Bassae Frieze - History

History

As has been remarked the temple's existence had been known to scholars from the record in Pausanias but its location was uncertain until the accidental discovery in November 1765 by the French architect J. Bocher of the site, but unfortunately he was unable to survey the place due to his murder on his second visit. Though the temple was visited several times in the intervening years, it wasn't until the expedition of 1812 that excavations began. Of the informal group of antiquaries who undertook the enterprise it fell to Haller to record the 1812 dig in his field notebook, the two copies of which are the only surviving details of the disposition of the intact site and finds since the drawings he made in 1811 were lost at sea. However, though Haller's study was exacting by the standards of the day no record was kept of the findspots of the frieze, and only sketchy details that parts of the frieze were found on the temple floor inside the cella by Brondsted. Furthermore the early explores of the temple make little discussion of the sculpture in their subsequent publications, it was not until 1892 that they were formally published with Arthur Smith's catalogue of the British Museum's holdings.

The site was explored in 1812 by British antiquaries who removed the twenty-three slabs of the Ionic cella frieze and transported them to Zante along with other sculptures. The frieze was bought at auction by the British Museum in 1815. This frieze's stones were removed by Charles Robert Cockerell. Cockerell decorated the walls of the Ashmolean Museum's Great Staircase and that of the Travellers Club with plaster casts of the same frieze.

The frieze was purchased by the British Museum from James Linkh, Thomas Legh, Karl Haller von Hallerstein, George Christian Gropius, John Foster and Charles Robert Cockerell who had bought it at auction.