Does the Parthenon frustrate camera movements?

[Heroique]

I should have included this rough rendering in the first post. I just now drew it.

It’s over-simplified & quite exaggerated, but I hope it helps illustrate our discussion.

It shows: what the eye does + Parthenon’s architecture = resulting optical illusion.

Note that I show only the sagging, swelling, and tilting. There are many other “tricks” as people have noted – like the progressive swelling from column to column, their progressive tilting inward, the “bunching” of the columns at the end, etc.

The middle image is similar to what might appear on the neutral camera’s GG, in less-exaggerated form of course…

[tgtaylor]

The movements provided by a standard technical field camera and a wide angle len(s) would be sufficient. Here is a snapshot of it that I took with a K1000 at high noon while on a bicycle tour of Greece:



I was very disappointed with all scaffolding, cranes, workmen all over it when I was there. The tourists I had expected. The same thing happened at Pisa: The famous Leaning Tower was being propped-up with a giant band around it when I was there. Shoot! I hope to get back.

Thomas

[Sascha Welter]

Correction to my previous "they should be finished" post: The cranes are still there. I passed by Monastiraki area this morning and saw not 1 but 3 cranes. Couldn't make out any scaffolding (that would be on the other side from where I was), but I guess some of that is still there too.

Ugly phone camera pic: http://betabug.ch/ouzo/images/acropolis_cranes.jpg

[Robert Hughes]

That old building is pretty beat, it didn't help that it got blown up a few hundred years ago, or that the Brits stole anything of value in the 1800's.

[Heroique]

That old building is pretty beat, it didn't help that it got blown up a few hundred years ago, or that the Brits stole anything of value in the 1800's.

Now, now, let’s be clear before anyone gets angry…

A drawing – dated 1674 – shows 20 sculpted figures in the West pediment. In the photo above, you might imagine them within the roof-top’s broken triangle.

Some of these figures were destroyed in 1687, when a Venetian mortar blew up a Turkish powder magazine in the Parthenon. The same shell knocked over a few columns.

In 1749, twelve figures were left.

In 1800, only four figures remained – at about this time, the Sultan granted Lord Elgin (British Ambassador to Turkey) permission to remove “miscellaneous marbles” from the Acropolis.

Let’s just say Elgin “saved” what he took – never mind he took them to decorate his home in Scotland!

In 1816, the British government purchased “the marbles” (as they’re often called) and installed them in the British Museum. You can see them there today. Read more in John Keats’ brief poem (1817), “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles.”

[Robert Hughes]

I was reading in a book on 19th Century architectural styles, that the Western fascination in Classical architecture came to an abrupt end after Victorian archeologists measured the ancient buildings, and discovered they did not conform to all the elegant mathematical theories expounded during the Renaissance. The Golden Section was a fraud! Oh, well, Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau were coming into vogue, and Classicism became last week's fashion ...

[Jack Dahlgren]

I was reading in a book on 19th Century architectural styles, that the Western fascination in Classical architecture came to an abrupt end after Victorian archeologists measured the ancient buildings, and discovered they did not conform to all the elegant mathematical theories expounded during the Renaissance. The Golden Section was a fraud! Oh, well, Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau were coming into vogue, and Classicism became last week's fashion ...

What book? It seems to exaggerate.

[Robert Hughes]

"Historic Minnesota Homes", I got it out of the Library a few weeks ago on a lark. One interesting tidbit of MN history I learned was that, when the US Army rolled in in the 1810's, they discovered the French had been here for 200 years already.