British Museum

I’m currently working on the Museum’s major exhibition Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art, which opens 26 March 2015. When you see the sculptures on display, you might be forgiven for thinking that the standard dress for men, in ancient Athens especially, was a state of undress. The Greeks, if their art is anything to go by, spent a lot of time starkers.

Although we must separate art from life, nevertheless, they enjoyed many more occasions for nudity than any other European civilisation before or since. The reason why they performed athletics in the nude was said to be because, in the early Olympic Games, a runner lost his knickers and as a result also lost the race. That story may be true or not but either way, it doesn’t explain the true nature of Greek athletic nudity as an expression of social, moral and political values.

The Westmacott Athlete. Roman marble copy of a Greek bronze original, 1st century AD. 1857,0807.1

The circumstances in which men and boys appeared naked were dictated by an exclusive attachment to certain values held by an elite ‘club’ of male citizens. To be naked was not the same as to be nude. The first befits manual workers or those engaged in lewd behaviour. Nudity by contrast was the uniform of the righteous. When a young man in ancient Athens exposed his athletic body to his peers, he was not asserting his sexuality, rather, he was demonstrating his qualification to compete in athletics and at the same time to be worthy of putting on a second skin of bronze and defending his city on the battlefield. Such young men were called Kaloi and Agathoi, that is to say, the beautiful and the good. Death in battle was the Kalos Thanatos or the beautiful death.

There is an interesting anecdote recorded in the life of the 5th-century BC philosopher Socrates, when he meets a fellow citizen Epigenes by chance. Socrates remarked tactlessly that his friend was looking rather chubby, which was rich coming from Socrates who, although he was a brave soldier, was notoriously pug-faced and pot-bellied. Epigenes told Socrates it wasn’t his business. He was now not in the army and, as a private citizen, he didn’t have to go to the gymn. Socrates replies that Epigenes owed it to his city and himself to be as fit and beautiful as possible. It was, said Socrates, the moral duty of every citizen to maintain himself in readiness in case called upon to defend his city. And besides, Epigenes was obliged to keep himself as pretty as he could be, while he was still young. The Greek body beautiful was a moral condition and one to which only the Greeks among the peoples of the ancient world were attached. Neither the Egyptians, nor the Assyrians, Persians or the Cypriots cultivated in art and in life ideal nudity.

Bronze statuette of a veiled and masked dancer. Hellenistic, 3rd–2nd century BC. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 1972.118.95

The ideal Greek male body, then, is at the very heart of the Greek experience. Female nudity was much rarer than male nudity and the wives of well-to-do citizens were expected to stay indoors preserving their reputations with their pale complexions. Sculptors become increasingly skilled at showing the body beneath thin tissues of drapery and to judge from such objects as terracotta figurines and white marble sculpture, women were adept at flaunting their figures using drapery as a means of exaggerating their shape and so drawing attention to the body beneath. Aphrodite, goddess of love, is alone among the female Olympian gods in being represented naked. Hers is an ambiguous presence, however, for crouching or standing at her bath she appears to lure us in to erotic pleasure, only then to punish us for having the presumption to gaze upon her divine beauty.

Marble statue of a naked Aphrodite crouching at her bath, also known as Lely’s Venus. Roman copy of a Greek original, 2nd century AD. Royal Collection Trust/Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2015. 1963.1029.1

To conclude, the Greek body is a pictorial sign through which the Greek experience is communicated. Nudity in ancient Greece was all part of an obligation to promote moral values that were amplified and endorsed through the culture of athletics and military training.

Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art opens 26 March 2015.
Sponsored by Julius Baer
Additional support
In memory of Melvin R Seiden
Mrs Jayne Wrightsman, OBE

Caroline Ingham, Senior Designer: Exhibitions, British Museum

Detail of a Bronze reconstruction of around 1920 by George Römer of the Doryphoros or ‘spear-bearer’ by Polykleitos, made around 440–430 BC. H 212 cm. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich

Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art is the first major temporary exhibition of sculpture at the British Museum since Hadrian: Empire & Conflict in 2008. It is also the first sculpture show in the new Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery (Room 30). For the Museum’s Exhibitions team this is the culmination of over a year of intensive work with the exhibition’s designers, Caruso St John architects and Matt Bigg, Surface 3 graphics.

Sculptures on display in the exhibition, from left to right: Bronze reconstruction of around 1920 by George Römer of the Doryphoros or ‘spear-bearer’ by Polykleitos, made around 440–430 BC. H 212 cm. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. Marble statue of the Diskobolos or ‘discus-thrower’. Roman copy from 2nd century AD of a bronze original of the 5th century BC, from Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, Italy. H 169 cm, W 105 cm. British Museum, London 1805,0703.43 Ilissos, marble statue of the river god, from the west pediment of the Parthenon in Athens. Greek, about 438–432 BC. H 81.28 cm, D 56 cm. British Museum, London 1816,0610.99

The exhibition presents some of the most beautiful and best-loved classical sculpture in the Museum’s collection. It includes some key pieces that have been temporarily removed from the permanent galleries to be juxtaposed for the very first and perhaps the only time, with loans of similar international significance. The movement of such important sculptures from the permanent day-lit galleries, into the controlled lighting environment of the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery presented the Exhibitions team with a unique opportunity to experiment with their display.

Through the design brief we challenged the designers to explore how they could present the objects differently, using dramatic lighting and by experimenting with display heights. We encouraged them to exploit the scale of the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery, in particular the 6-metre height and the very flexible lighting system, to encourage visitors to engage with these very familiar objects in a new way and at a deeper level.

Testing fabric colours
Marble statue of a Nereid, from the Nereid monument, Lycian, about 390–380 BC, from Xanthos (modern Günük), south-western Turkey. H 137 cm. British Museum, London 1848,1020.81

It took many months to develop the design scheme. This included trying colours and fabrics against the objects, working up scale drawings of each object group, building a scale model and mocking up full-size elements of the design. We used our new purpose-built mock-up room, adjacent to the new gallery, which has the exact ceiling and floor specification of the gallery itself, to test the plinth heights and lighting.

