Some Relief Sculptures in the Museum of the British School at Athens

Abstract

The British School at Athens has had in its possession for many years now a number of fragments of Greek relief sculpture, mostly from funerary or votive monuments. The origin of these sculptures is obscure, but it seems likely that they were collected by the historian George Finlay, probably during the first half of the nineteenth century. It is the purpose of this article to publish photographs and details of some of the more important fragments, and also to attempt to date them and to interpret the scenes which they show.S.7. Plate 73a. A fragment from the lower right corner of a relief. H. 0·27 m., W. 0·45 m., Th. 0·17 m., Depth of relief 1 cm. Pentelic marble. Part of the right-hand edge of the relief remains, where it can be seen that there was no side frame. Below, there is a simple plinth or ground-line with a flat surface, and beneath this a rougher receding margin of about the same width, perhaps where the relief was inserted into a base

9 A brief history of the BSA Museum Study Collection

“…Finlay's stone collection (and sculptures donated by others) were not catalogued before the Second World War and were kept in the gardens of the BSA. A few pieces had been published (Waywell 1970), but more full David Clarke and the 'Clarke Catalogue' (with contributions from Antonis Chaliakopoulos) In 1948, David Clarke, BSA Student and scholar of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, was in Greece to take part in the excavations at Old Smyrna. Clarke was also resident for some time in Athens; during this stay, he began indexing and re-cataloguing the antiquities collection 'with a view to eventual publication' (Cook 1948: 2, 7).…”

“…9.18;Smith 2003;D'Errico 2021). Further study of the collection was undertaken during this period, resulting in a series of new publications (Boardman 1954;Waywell 1970;French 1971;Phelps et al 1979; and later studies by Catling and Jones 1989;Arnott 1990;Catling 1990). The first scientific analyses were conducted on BSA collection objects (stone axes) at this time, which resulted in a published study (Phelps et al 1979) and the production of unpublished notes In 1983 a condition report on the Museum Study Collection was written by Roger Cocking (BSA MUS 01/04/01), in which he gave recommendations for the repacking of objectsa preventative conservation strategyand in which he urged the curators of the museum to return to the task of compiling a full inventory and photographic record.…”

“…The result is that there are now some 4,000 individual artefacts and over 46,000 sherds of pottery comprising the collection from some 120 different sites (Map 9.1). This collection has been housed and/or displayed in different parts of the premises over the past 130 years, and various small sections, organized by primary material type and studied by object specialists, have been published in the BSA (Wilhelm 1901;Lamb 1924;Cook 1935;Boardman 1954;Waywell 1970;Betts 1971;Phelps et al 1979;Catling and Jones 1989;Arnott 1990;Catling 1990;Lambert 2000;Tomlinson 2000;Coldstream 2003;Smith 2003;Pisani 2006;Smith 2009). What has been lacking, however, is a narrative of the collection itself -although many of its details have been part of unwritten institutional memory.…”

George Finlay in Egypt and Switzerland: Nineteenth-Century Travel, Scholarship and Social Networks

“… 20. Bosanquet 1904; Waywell 1970; Betts 1971; Arnott 1990; Lambert 2000; Tomlinson 2000; Smith 2003 and 2009; Pisani 2006. …”