Report on the Aeginetan Sculptures

Tells the story of Bavaria's acquisition of ancient Greek sculptures that rivaled those acquired by England from the Parthenon.The controversial removal of the Parthenon sculptures from Greece to England in the first decade of the nineteenth century by Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, sparked an international competition for classical antiquities. This volume tells a lesser-known chapter of that story, concerning sculptures from the Temple of Aphaia on the Greek island of Aegina. Discovered in 1811 as the Parthenon project was nearing its completion, these ancient sculptures were acquired at auction by Johann Martin Wagner (1777-1858) on behalf of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria. The sculptures turned out to be significant in a number of ways, offering important evidence for a transitional period of Greek art between the archaic and classical eras, for the existence of an independent Aeginetan school that was the equal of Athenian art at the time, and for Greek sculptures having been elaborately painted and adorned.>Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. holds the William M. Suttles Chair in Religious Studies and serves as Director of the Center for Hellenic Studies at Georgia State University. He is the author of many books, including Symposia: Plato, the Erotic, and Moral Value and Afterwords: Hellenism, Modernism, and the Myth of Decadence, both also published by SUNY Press; Classics at the Dawn of the Museum Era: The Life and Times of Antoine Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849); and Winckelmann and the Vatican's First Profane Museum.