The result is a scheme that transforms the way we see familiar objects in the collection. The designers have achieved this through the use of colour, lighting and displaying the sculpture at height. Many of the sculptures are lifted to 1.5 metres (approximately shoulder height) and our relationship to them is immediately transformed. The objects are lit from the ceiling track and not the space around them. This privileges them and makes them visible on key vistas – for instance, the Amazon can be seen at the west end of the gallery at a distance of 20 metres or more.

Sculptures on display in the exhibition Foreground: Marble statue of Dionysos from the east pediment of the Parthenon. Greek, about 438–432 BC, from the Acropolis, Athens. L 174 cm, H 127 cm. British Museum, London 1816,0610.93 Background: Belvedere Torso, 1st century BC. Marble copy after a Greek bronze, probably of the early 2nd century BC. H (including base) 156.5 cm, W 87.5 cm. Vatican Museums, Vatican City

The exhibition may not offer the definitive answer to the successful display of sculpture in all circumstances, but what it has done is given us a wonderful opportunity to display these sculptures for a short period, in a new and thought-provoking way.

Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art is on display from 26 March to 5 July 2015.

Sponsored by Julius Baer
Additional support
In memory of Melvin R Seiden
Mrs Jayne Wrightsman, OBE

Ian Jenkins, Curator, ancient Greece, British Museum
I am often asked what my favourite object is in the exhibition Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art. I answer this by marching my interrogator past the great white marble sculptures glowing in the mysterious half-light of the gallery to a showcase containing a primitive and seemingly unprepossessing bronze figure, only seven centimetres high. I am usually greeted with a look of incredulity. But this is my favourite object; partly because I discovered it in 1996 in what we now call the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory, and partly because of what it shows and how it shows it.

The object is a helmeted matchstick man, forged from solid metal tubing, drawn out to represent the subject, sitting on a low stool, with his arms extended in front of him and a dagger turned inwards. At a glance, you can see that this is, by virtue of the action, a suicide caught in the moment before the dagger is forced in.

Bronze figure of Ajax. Greek, 720–700 BC. H. 6.7 cm. British Museum, London 1865,1118.230

The short version of the story of Ajax’s suicide as told in Greek myth goes something like this: Ajax was big dumb-dumb Ajax, brave and good-hearted but not a subtle thinker. It was he who carried the body of Achilles, dead from the battlefield, and it was he who should have had the armour Achilles was wearing – armour that was made by the god of smiths himself, Hephaestus. But with weasel words, wily Odysseus manages to deprive Ajax of this prize. In rage and shame a night-long fit of madness fell upon the hero, who thought he could hear an attack by the Trojans on the Greek camp and set about single-handedly defending his companions from the danger. It was not until the cold light of the morning lifted the veil of his madness that the nature of his folly was revealed. For in fact there had been no attack – only the sound of the herd of Greek cattle moving about in their pen, every member of which he had slaughtered. With nothing left by way of honour, now twice humiliated, Ajax killed himself.

The image of the death of Ajax that comes most readily to mind is that in Sophocles’ tragic dramatisation of the story, where the brooding hero prepares to fall on a sword set into the Trojan earth. This, as Ajax bitterly remarks, is a hostile soil and the sword is that of his old enemy Hector. The sad story of Ajax’s suicide is not told by Homer in the Iliad. This centres instead on a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon, and its impact on the progress of the Trojan War and the lives of those people caught up in it. In this Achilles does not yet die but his eventual end is related in a number of other contemporary epic poems, including The Aithiopis, which relates the heroic life of Memnon, king of the Ethiopians, sometimes known as ‘The Black Hector’. The little bronze has none of the literary power of either 8th-century BC epic poetry, nor of the 5th-century BC tragedy. But it has an indefinable poetry all of its own that, in spite of its great simplicity, seems to capture something of the bleak and solitary circumstances of Ajax’s death.

Like the great Greek sculptors of a later age, the smith of this bronze has chosen not to represent the act of suicide itself, but the moment just before the dagger is buried in the body of the hero. What really, though, evokes absolutely the mental agony of Ajax is his large erection. This has nothing to do with any ideas of the erotic charge of death. It is instead a metaphor used to mark Ajax as a figure undergoing extreme trauma. In the symbolic use of the phallus, the smith is straining at the very limits of his powers. He has departed from actual representation and makes a metaphysical statement instead. When we compare such art with contemporary literature, we find nothing in the former of the narrative and descriptive power of the latter. Nonetheless, our little stick-man Ajax points at the direction in which Greek artists will go in their quest to tell stories of the kind that Homer had already mastered in the medium of words.

The object dates to around 720–700 BC and as such may be among the earliest representation to survive of a named mythological character in Greek art. Because of its phallic nature, it had been previously misclassified in the Museum’s collection, now dispersed, of erotica. Its appearance in our exhibition seems unpromising on first acquaintance but, on reflection, it turns out to be an object with great poetic presence and one which anticipates the visual power of later Greek art.

Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art is at the British Museum
until 5 July 2015.

Sponsored by Julius Baer
Additional support
In memory of Melvin R Seiden
Mrs Jayne Wrightsman, OBE

The accompanying book is available from the British Museum shop online.

Dr Katherine Harloe, Associate Professor of Classics and Intellectual History, University of Reading

Browsing the exhibition Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art on a rainy afternoon, an Athenian red-figure mixing-bowl caught my attention. It shows the death of Kaineus, a mythical Thessalian hero who had the misfortune to be present at the wedding feast of Peirithoos, King of the Lapiths, and his bride Hippodameia. The celebrations famously ended in a fracas when the centaurs among the wedding guests became drunken and violent, attempting to rape their hosts’ wives. The ensuing battle, which the Lapiths won, came to stand for the conquest of savagery by civilisation. It features as such on the decoration of important civic and religious buildings, including the Parthenon and the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai. On this vessel, made for mixing wine at a drinking party, it warns of the dangers of overindulgence.

