Having visited the exhibition early in its run, on a rather bleak Monday morning in November, I have one overriding memory of the occasion: it was heaving with school children. Clearly this was the day when schools from London and the surrounding environs had hastened to the BM for a spot of Classical immersion… and it is difficult to get more immersive than a 294-artefact exhibition that involved walking through a wooden rib cage suggestive of the eponymous Trojan Horse.
The exhibition itself is divided into three main sections: Myth, Archaeological Reality, and Legacy.
First up, the mythical cycle, which slaps you in the face immediately with a heavy-hitter from the BM’s pottery holdings: the Black Figure Amphora by Exekias of Achilles slaying Penthesilea.
This very much sets the tone for the first third of the exhibition, where the entire Trojan Cycle is explored through Greek and Roman artefacts ranging from Pompeiian frescoes (Aeneas having his wounds tended, from the House of Sirico, Pompeii [VII,1,25]), to Etruscan red-figure vases, sarcophagi, and even gorgeously carved table supports showing Scylla.
However, this is also the problem with this opening section: it’s all a little bit like mythical grapeshot.
Scenes of Achilles on Skyros sit next to the suicide of Ajax, which stand opposite reliefs of Paris’ abduction of Helen. For the informed observer, this juxtaposition of points within the narrative is fine, but for the casual visitor (or a younger pupil) it may be a little overwhelming and difficult to follow any sense of the narrative of the Cycle itself.
More successful – and certainly for this archaeologist more evocative – is the second section of the exhibition, which moves the visitor into the archaeology of Hisarlik, the site of ancient Troy. Necessarily this involves dealing with the legacy of Heinrich Schliemann, which could fill an exhibition in itself. Much of the display is on loan from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the irony being that Schliemann had first offered the entire collection to the BM back in the 1870s, only for the finds to have been turned down due to a lack of space!
The display of these artefacts is well-curated, with the different levels from the Hisarlik Tell being reflected in the arrangement of the shelves of the display cases. Similarly, the lighting and arrangement of the artefacts allows the beauty of the shapes and the textures of the clay to shine through. It was therefore somewhat disappointing to see many on the day I visited speeding through this gallery, clearly perceiving it as something of a transitional zone.
The final area of the exhibition, that which focussed on the artistic legacy of the Trojan Cycle, was very much hit-and miss to me – along with everyone else in the gallery. Certain pieces such as Alexander Pope’s notebook on the Iliad, his hand-written draft of his translation of showing his fascination with the Shield of Achilles (1712-1724), were very evocative. Similarly, I appreciated Blake’s rendering of the Judgement of Paris, complete with demonic figure wielding torches in the upper left, a figure foreshadowing the destruction to come as Paris awards the Golden Apple to Aphrodite.
However, the Wounded Achilles (from Chatsworth House), by Filippo Albacini (1825), the sculpture which has been emblazoned on all of the exhibition’s advertising – and its souvenir tote bags (yes, I am guilty of purchasing one) – left me rather cold, simply because it is rather cold itself. It comes from that period of Classical reception when shining white marble was seen as the Classical ideal, rather than the reality of brightly painted effervescent statuary that was the norm in the Classical Period. I found its sterility uneasy on the eye.
Indeed, that is very much the problem with areas of an exhibition devoted to ‘reception’. While they highlight the continuing ‘cultural’ influence of these texts, either as direct inspiration or as something against which one may react, works of reception are inherently subjective. One of my favourite pieces in this section was the ‘Clytemnestra’ (1882) by John Collier. The jewellery she sports was influenced by the pieces excavated by Schliemann, so we see a direct line between excavation and reception. Equally interesting was Eleanor Antin’s Judgment of Paris (After Rubens), a 2007 piece casting the goddesses into modern visions of their roles.
However, given that there were various mutterings from those around me that pieces like this “have no place in shows at the BM” perhaps reveals something interesting about the audiences that were drawn to the exhibition. Each of us comes with baggage about the Trojan Cycle, baggage informed by 2000 years of elevating Homer to a canonical status, whatever that actually means. We have expectations and some pieces will confirm them, while others will inevitably challenge those preconceptions.
In this regard, the BM’s Troy: Myth and Reality exhibition succeeds, as it reveals that there is not one Homer, but rather many.
The exhibition continues until 8th March 2020.
