Pope Francis' magnanimous gesture, the Vatican Museum gifts the Acropolis Museum three fragments from the Parthenon

Pope Francis' magnanimous gesture, the return of three pieces from the Parthenon housed in the Vatican Museum, to be gifted to Greece where they will be reunited with the Parthenon Marbles in the Acropolis Museum.

These three fragments of Pentelic marble arrived into the Vatican in the 19th century. Part of the decorative sculpture of the Parthenon, the temple built on the Acropolis in Athens by Pericles (447-432 B.C.), the figurative decoration of the temple is the creative genius of the Athenian sculptor, Phidias.

The head of a horse comes from the west front of the building, on which Athena and Poseidon were shown competing for dominion over Attica; the fragment here has been identified as the fourth horse pulling Athena's chariot. The relief with the head of a boy has been identified as one of the figures from the frieze that went round the cella of the temple: he is carrying a tray of votive cakes which were offered during the Panathenaic procession in honour of Athena. The bearded male head, however, has been attributed to one of the metopes from the southern side of the building where there was a battle between the Lapiths and Centaurs.

This donation is made by the Pope to His Beatitude Ieronymos II, the Orthodox Christian archbishop of Athens and all Greece, “as a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth.”

The Vatican statement reported in a number of news outlets suggestes the Holy See wanted to make clear that it was not a bilateral decision to return the marbles from the Vatican state to Greece, but rather a religiously inspired donation. The statement may have been worded in this way so as to refrain from creating a precedent that could affect other priceless holdings in the Vatican Museums.

On this happy news day,  BCRPM reflects on the Vatican Museum fragment orginally lent to the Acropolis Museum in December 2008 and that the then BCRPM Hon Secretary Eleni Cubitt asked Marlen to telephone Francesco Buranelli. He was delighted to find out that there was a committee in the UK campaigning for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles. His email to BCRPM can be read here, and his article in Italian, published in "Giornale dell'Arte" in July 2008, can also be read here.