Red-figured mixing-bowl (column-krater). Greek, made in Athens, 480–460 BC, attributed to the Pan Painter. British Museum, London 1846,0925.6

Marble metope (XXXI) from the south side of the Parthenon, showing a Lapith and a centaur fighting. Greek, 447–438 BC, from the Acropolis, Athens. British Museum, London 1816,0610.15

Section of frieze from the temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai, 420–400 BC. As Kaineus is hammered into the ground, his muscular, twisting torso aligns him with the heroic Lapith warrior who comes to his aid, and contrasts with the swirling drapery of the female escaping to the side. British Museum, London 1815,1020.4

Kaineus was killed during the fighting, though not (so Ovid, who gives us a poetic account of the battle in his Metamorphoses, says) before he had dispatched six centaurs to their deaths. He was a difficult to kill because his skin could not be pierced by sword or spear. In the end the centaurs could only overcome him by hammering him into the ground with rocks and tree trunks. The vase shows this moment – the helpless Kaineus looks up in dismay at two centaurs bearing down on him with large boulders. But within the myth, the warrior’s invulnerability supersedes and compensates for a previous vulnerability. For, as the hero Nestor recounts, Kaineus had been born a girl, Kainis, who was raped by the god Poseidon and in return granted the fulfilment of one wish. She asked to become male, and in granting her a masculine body Poseidon also made it one that could not be penetrated.

Scholars of ancient gender and sexuality have made much of this myth’s association of impenetrability with the male sex. Its popularity in Athens might also tell us something about that society, where the law protected male citizen bodies from violation while overlooking violence towards others. But Kaineus/Kainis can also help us think through some of the issues around the sculpted male and female forms that provide the highlights of this exhibition. An impenetrable body which can be hammered into the ground sounds like nothing so much as a statue. Ovid also hints at this when he describes the centaur Latreus’s sword bouncing and shattering off Kaineus as if it had struck ‘a body of marble’.

Bronze statue of an Apoxyomenos, Greek, about 300 BC. Ministry of Culture, Croatia. Image: Mali Losinj Tourist Board / photography by Mr Marko Vrdoljak

The exhibition gives us marble bodies aplenty, male and female, as well as several in bronze. But the male and female bodies we encounter in the exhibition are different in several ways. Most obvious to me, and perhaps striking to most visitors, is the contrast of clothed and unclothed. Male figures, from the beautiful bronze Apoxyomenos (‘sweat-scraper’) in the first room to the Belvedere Torso at its end, are all presented nude. The females – unless they happen to be Aphrodite, or to be modelled on her – are clothed.

Marble statue of a Nereid, from the Nereid monument. Lycian, about 390–380 BC, from Xanthos, south-western Turkey. British Museum, London 1848,1020.81

Not that the drapery on the female statues always conceals much. In the case of the nymphs from the Nereid Monument, belly, breasts, thighs, are all visible through the moistened folds of their clothes. Their eroticism is obvious, even without the colour that would once have created the illusion of living, breathing flesh. But there is a paradox here – it is often said of the Greek male sculptural nude that its eroticism is downplayed. For a statue like the Apoxyomenos, nudity does not equal nakedness but – as Director of the British Museum Neil MacGregor puts it in the exhibition catalogue – ‘a suit of morally charged new clothes’. The female body, by contrast, tends to be undressed even when dressed.

Does this tell us something about ancient Greek attitudes to women, or does it have more to do with our own ways of viewing male and female bodies? Michael Squire, the classical art historian whose voice is one of the first you hear on the exhibition’s multimedia guide, has argued that sexualised responses to naked Aphrodites overlook their religious significance, her status as a goddess and the awe in which ancient worshippers would have held her image. Now that mainstream advertising has begun to serve up naked or near-naked male bodies to sell everything from designer underwear to fizzy drinks, can we look at Greek male nudes afresh, with greater sensitivity to their erotic charge? The distinctions between nude and naked, male and female, are not as clear cut as they first seem, but still make me uncomfortable. Perhaps that’s why, of all the beautiful objects in the exhibition, I am most drawn to the figurines from Tanagra – miniature statuettes of heavily draped, yet graceful women, with fashionable hats and hairstyles, dolled up to appear in public yet somehow conveying a womanly world and messages all of their own.

Terracotta figures. Greek, about 300–200 BC or later. Said to be from Tanagra, Boeotia. British Museum, London 1875,1012.9; 1875,1012.12.a; 1874,0305.65

Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art is at the British Museum
until 5 July 2015.

Sponsored by Julius Baer
Additional support
In memory of Melvin R Seiden
Mrs Jayne Wrightsman, OBE

The accompanying book is available from the British Museum shop online.

As a new painting by Alison Watt goes on display at the British Museum, the acclaimed artist talks about the inspiration behind the painting…

From the moment I first heard Ian Jenkins, curator of Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art talk about the Parthenon sculptures, my understanding of them was enriched. And it was as much about the way he spoke as what he said. As with the sculptures themselves, there was an unmistakable rhythm to his words – I was struck by his use of language, its musicality, as he talked of the sculptures in terms of their flow, their movements. Listening to him, it was as though a pulse ran through the stone itself.

I clearly remember my response to these representations in marble, many years ago when I first saw them. It was visceral. Even now, they remain startling to me but ultimately, elusive. They are so full of drama and atmosphere and one of the things that makes them so compelling is their ability to trigger the senses. It’s no wonder that, since their creation, they have been influencing artists throughout history.

