135 Main St., Montpelier, Vt 05602
802-223-3338 (phone and fax)
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The Bittermann Kitzmiller Room Frieze |
| The friezes of the Bittermann Kitzmiller Room in the Kellogg-Hubbard Library are remnants not only of Ancient Greece and Renaissance Italy, but also of the Library's own history. | |
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The room, which was originally built as a lecture hall for the Library, housed the T.W. Wood Art Gallery from 1953-1985. The Gallery bought the three friezes, which remained in the Library after the Gallery moved to its current location at the Vermont College of Fine Arts campus. While also housing the Library's fiction collection, the room continues to serve as a gallery, hosting exhibits by local artists. The room was restored during the Millennium renovation. Obstructive light fixtures were removed and replaced by ones that emphasize the friezes. In 2001, the room was renamed in honor of Karen Bittermann Kitzmiller, a state legislator from Montpelier and a tireless advocate for the Kellogg-Hubbard Library. The room contains copies of three separate friezes: one from the Parthenon, and two from the cathedral in Florence. The Parthenon is the temple built by Pericles from 460-438 B.C., to honor Athena, the patroness deity of Athens. Every year, a Panathenaic (or national) festival was held to celebrate and solidify the union of the peoples of Attica. The crowning event was the grand procession of the citizens from the Stadium, where games were played, to the Parthenon's cella (the enclosed interior of the temple), where prizes were presented to the victors. The frieze represents a "procession of youths and maidens, of priests and magistrates, of oxen for sacrifice, of flute players and singers of youthful chivalry of Athens riding their Thessalian horses." It was sculpted by Phidias in marble, around 440 BC, and graced the outer walls of the cella. Despite attacks on Athens by the Romans, Goths, and Turks, the Parthenon remained almost intact until 1687, when Venetians besieged the Turkish garrison, and in the course of the bombardment the Parthenon was reduced to rubble. At the beginning of the 19th century, Lord Elgin, the British ambassador at Constantinople, received permission from the Turkish Sultan (Greece then being under Ottoman rule) to take some slabs of the Parthenon frieze to England. In 1816 the British government bought portions of the frieze, and they still reside in the British Museum. The slabs on the wall overlooking Main St. are copies of the least-damaged part of the frieze that remains in the Parthenon; the slabs on the opposite wall are copies of the best-preserved slabs in the British Museum. They are displayed in roughly the same order and position as the originals, though the originals were on the outside of the cella, while the copies here are displayed on internal, facing walls. |
| The second frieze is found on the wall over the main stairwell. It depicts cherubs singing and keeping step to their music. This work is regarded as the finest sculpture in bas-relief of the period of the Renaissance, with one exception: the façade of the chorus gallery in the same cathedral, done by Luca Della Robbia between 1431-1440. |  |
| The third frieze in this room is a full and exact replica of that work. Found over the windows that face School St., it depicts singing angels and dancing boys. The flatness of the figures is noticeable; this was a peculiar characteristic of Robbia's work, done to create a pictorial effect. It is without doubt the masterpiece of bas-relief sculpture of the Renaissance. The original slabs are no longer in the cathedral, but are scattered throughout the Bargello Museum in Florence. There are few places in the world where a complete set of them can be seen. |
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Adapted from the Catalogue of the Pictures of the Thomas Waterman Wood Gallery. Edited by The Queen's English.
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