Pentelic marble caryatid from the Erechtheion. This is one of six caryatids that held up the roof of the Erechtheion. She wears a peplos pinned on each shoulder. Her hair is braided and falls in a thick rope down her back. She probably held a sacrificial vessel in one of the missing hands. The figure strongly resembles the women of the east frieze of the Parthenon, which had just been completed when work on the Erechtheion began. She carries an architectural capital like a basket on her head. The weight she bears is taken on the right leg, encased in perpendicular folds. The other leg is flexed with the drapery moulded to it. --The British Museum, Pryce, F N; Smith, A H, Catalogue of Greek Sculpture in the British Museum, I-III, London, BMP, 1892
The East pediment showed the miraculous birth of the goddess Athena from the head of her father Zeus. Many of the figures from the central scene are now fragmentary or entirely lost. --The British Museum, Pryce, F N; Smith, A H, Catalogue of Greek Sculpture in the British Museum, I-III, London, BMP, 1892; Jenkins, Ian, The Parthenon Frieze, London, BMP, 1994
The East pediment showed the miraculous birth of the goddess Athena from the head of her father Zeus. Many of the figures from the central scene are now fragmentary or entirely lost. --The British Museum, Pryce, F N; Smith, A H, Catalogue of Greek Sculpture in the British Museum, I-III, London, BMP, 1892; Jenkins, Ian, The Parthenon Frieze, London, BMP, 1994