In the show it seemed entirely natural to be drawn to the sculpture of Iris, the messenger goddess as a channel for my ideas. She’s a virtuoso performance by her creator; a simply astonishing portrayal of the human form. But Iris is not only a piece about the contingency of the human body. She’s also a piece about fabric. Within this thinly-veiled form, there is an element which goes beyond nature, something which does not exist in real life, and that is the element of fantasy. What we feel when we look at her is as important as what we see.

Marble figure of Iris from the west pediment of the Parthenon. Greek (Athens), about 438–432 BC. H. 135 cm. British Museum 1816,0610.96

Here, visual reality has been subtly improved and intensified, the fabric itself fetishized, and so it transcends its proper function. The sensual is highlighted with an emphasis on tactile sensation. We also become much more aware of the less tangible features of cloth, such as how it might sound as it moves. And that’s why the use of fabric in this piece is so powerful and makes our response to it so complex. It somehow encapsulates a sense of movement which feels perpetual. As in a fold itself, there is a simultaneous display of two positions. It at once hides and discloses; like a fold there is always a promise to reveal.

My fascination with depictions of drapery began with a childhood visit to The National Gallery and its exquisite collection of old master paintings. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to portrayals of fabric: how it falls, how it moves as the body moves and how it often seems to have its own secret interior. Fabric has been a powerful vehicle for my imagination and the memory of it often conjures sensations that are difficult to describe.

Although my paintings may appear to be devoid of a human presence, there is a suggestion of the body – a body which is absent but implied. While I no longer paint directly from the human figure, I’m still fascinated by it. Indeed I once spent an intense period of ten years working every day with a life model in order to immerse myself in the process of looking. Spending time with another human being in such intimate conditions has the effect of heightening consciousness. A small shift in weight in an observed body becomes a monumental act. As the brain edits what the eye is seeing, it begins to abstract what is keenly observed. The geometric balance, the spacial order so important to the success of a painting comes from this study. I have never looked at the human body in the same way since.

With Iris, the parts that have been discreetly draped reappear in the cloth itself, which clings to her thighs and torso like a second skin. There is no bulk in this drapery which only enhances the erotic tension of the piece. Of course the erotic relies on suggestion and this work is all the more alluring because of what it might reveal. The cloth appears almost like a membrane, an intimate barrier between the body and what exists outside of it. In places it melds with the naked form, tantalisingly emphasising its shape. Therefore the properties of both fabric and body are captured simultaneously, drawing our attention to the behaviour of both.

Iris is a sculpture which is both beautiful and disconcerting. In its now fragmentary condition we are left without its extent. It seems to have no end, and indeed goes on in the imagination. The use of drapery all at once reveals her, conceals her and frames her but it cannot contain her.

Over the years, I’ve moved away from painting directly from life. I found myself looking for other means of representing the human form – ways to suggest the body and its movements. So now the memory of a piece of fabric becomes a metaphor for the body. The severing of drapery from its original narrative gives it added potency, while isolating it from its surroundings heightens our awareness of what is missing – the human presence.

Alison Watt, Himation, 2015. Oil on canvas, 106.7 x 71.1 cm. Alison’s painting will be on display at the British Museum in Room 18a until 5 September 2015.

One of the reasons my paintings take their current form is because there are certain proportions that are satisfying and which make sense to me, and that has come from years of studying the human figure – whether it be in a piece of art, often a painting or sculpture, the written word, or even the experience of intimacy. For sure, all of these influences affect how I make my paintings. But above all, painting is an emotional experience for me because it’s about what lies inside, what you can only sense, feel or imagine.

Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art is at the British Museum
 until 5 July 2015.

Sponsored by Julius Baer

Additional support

In memory of Melvin R Seiden

Mrs Jayne Wrightsman, OBE

The accompanying book is available from the British Museum shop online.

Richard B. Parkinson, Professor of Egyptology, University of Oxford

It’s hard to walk past so many beautiful naked bodies in a dark room without thinking a bit about sex and love; and in an exhibition like Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art, there’s always the tendency to play the mental game of trying to decide who you fancy most out of all the represented people. The display of male beauty in Greek art has had a huge impact on European culture, and sometimes on very intimate levels, even though the exact role of same-sex desire in ancient Greek society remains controversial. Ancient Greek art has been one of the ways in which LGBT people have recognised their presence in world history, and this capacity of art to help awareness of sexual identity has produced a wonderful continuing dialogue between ancient and modern works.

This struck me particularly when I was in front of the Belvedere Torso, on loan from the Vatican Museums, because it’s displayed next to some of the Museum’s own Michelangelo drawings. This stunning juxtaposition gives a vivid – almost physical sense – of Michelangelo’s deep engagement with classical art. In a culture where sodomites were consigned to hell, Michelangelo’s own attraction to male beauty found a passionate, if uneasy, resolution with his spirituality through classical philosophy and thought. He expressed this not only in his images of muscular male figures but also in poems such as this one of around 1549, which merges his desire for earthly beauty with his love for God:

My eyes, seeking beauty,
and my soul, seeking salvation,
have no other way to rise to heaven except by looking at beautiful things.
From the highest stars, a splendour come down
which draws desire to them,
and which here is called ‘Love’.
The noble heart has nothing to make it burn or love, or to guide it,
except a face as fair as those stars.

Above: The Belvedere Torso, 1st century BC. Marble copy after a Greek bronze, probably of the early 2nd century BC. H (including base) 156.5 cm; W 87.5 cm. Vatican Museums, Vatican City. Below: Michelangelo’s study of a reclining male nude inspired by the sculpture. Dark red chalk over some stylus underdrawing. Florentine, around 1511. 19.3 x 25.9 cm. British Museum, London 1926,1009.1

Later, Michelangelo’s own ‘beautiful things’ became works through which gay identity was expressed, with the very 20th-century Benjamin Britten composing a song-cycle of the Renaissance artist’s sonnets. This was dedicated to his life-partner, the singer Peter Pears, and was first performed publicly by the two of them together in the early 1940s, when ‘homosexuality’ was illegal in Britain.

