The Three Goddesses of Destiny is a marble sculpture produced by Phidias from 447 BC to 438 BC, which is now collected in the British Museum in London.
The Three Goddesses of Destiny is a group of sculptures in the Birth of Athena carved on the east mountain wall of the Parthenon Temple, an ancient Greek building. There are three goddesses with no head and arms, namedAtropos、Clotho andLachesis。They are the gods spinning the thread of human life.The three goddesses were dressed in long skirts, with beautiful and varied postures and well arranged. In particular, the ancient Greek style wide dresses were soft and thin, with smooth and light lines, revealing the beautiful, plump and vigorous bodies of the three goddesses of fate, representing the high level of ancient Greek sculpture art, which can be called a treasure of ancient Greek art.[1]
The three goddesses of destiny refer to the three goddesses in charge of people's destiny in Greek mythology, and they respectively refer to Kroso, who is in charge of the future and spinning the thread of life;Lachise, who is responsible for determining the length of the line of life, and Atropos, who is responsible for cutting off the line of life and taking charge of death.（5）... Details
From 447 BC to 438 BC, Phidias presided over the production of the Three Goddesses of Destiny.
1687
Plunder and Collection
In 1687,ParthenonThey were destroyed in the war, and a large number of sculptures were burned or removed. Later, they were plundered by the British. The Three Goddesses of Destiny were exiled to Britain and later kept in the British Museum in London.
Sculpture content
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Three Goddesses of Destiny
The three goddesses are formed by two seated figures, one reclining, the highest seated figure is 1.4 meters, and it is triangular from high to low.They naturally stretch their posture and snuggle closely with each other.Because there is no head, people's aesthetic attention is focused on the body of the statue.The Greek wide grey skirts covering the goddesses are particularly striking.[2]
Creation background
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Material background
This is a sculpture in the classical period of Greece. The theme is from Greek mythology.The second wife of Zeus was Themis, the goddess of justice and law in the Titans. Themis and Zeus gave birth to two pairs of triplets, a total of six girls（Onomia）, Justice（Dice）And peace（Erine）The second child is the Three Goddesses of Destiny, namely Croto who weaves the lifeline, Lachesis who distributes life and Atropos who recovers the lifeline.The power of the three goddesses of fate is above all, and neither God nor man can disobey them.Zeus was the king of all gods, in charge of all things in the world, with infinite power, but his own destiny was controlled by the three goddesses, and could not be controlled by himself.In the Greek world, people undoubtedly believed that their destiny was under the control of the three goddesses, who were the agents of Hades.[3-4]
historical background
In 490 BC, the powerful Persian Empire sent troops to attack Greek city states in order to expand its territory. The Persian army ran all the way in victory, but was tenaciously resisted by the Athenian army. It was badly hit in the Marathon Plain, and had no choice but to retreat.The Athenian city-state won a great victory in the Marathon battle. They cleared the Mycenaean ruins at the southern tip of the city and began to build the old Parthenon Temple.The Athenians used 8000 two ton limestone bricks to level the foundation and raise it. These stones filled the original large pit with a maximum depth of 11 meters.With great reverence, they gradually built a place to worship God, which was not completed for 10 years.
In 480 BC, the Athenian city-state was invaded again by the Persians, and more than 200000 Persian troops occupied two-thirds of Greece's land. But when they reached Athens, the Athenians had evacuated.The Persian commander Xerxes ordered the burning of the city to vent his anger, and the unfinished "Old Parthenon" was razed along with other ancient temples.The Athenians decided not to rebuild any more, and let the ruins "serve as a monument to warn those who come to the Acropolis to mourn after the disrespectful barbarians have gone" until they won the war.
Since then, Greek city states have formed an alliance to jointly resist the Persian attack. After 30 years of resistance, the allied forces led by Athens finally defeated the Persian Empire. In 449 years ago, Persia signed the Carias Peace Treaty with Greece, recognized the independence of Greek city states, and withdrew from the Aegean Sea and Haiti, ending the Bosnian War.
In order to commemorate the victory of the war, people built a large number of temples to sing praises for the gods.Among them is the Parthenon.The Three Goddesses of Destiny is a group of fragments of all the statues on the chevron gable on the east side of Parthenon Temple.[5]
The sitting posture of the three goddesses changes with the triangle trend of the wall. They all wear thin Greek style wide gowns with delicate and complex folds. With the ups and downs of the human body structure, they vividly reflect the distinctive female body curves. The goddesses are beautiful, full and plump,It makes people really feel the infinite vitality and vigor gestated in their bodies.The flexible body that seems to rise and fall slightly with the breath makes everyone who sees this group of sculptures almost forget that they are cold marble. They are real, kind and admirable.[4]
Ancient Greek sculpture attaches great importance to the integral indivisibility of the image, and each part of the human body gives full play to its modeling characteristics, striving to express the internal life of the image.So although the body is incomplete, every part contains the spirit of life. That is to say, the fragments of the statue are also living creatures. The viewer can associate the incomplete part through the action and posture of the visible part, so as to obtain a perfect aesthetic experience.[4]
technique
The sculptor used superb carving language to depict the plump and soft body hidden through the pleats of the goddess' clothes.The sculpture adopts different curve changing shapes: the seated goddess, the soft dress, due to the ups and downs of the body, forms horizontal and vertical changes in density, the plump crisp chest and the breast peak are flat and folded up, and the waist is complex and folded down, from the overall point of view, the density changes slightly;The reclining goddess bares her chest and exposes her round and soft skin. The movement of her body shows a beautiful figure and the flow of wavy lines, which is smooth and soft.In the words of the poet Heine, the patterns on the Greek statues are the polyphonic response of the body movement.[4]
Comments of famous experts
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Zhuang Xichang, an expert in world cultural history, doctoral supervisor of Fudan University and former vice president, said that although the sculpture of the Three Goddesses of Destiny is incomplete now, it still shows the charm of elegance and elegance.[6]
Historical inheritance
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In 1687, the Parthenon Temple was destroyed in the war, and a large number of sculptures were burned or moved away. Later, it was looted by the British, which made many precious works of art flow to Britain. The Three Goddesses of Destiny is one of the better preserved works.[7]
About the author
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Phidias (500 years ago - 432 years ago) is the representative of Greek idealized art.He led the design and construction of the Acropolis in Athens, and was the designer of the decorative sculpture of the Parthenon and the "Statue of Zeus" of the Olympian Temple.[2]
