Enid Yandell - turn-of-the-century sculptress - created Nashville Parthenon's first Athena for the 1897 Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition. Yandell's Pallas Athena (based upon the Pallas of Velletri - at the Louvre) stood sentry outside Nashville's Parthenon. Strong hero-protector-goddess of all-things and endeavors wise, brave, just, skillful, shrewd, and artistic - Athena... at least Yandell's Athena... was not equipped to battle weather and time. Nashville elected to replace Yandell's Pallas Athena.
Enid Yandell with Pallas Athena, circa 1897. Photo from Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. |
Nashville, Tennessee Parthenon pediment, frieze, and grand columns. Photo Toile La La. |
Magnificent doors of Nashville, Tennessee Parthenon. Photo Toile La La. |
All in all, as awe-inspriring as any statue of any Athena statue - it's a remarkable fact and feat that Enid Yandell, a woman of the late nineteenth century should make her mark as a prolific artist/sculptor. As proof of the magnitude of this triumph, one should perhaps consider Yandell's words describing another statue - Struggle of Life - portraying "the attempt of the mortal soul within us to free itself from the handicaps and entanglements of its earthly environments".
In addition to images of Yandell's Pallas Athena (sometimes referred to as Athene), it was a description of Yandell in her Paris studio - at the impasse du Maine in the Latin Quarter - which drew me to the artist. Before Pallas Athena set sail for the U.S., Enid held a bon voyage party - "a candle-lit feast" inside the statue's torso... Tres Chic!
Wikipedia entry image, chromolithograph by The Henderson Litho Co., 1896/1897. Library of Congress. |
Read more about the Nashville Parthenon at this Interesting America Richard Grigonis article.
See Enid Yandell's Pallas Athena in situ as it was in 1897 - here at Tennessee State Library and Archives.