The Elgin Affair
The True Story of the Greatest Theft in History
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Almost two hundred years after they were “purchased” from Greece, the finest and most famous marbles of antiquity still remain a burning issue. This compelling, controversial story of the Elgin marbles re-creates in full and colorful detail “the greatest art theft in history,” a steamy tale of obsession, intrigue, adultery, and ruin. As the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte in Constantinople, Lord Elgin encountered in his endeavors some of the most famous names of nineteenth-century history: Napoleon, Sultan Selim III, Lord Nelson, Lord Byron, and Keats. Drawing on original source material—letters, diaries, official government reports, and memoranda, Vrettos brilliantly brings to life these fascinating stories.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Childe Harold, Byron famously wrote of Greece, "Dull is the eye that will not weep to see/ Thy mouldering shrines removed/ By British hands." This canto appeared in 1812, just a few years after the seventh Earl of Elgin, a British diplomat, stripped friezes, metopes and slabs from the Parthenon and other structures on the Acropolis and sent them to England. Although Elgin's collection of ancient Grecian artwork still remains in the British Museum, his efforts ruined him financially; may have played a role in his brief imprisonment in France; and certainly gained him the enmity not only of the Greeks but of others like Byron. There is certainly a very interesting book to be written on this contentious subject, but this is not it. The prose is overheated, and on at least one art historical point (the origin of Greek vases) Vrettos displays a talent for imprecise thinking. The more serious problem is the similarity between this book and Vrettos's 1974 A Shadow of Magnitude: The Acquisition of the Elgin Marbles. While in his "