Among the first audiences for the song-cycle was the novelist E.M. Forster (1879–1970), for whom classical culture had also offered a sense of personal (humanist) salvation. In his novel Maurice, young men try to understand their desires for each other through images of Michelangelo’s works and reading Plato’s dialogues, eventually realising that ‘I have always been like the Greeks and didn’t know’ (chap. 11). The novel was written in 1914 and was dedicated ‘to a happier year’ when same-sex love would be regarded as equal. Significantly, a crucial scene of Maurice is set in the British Museum’s classical galleries and the adjacent Assyrian rooms, as Maurice and the gamekeeper Alec finally realise that they are in love, surrounded by ancient art. The novel was magnificently filmed by Merchant Ivory Productions in 1987, on location and (of course) in exactly the right galleries. The film concentrates on the Assyrian rooms, but the Greek sculpture of the Parthenon gallery had already featured in Merchant Ivory’s earlier film of Henry James’ Bostonians, also with a same-sex couple, Olive Chancellor and her beloved Verena Tarrant.

Love in the museum: Maurice and Alec bicker among the Assyrian sculptures and realise they love each other in James Ivory’s Maurice (1987). Photo: copyright Merchant Ivory Productions 1987

Maurice was filmed in the 1980s, the period of the now infamous Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 that prohibited local authorities in England and Wales from ‘promoting’ homosexuality. Attitudes in Britain are thankfully now very different, but I remember the 80s well as a time when it was easy for young people coming out to feel alone: history was almost unremittingly heterosexual, gay stereotypes were often mocking, and there was a general invisibility in culture. Michelangelo and Maurice were hugely reassuring. Memories of these feelings of cultural isolation helped shape a recent British Museum project on LGBT history, which I hoped would help LGBT people find themselves in world history. A long line of very different, interconnected works of art stretches back to those Greek statues, explaining and legitimising the diversity of human desire to modern generations.

Ideas of beauty and desire are culturally constructed in many different ways, but this particularly Greek vision of beauty can still have a personal impact. Standing in front of the hunky Belvedere Torso, I wonder how many people have come to understand their own hearts and identities through looking at these statues carved millennia earlier. The statues don’t even have to be male or naked. Defining beauty also includes one which was much loved by Forster – the (clothed) goddess Demeter from Knidos. The statue features as a symbolic motif in his novel The Longest Journey, and she is in many ways a mythic archetype for his famous mature female characters, such as Mrs Wilcox and Mrs Moore, who embody an instinctive wisdom that sees beyond social conventions and recognises (in the words of the second Mrs Wilcox) ‘that people are far more different than is pretended’ (Howards End, chap. 44).

Marble cult statue of Demeter, goddess of nature. Greek, carved around 360 BC. H. 152 cm. British Museum, London 1859,1226.26

Looking at ancient beauty can perhaps encourage our world to adopt a more inclusive attitude towards human diversity – which is still urgently needed now when militant groups are not only overturning ancient statues but also executing gay men by throwing them from buildings. While they are destroying, and more people are dying, Forster’s Demeter sits in the British Museum as a benign and inspiring presence, waiting patiently for that ‘happier year’. It’s now much closer than it was across the world, but not quite with us yet.

Further reading:

B. Parkinson, A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity across the World (British Museum Press 2013).

M. Forster, Maurice (Penguin Classics 2005)

Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art is on display from 26 March to 5 July 2015.

Sponsored by Julius Baer

Additional support

In memory of Melvin R Seiden

Mrs Jayne Wrightsman, OBE

Celeste Farge, Exhibition Project Curator, British Museum

Bronze statue of an apoxyomenos. Greek, about 300 BC. Ministry of Culture, Croatia.
Image: Mali Losinj Tourist Board / photography by Mr Marko Vrdoljak.

Many of the objects in Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art have fascinating histories which, because they don’t form part of the essential narrative of the exhibition, are not mentioned in the labels and catalogue. For me, the most compelling is the story of the discovery of the bronze statue of an athlete, most probably a wrestler, and one of the star pieces of the exhibition generously lent by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.

This statue is extremely rare, for very few life-size bronzes have in fact survived. Most were destroyed in late antiquity when they were valued more as scrap metal than as artworks and were melted down for other uses, such as in the manufacture of weapons and armour and the minting of coins. Occasionally a chance discovery, usually from the seabed, resurrects such masterpieces. This bronze statue, dating from around 300 BC, was found by a Belgian tourist diving off the coast of Croatia near the island of Lošinj.

The statue lying on the seabed where it was discovered. © Mr Danijel Freka

The statue being raised from the sea. © Ministry of Culture, Conservation Department Zagreb

In a carefully planned operation, with additional expertise and financial support from the Oxford Maritime Trust, it was raised in 1999 after having been in the sea for more than 2000 years. The surrounding area was then searched for other finds by using a pneumatic suction pipe, metal detectors and a remote operated device complete with camera but, although some amphora fragments and part of an anchor were found, the only significant item recovered was the base of the statue. It seems, therefore, unlikely that this statue was from a shipwreck. It may perhaps have been thrown overboard to lighten the load when the ship carrying it ran into difficulty during a storm.

The statue needed six years of conservation work eradicating soluble salts and harmful chlorides, removing layers of maritime encrustations, consolidating cracks and breaks, and building an internal support, to restore it to the exceptional condition it is in today. Extensive research on the statue was conducted to gather information on matters concerning the production techniques and composition. The statue had been constructed using the indirect lost wax process and cast in seven separate parts – the head, torso, legs, arms and genitals. Various factors indicate that ancient Greek casting techniques had been used, such as the low lead content, and the skill of the craftsmen is demonstrated in the application of hundreds of small patches to repair casting flaws before the final chasing and polishing and in the precision of the joins.

