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TRAVELERS with a fondness for classical antiquity can visit no fewer than 13 Athenses in the United States. but only in Nashville&emdash;the "Athens of the South"&emdash;does the Greek original come to life. In Nashville's Centennial Park stands the only full-scale replica of the Parthenon, the fifth-century B . C . temple on the Athenian Acropolis that has come to symbolize the classical past. Each year over 200,000 visitors from around the world walk through this faithful reproduction and examine casts of many of the famous sculptures that adorned the original. But since it opened in 1931, the Nashville Parthenon has lacked what would have been the central attraction for the ancient Greeks&emdash;the colossal statue of Athens' city goddess, Athena Parthenos, by the renowned sculptor Phidias. Soon, however, Athena will again inhabit her temple: Nashville's Board of Parks and Recreation has commissioned local sculptor Alan LeQuire to produce a full-scale replica. The statue will stand nearly 42 feet high&emdash;Athena herself 36 feet tall, atop a five-and-a-half-foot base. Enthusiasm for providing the Nashville temple with an image of its goddess has grown steadily since 1975. when a small collection-box was set up in the Parthenon. By 1982, interest among sculptors and the availability of almost $27,000&emdash;largely contributions from visitors&emdash;had made starting the project feasible. (Fundraising continues: $40,000 is needed to see Athena to completion. ) The Board of Parks formed a special committee, chaired by board member Anne Roos, which awarded the commission to LeQuire in May 1982. According to Roos, LeQuire was selected because he was keenly interested in producing an archeologically correct replica and because his work displayed the skill necessary for modeling the lifelike statue. The construction of the colossal statue presents extraordinary artistic and technical challenges. Phidias' Athena no longer exists: it was transported to Byzantium in the fifth century A.D. by the Christian emperor Theodosius ll, and only traces of the great base and the deep hole that held the central support of the statue can be seen today in the temple on the Acropolis. Ancient descnptions of the image survive, however, as do replicas of the statue as a whole and of individual parts and details. Although these copies, dating from different centuries and executed in different scales and degrees of detail, cannot simply be combined to produce an exact replica of the Athena, they do offer sufficient information for attempting reconstructions. For example, a small-scale model stands in the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto . LeQuire ' s Athena, however, will be the first full-size reproduction. Phidias' Athena was made of gold and ivory. A fair number of such statues&emdash;called "chryselephantine"&emdash;were made in antiquity, but the Athena was the first translation of the technique to a colossal scale. The statue was constructed on a wooden armature&emdash;one ancient author describes mice scampering up and down the interior supports&emdash;but presented a realistic surface, with plates of gold for drapery and ivory for the white skin of the goddess. LeQuire's replica is made of less precious but more practical materials&emdash;primarily gypsum cement reinforced with fiberglass. LeQuire spent months studying the archeological evidence for Phidias' Athena, mastering the available facts about the image and absorbing the sculptural style of the high classical period. He then prepared a clay model at one tenth of the finished size. This was followed by an eight-foot-high model, one fifth the final size. At this stage LeQuire refined the design of the statue, balancing the demands of archeological accuracy with the requirements of the new technique. The final statue is being cast section by section in thin panels. Like Phidias, LeQuire works not in the temple where the image will stand but in his own studio. Each secfion is first modeled in clay&emdash;five tons of it, worked on a wood armature&emdash;and then covered with plaster to obtain a mold. The inside of this mold is coated with a thin layer of gypsum cement reinforced with chopped fiberglass, and the final result is a thin shell of great strength but minimal weigh the clay is remolded for the next section, and the casting goes on. Since the completed Athena will stand three times as high as the studio, joining the panels is also a piecemeal procedure; LeQuire is currently assembling Athena's head in the shop of the welder who is preparing the aluminum frame around which the panels will be constructed. The complete image will be assembled on its frame in the main chamber of the Parthenon&emdash;much as Phidias' Athena I was&emdash;and will be painted to give the appearance of the original. LeQuire is not daunted by his colossal creation, despite the fact that the project is "ten times'' as extensive as he originally thought it would be. ''I had no experience in doing anything this big. But the final product is also going to be a lot better than I expected it to be. It's taking four years, not one year, mostly because the material was changed from plaster to gypsum cement. Instead of modeling the figure directly in plaster over wire, I'm sculpting it in clay and casting it, which means that I go over every part of it four or five times at different stages.'' In his own, non-Phidian work, LeQuire is solidly committed to a naturalistic figural style. He holds degrees from Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and studied in France and in Italy (where he was assistant to sculptor Milton Hebald in Rome). His statues and portraits in stone, bronze and clay are well known in his native Nashville and have won high praise for their sensitive naturalism. In executing the Athena, however, he has subordinated his own artistic aims to the goal of producing an accurate copy. He has been in steady consultation with archeologists to ensure the accuracy of the replica. Early interest in the project came from Brunilde S. Ridgway of Bryn Mawr College, a leading expert on Greek sculpture. (It was one of her teachers, William Bell Dinsmoor. the greatest authority on Greek architecture, who acted as consultant for the construction of the Nashville Parthenon, which was begun in 1920.) Long fascinated bv colossal statuary, Ridgway sees the Nashville project as a chance to put archeological theories to a practical test. "There are so many questions that can be answered only by attempting this kind of project," she says. ''Problems that we can't imagine when we try to reconstruct these statues on paper suddenly stand out. This is the best chance we have had to see the Parthenos primarily in terms of the technical considerations of a colossal image. LeQuire expects that Athena will be in place this fall; the finishing touches, such as her giant shield and the figure of Victory that she holds, will be completed by fall 1986. The sculptor is returning to the mod ern world with a commission for a Vietnam memorial for Nashville. Has he learned more about archeology than he ever wanted to know? ''No," he says, laughing. "I'm still learning." &emdash;Alice Donohue |