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The Exaltation of the Flower
Artist	Unknown Greek artist
Year	ca. 470–460 BCE
Type	Parian marble
Dimensions	Height: 56.5 cm (22.2 in). Width: 67 cm (26.4 in). Depth: 14 cm (5.5 in).
Condition	Fragment
Location	Louvre, Paris

The Exaltation of the Flower (L'Exaltation de la Fleur) is an early Classical Greek marble fragment of a funerary stele from the 5th century BCE. It was discovered in 1863 by Léon Heuzey and Henri Daumet at a church in Farsala, Thessaly, Greece. The stele depicts two women carved in bas-relief in the Severe style. The work is held by the Louvre museum in the Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities.

Background

French archaeologist and historian Léon Heuzey began working with the École française d'Athènes at the age of 20 in 1851. He made his most famous discovery of that period in the town of Farsala, a city in southern Thessaly, Greece. In antiquity, the area was named Pharsalos, and became known for the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BCE, where Julius Caesar defeated Pompey during the Great Roman Civil War.

Heuzey and the architect Henri Daumet were involved in an official mission to collect objects related to Caesar's campaigns, but they were also interested in other artifacts unrelated to their work. In 1863, they found the marble bas-relief embedded in the walls of a church in the neighborhood of Paleo-Loutro in Farsala. Heuzey was informed that the stone was originally discovered in a garden in close proximity to another stone that was not recovered. Heuzey successfully negotiated to purchase the stone and had it sent back to the Louvre. Back in France, Heuzy would become curator of the Louvre, where he would retire in 1908.

Description

A precise description and interpretation of the work has remained elusive since its initial discovery in the 19th century, with scholars agreeing on some aspects but disagreeing on others. British Greek art scholar Martin Robertson, for example, notes that both females can be seen wearing the tubular peplos garment common to the Classical period. Robertson believes that the bottom missing fragment would have showed the girl on the left standing and the woman on the right seated.

Analysis

In his 1868 paper, Heuzey argued that the images in the stele suggested the goddesses Persephone and Demeter, referring to the cult of Kore and the legend of Demeter found in the Homeric Hymns. French archaeologist and art historian Maxime Collignon explained his position, writing "Heuzey believes that this monument refers to the cultus of Core, daughter of Demeter, a divinity suggesting in Greek legend the ephemeral but incessantly recurring bloom of nature." French archaeologist Olivier Rayet disagreed with the interpretation offered by Heuzey. While Heuzey's perspective still has adherents, it has largely fallen out of favor among art historians. According to the Perseus Project at Tufts University, "It is now generally agreed...that the figures represented are mortals rather than goddesses."

German archaeologist Heinrich Brunn believed the decorative qualities of the Pharsalos stele originated in Asia Minor. Following this line of reasoning, Scottish archaeologist Alexander Stuart Murray compared the facial features of the stele, such as the eyes, lips, and nose, to similar facial features found in the Harpy Tomb relief from Xanthos in Lycia. American curator Edward Robinson notes the influence of the Ionic schools on this and other artwork from ancient Aeolia, now known as Thessaly: "It is now a question whether these works were done by local artists under this influence, or by Ionic artists who may have established themselves in Thessaly, as they did in other parts of Greece." The Ionian style's influence can also be seen in the depiction of the hair-net worn by the women in the relief.

In 1911, Greek scholar and archaeologist Rufus B. Richardson, formerly of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, observed that the flowers in the relief looked similar to mushrooms. English classicist Robert Graves and Italian ethnobotanist Giorgio Samorini have both referred to The Exaltation of the Flower as evidence for the entheogen hypothesis, speculating that the flowers depicted in the work are actually a type of psychoactive mushroom that was used in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Alternate titles

The work is referred to by many different titles in the literature. These include: Template:Multicol

• Adoration of the Flower
• Demeter and Kore Exalting the Flower
• Demeter and Persephone
• The Elevation of the Flower

Template:Multicol-break

• Maidens Enjoying Flowers
• Pharsalos Bas-Relief
• Pharsalos relief
• Relief of Demeter and Kore

Template:Multicol-break

• Stele of Pharsalos
• Stele of the Two Sisters
• The Uplifting of the Flower

Template:Multicol-end

References

1. Lis, Michel; Béatrice Vingtrinier (2010). Flowers in the Louvre. Flammarion. ISBN 2081228203. pp. 16-17.
2. ^ Collignon, Maxime; John Henry Wright, trans. (1886). A Manual of Greek Archæology. Cassell. p. 142-143.
3. ^ Heuzey, L. (June 1868). L'exaltation de la fleur, bas-relief grec de style archaïque trouvé à Pharsale Journal des savants. pp. 380-395
4. ^ Monceaux, Paul (1922). Éloge funèbre de M. Léon Heuzey, membre de l'Académie. Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. 66 (1): 53-56.
5. Schwartz, Emmanuel. (2010). Heuzy, Léon. Dictionnaire Critique des Historiens de L'Art. Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art.
6. Heuzey, L.; H. Daumet (1876). Mission archéologique de Macédoine. Volume 1. Paris. pp. 415-417.
7. ^ Louvre Ma 701 (Sculpture). Perseus Project. Tufts University.
8. Robertson, Martin (1981). A Shorter History of Greek Art. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521280842. pp. 57-58.
9. The German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne hosts an image using extrapolation to reconstruct the missing bottom fragment. It is available here. For the main object record, see here.
10. Murray, Alexander Stuart (1880). A History of Greek Sculpture: From the earliest times down to the age of Pheidias. London: John Murray. pp. 289-291.
11. Robinson, Edward (1896). Catalogue of Casts Part III: Greek and Roman Sculpture. Museum of Fine Arts Boston. p. 32.
12. Benson, Carol (2001). A Greek Statuette in Egyptian Dress. The Journal of the Walters Art Museum, 59. pp. 9-10.
13. Richardson, Rufus Byam (1911). A History of Greek Sculpture. American Book Company. pp. 73, 96.
14. Samorini, Giorgio (1998). The Pharsalus Bas-Relief and the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Entheogen Review, 7(2): 60-63.
15. Samorini, Giorgio; Gilberto Camilla (1995). Rappresentazioni fungine nell’arte greca. Annali del Museo Civico di Rovereto, 10: 307-326. (html)

Further reading

• Biesantz, Hagen. (1965). Die thessalischen Grabreliefs. Studien Zur Nordgriechischen Kunst. Mainz: Philip von Zabern. ISBN 3805302312.
• Hamiaux, Marianne (1992). Les Sculptures grecques. Des origines à la fin du IVe siècle avant J.-C. Volume I. ISBN 2711826031.
• Hampe, R. (1951). Die Stele aus Pharsalos im Louvre. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co. OCLC 2205559
• Knauf-Museum (2005). Reliefsammlung der großen Kulturepochen. J.H.Röll Verlag. ISBN 3897542404. p. 139.

External links

• Official site (French)

• Funerary steles
• 5th-century BC Greek sculptures
• Antiquities of the Louvre