Remnants of a mouse nest, including straw, fig seeds and cherry stones (with bite marks!), were found inside the left forearm of the statue. At some point after its manufacture, the statue must have toppled over (the weight-bearing leg had been weakened when the clay core in the mould shifted causing bubbles and an unequal thickness of the bronze) damaging the figure’s left sole and right calf, and it is through these areas that the mouse would have been able to crawl in and out. The organic material deposited by the mouse has been carbon dated and the oldest material was found to date from around 50 BC.

It was a thrilling moment when the statue arrived at the British Museum accompanied by a team of guards, conservators and art handlers. It travelled inside a purpose-built hexagonal cage, designed to allow the statue to be moved with ease particularly during conservation work, but also during transport and hoisting onto its plinth.

Known as the ‘apoxyomenos’, which literally means ‘the scraper’, the statue would originally have had in its hands a strigil – a metal implement used for scraping the oil, dust and dirt from the body after exercising and before bathing. Bizarrely, in antiquity this mixture was collected and used for cosmetic and medicinal purposes. In fact, this gloop from the bodies of victorious athletes was especially prized for its healing properties. Statues, like this one, were erected in honour of prizewinning athletes but also as dedications to the gods, for it was believed that the victorious athletes had been favoured by them. Sanctuaries and gymnasia abounded with such statues ensuring the heroic status and, in a sense, immortality of the victors. Although the name of this athlete is no longer known, the fame of the statue lives on.

For more information, see http://www.h-r-z.hr/en/index.php/djelatnosti/konzerviranje-restauriranje/metal/222-hrvatski-apoksiomen

Last chance! Defining beauty: the body in ancient Greek art is on display until 5 July 2015.

Sponsored by Julius Baer

Additional support

In memory of Melvin R Seiden

Mrs Jayne Wrightsman, OBE

Lloyd de Beer, Curator of Late Medieval Europe, British Museum

Last month we celebrated the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. It is not often that people collectively stop to remember the creation and sealing of a document from the early 13th century, but this one (or four to be precise) is special, and its specialness has grown exponentially since its creation. It is a document which quickly became a symbol, enduring as a touchstone and inspiring many throughout its history. You can sometimes find it lurking in surprising places.

Each morning on my walk to work I pass through Bloomsbury Square, and most days I think about the people who have lived in and around the area. Usually, and with no specific focus, I let my eyes and mind drift across the buildings to the east and the west, but one morning on this walk I noticed properly for the first time a bronze sculpture at the north end of the square. I wondered why this figure faced away from the small park, staring down Bedford Street, so I moved in closer to inspect.

Reverse of the sculpture, Bloomsbury Square. (Photo: Lloyd de Beer)

Before looking at his face I could tell from behind that this individual was dressed in a very grand style, seated on an ornate double columned throne with a large cushion. As I moved around him it was clear that he was presented as a Roman, clad in imperial garb, a single foot outstretched and teetering on the end of the stone base. It was only when I looked closer at the large rolled up scroll, held at an angle towards the viewer on the ground, between his hand and knee, that I saw something familiar. Dangling in mid-air was the great seal of King John (r. 1199–1216). This man holds a copy of Magna Carta. But why?

Charles James Fox, Bloomsbury Square. (Photo: Bob Speel)

The bronze figure was made in 1810 and shows Charles James Fox, post mortem, who was previously the leader of the Whig party. It was commissioned through subscription by his friends and sculpted by Sir Richard Westmacott, famous at the British Museum for making The Progress of Civilisation, the pediment sculptures situated above the main entrance under which several million people pass annually. In 1809, a year before beginning the Fox sculpture, Westmacott had finished and erected at the opposite end of Bedford Street, a sculpture of Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford, long standing friend and political ally of Charles James Fox. Two politicians, two friends, cast in bronze and linked eye to eye for eternity.

Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford, Russell Square. (Photo: Lloyd de Beer)

What I found interesting as I learnt more about this sculpture was how Magna Carta was invoked symbolically through the authentic use of the king’s seal. In some ways this sculpture is an early form of the Gothic Revival rolled up in the presentation of a classical ideal. A document can only tell us so much, but when connected to the enthroned image of the king, hey presto, the figure is transformed and holds in his hand a copy of Magna Carta. He is therefore by proxy invested with the authority of the people. This was not a paltry copy of the seal but an exacting replica of the object both in size and style, which the sculptor must surely have studied with his own eyes. In this instance the medieval image of the king, the classical style of the sculpture and the modern man all sit side by side, collectively telling us about the personality of the individual.

Wenceslas Hollar print of the seal of King John, c. 1677 AD, 307 x 194 mm. British Museum 1856,0712.791

Close up of the seal of King John from the Fox sculpture. (Photo: Lloyd de Beer)

More recently when wandering through the Defining Beauty: the body in ancient Greek art exhibition I came across a small Greek bronze of Zeus which looked so similar to the statue of Charles James Fox that the likeness struck me immediately. The Zeus figure was acquired by the Museum in 1865, long after the completion of the Fox sculpture and I have since learned that Westmacott surely based his design for the body of Fox on classical sculptures of seated philosophers such as Epicurus. However Westmacott had a long standing relationship with the British Museum, going as far back as 1805 with debates on how to show the Townley collection.

Bronze figure of Zeus, 1st–2nd century AD, height 236 mm. British Museum 1865,0103.36  

There is also an early record for one of his visits in the Museum archives, dated 18th February 1820. Given his involvement and taste for the classical it is impossible that he was not inspired by the collections of the British Museum, even if there was not an exact source of inspiration for the Fox sculpture. But where did Westmacott see the medieval seal?

Archival register with Richard Westmacott record at the very bottom.

Seal matrices, impressions, casts and facsimiles were part of a long-standing antiquarian interest in the past. Seals were attached to documents and documents were interesting so therefore antiquarians became interested in seals. Testament to this is the fact that some of the earliest medieval acquisitions at the British Museum were seal matrices. Amongst them is the seal matrix of Robert Fitzwalter, one of the barons who rebelled against King John and was crucial to the formation of Magna Carta.

Seal matrix of Robert Fitzwalter, 1213–1219 AD, diam. 73.5 mm. British Museum 1841,0624.1

Before the library officially separated from the Museum in 1973 to become the British Library, the Bloomsbury site which Westmacott visited held the many thousands of seal impressions now housed at St Pancras, including those of King John. It is tantalising to think that Westmacott, who spent a great deal of time thinking about the importance of classical sculpture, might also have spent just a little bit of time at the British Museum connecting it to a medieval past and a modern future.

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The so-called Sword of Tiberius is on display in Room 70, the Wolfson Gallery of the Roman Empire. It perfectly embodies Roman visual language and political propaganda, tied up with Rome’s foreign wars and the imperial succession.

The sword was discovered in 1848 near the river Rhine, outside the German city of Mainz, which in antiquity was a vast legionary fortress and military command centre for the German frontier.

The scabbard is astonishingly well preserved and intricately detailed. The figurative scene on top is key to its meaning. In the centre is an enthroned male in classicising, divine garb with two attendant figures behind. Before him stands another male in military armour. They both have clear portrait features and were meant to be recognisable.

The sword’s scabbard is remarkably well preserved.

The Museum’s own labels used to say otherwise, but having followed the heated arguments about its iconography and context over the years, I am with those who recognise here the emperor Tiberius (r. AD 14–37), seated, receiving his adopted son Germanicus, commander-in-chief of the Roman army of the Rhine. The goddess Victory is to his left, and another deity, probably Mars, to his right. Clearly, this refers to a major military triumph in Rome’s German wars.

Marble portrait bust of the Roman emperor Tiberius. Roman, c. AD 4–14.

In truth, this is elaborate political spin, masterfully crafted both in intellectual concept and physical form. Under the emperor Augustus (r. 27 BC–AD 14), three entire legions had perished in Germany. First Tiberius, and then Germanicus, led punitive expeditions that resulted in a series of inconclusive, ever more Pyrrhic victories. Tiberius was clever: seeing the futility of these wars, he simply declared victory, granted the ambitious, gung-ho Germanicus a triumph and recalled him to Rome. As Augustus’ stepson, Tiberius had long been overlooked for the succession and was then forced to accept Germanicus as his own crown prince in uneasy competition with the hugely popular, younger man.

The ‘Sword of Tiberius’. Iron sword and tinned and gilded bronze scabbard. Roman, c. AD 15.

One likes to think that this elaborate weapon belonged to a high-ranking officer, but this is by no means assured. What looks like gold and silver is in fact mostly tinned brass. The bigger story is clear – the new monarchy’s legitimacy derived in large part from constant battlefield victories, and the absolute personal loyalty of the new professional military was crucial. Giving to the troops a powerful message of wise leadership by a united imperial family helped achieve this, and the army had the craftspeople to do so beautifully.

Although never part of the ancient Olympic Games, the marathon does have ancient Greek origins. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, when the Athenians learned that the Persians had landed at Marathon on the way to attack Athens in 490 BC, a messenger named Pheidippides ran to Sparta with a request for help. This original ‘marathon runner’ covered 260 kilometres of rugged terrain in less than two days! The Persians were subsequently defeated at the Battle of Marathon. The word marathon is the Greek word for fennel, which seems to have grown in the area and gave the battlefield its name.

A dagger found at Marathon. Greece, 5th century BC.

Running was a key part of the ancient Olympics, although long distance races were not initially included. The stadion (or ‘stade’) race, a short sprint, was the most ancient – and indeed the only – event at the first 13 Olympiads. This is where we get the modern word ‘stadium’ and its winner had the Olympiad named after him. The track was not circular but straight, and measured approximately 192 metres.

The vigorous action of a sprinter. Amphora made in ancient Greece, c. 550–525 BC.

Gradually other footraces were added to the programme at Olympia. The diaulos, named after the musical double pipes, consisted of two lengths of the stadium, while the dolichos was a long-distance race, consisting of 20 or 24 lengths. The greatest Olympic runner of all was Leonidas of Rhodes, who won all three events at each of the four Olympiads between 164 and 152 BC. For a runner to maintain such a peak of fitness (all the running events were held on the same day) for 12 years was a remarkable feat and such was the pride of his countrymen that he became worshipped as a local deity.

The steady rhythm of three long-distance runners. Panathenaic amphora made in 333 BC.

The marathon as we know it today was not an event until the modern Olympic Games in 1896, and even then it varied in length. The first modern Olympic marathons were around 40km (25 miles), which is approximately the distance between Marathon and Athens. The marathon is the final athletic race in the Olympics, usually finishing in the stadium. The now standard length of 26 miles and 385 yards was originally run in the 1908 Games in London.

Bronze figure of a running girl. 520–500 BC.

Women were excluded from competing in the Olympic Games, but they did have a festival of their own at Olympia. This was the Heraia, or games held in honour of Hera. These were also celebrated every four years, but there was only one type of event – the foot-race. It was divided into three separate contests for girls of different age groups. The winners were given crowns of olive like the Olympic victors, and they also received a portion of a heifer sacrificed to Hera. Just as the Olympic prize-winners were allowed to dedicate statues of themselves, so the girl victors were granted the privilege of setting up their images in the temple of Hera, but these were paintings and not statues.

At Sparta, girls seem always to have undertaken the same athletic exercises as boys, because tough, strong mothers were believed to produce good Spartan soldiers. The bronze statuette of a girl runner above is probably from Sparta, where women were also expected to take part in athletics. Her appearance corresponds well with the ancient Greek geographer and writer Pausanias’ description of the girls who raced in the Heraia: ‘Their hair hangs down, a tunic reaches to a little above the knee, and they bare the right shoulder as far as the breast.’ (Description of Greece V 16.4).

Find out more about the ancient Olympic Games with Judith’s book The Ancient Olympic Games, available in the Museum’s shop.

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The so-called Sword of Tiberius is on display in Room 70, the Wolfson Gallery of the Roman Empire. It perfectly embodies Roman visual language and political propaganda, tied up with Rome’s foreign wars and the imperial succession.

The sword was discovered in 1848 near the river Rhine, outside the German city of Mainz, which in antiquity was a vast legionary fortress and military command centre for the German frontier.

The scabbard is astonishingly well preserved and intricately detailed. The figurative scene on top is key to its meaning. In the centre is an enthroned male in classicising, divine garb with two attendant figures behind. Before him stands another male in military armour. They both have clear portrait features and were meant to be recognisable.

The sword’s scabbard is remarkably well preserved.

The Museum’s own labels used to say otherwise, but having followed the heated arguments about its iconography and context over the years, I am with those who recognise here the emperor Tiberius (r. AD 14–37), seated, receiving his adopted son Germanicus, commander-in-chief of the Roman army of the Rhine. The goddess Victory is to his left, and another deity, probably Mars, to his right. Clearly, this refers to a major military triumph in Rome’s German wars.

Marble portrait bust of the Roman emperor Tiberius. Roman, c. AD 4–14.

In truth, this is elaborate political spin, masterfully crafted both in intellectual concept and physical form. Under the emperor Augustus (r. 27 BC–AD 14), three entire legions had perished in Germany. First Tiberius, and then Germanicus, led punitive expeditions that resulted in a series of inconclusive, ever more Pyrrhic victories. Tiberius was clever: seeing the futility of these wars, he simply declared victory, granted the ambitious, gung-ho Germanicus a triumph and recalled him to Rome. As Augustus’ stepson, Tiberius had long been overlooked for the succession and was then forced to accept Germanicus as his own crown prince in uneasy competition with the hugely popular, younger man.

The ‘Sword of Tiberius’. Iron sword and tinned and gilded bronze scabbard. Roman, c. AD 15.

One likes to think that this elaborate weapon belonged to a high-ranking officer, but this is by no means assured. What looks like gold and silver is in fact mostly tinned brass. The bigger story is clear – the new monarchy’s legitimacy derived in large part from constant battlefield victories, and the absolute personal loyalty of the new professional military was crucial. Giving to the troops a powerful message of wise leadership by a united imperial family helped achieve this, and the army had the craftspeople to do so beautifully.

Although never part of the ancient Olympic Games, the marathon does have ancient Greek origins. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, when the Athenians learned that the Persians had landed at Marathon on the way to attack Athens in 490 BC, a messenger named Pheidippides ran to Sparta with a request for help. This original ‘marathon runner’ covered 260 kilometres of rugged terrain in less than two days! The Persians were subsequently defeated at the Battle of Marathon. The word marathon is the Greek word for fennel, which seems to have grown in the area and gave the battlefield its name.

A dagger found at Marathon. Greece, 5th century BC.

Running was a key part of the ancient Olympics, although long distance races were not initially included. The stadion (or ‘stade’) race, a short sprint, was the most ancient – and indeed the only – event at the first 13 Olympiads. This is where we get the modern word ‘stadium’ and its winner had the Olympiad named after him. The track was not circular but straight, and measured approximately 192 metres.

The vigorous action of a sprinter. Amphora made in ancient Greece, c. 550–525 BC.

Gradually other footraces were added to the programme at Olympia. The diaulos, named after the musical double pipes, consisted of two lengths of the stadium, while the dolichos was a long-distance race, consisting of 20 or 24 lengths. The greatest Olympic runner of all was Leonidas of Rhodes, who won all three events at each of the four Olympiads between 164 and 152 BC. For a runner to maintain such a peak of fitness (all the running events were held on the same day) for 12 years was a remarkable feat and such was the pride of his countrymen that he became worshipped as a local deity.

The steady rhythm of three long-distance runners. Panathenaic amphora made in 333 BC.

The marathon as we know it today was not an event until the modern Olympic Games in 1896, and even then it varied in length. The first modern Olympic marathons were around 40km (25 miles), which is approximately the distance between Marathon and Athens. The marathon is the final athletic race in the Olympics, usually finishing in the stadium. The now standard length of 26 miles and 385 yards was originally run in the 1908 Games in London.

Bronze figure of a running girl. 520–500 BC.

Women were excluded from competing in the Olympic Games, but they did have a festival of their own at Olympia. This was the Heraia, or games held in honour of Hera. These were also celebrated every four years, but there was only one type of event – the foot-race. It was divided into three separate contests for girls of different age groups. The winners were given crowns of olive like the Olympic victors, and they also received a portion of a heifer sacrificed to Hera. Just as the Olympic prize-winners were allowed to dedicate statues of themselves, so the girl victors were granted the privilege of setting up their images in the temple of Hera, but these were paintings and not statues.

At Sparta, girls seem always to have undertaken the same athletic exercises as boys, because tough, strong mothers were believed to produce good Spartan soldiers. The bronze statuette of a girl runner above is probably from Sparta, where women were also expected to take part in athletics. Her appearance corresponds well with the ancient Greek geographer and writer Pausanias’ description of the girls who raced in the Heraia: ‘Their hair hangs down, a tunic reaches to a little above the knee, and they bare the right shoulder as far as the breast.’ (Description of Greece V 16.4).

Find out more about the ancient Olympic Games with Judith’s book The Ancient Olympic Games, available in the Museum’s shop.