Las Incantadas
Las Incantadas of Salonica is a group of Roman sculptures from a portico dating to the second century AD that once adorned the Roman Forum of Thessalonica in Northern Greece, and were considered to be among the most impressive and prestigious monuments of the city. Based on descriptions by travellers, it consisted of five Corinthian columns with four of them having bilateral sculptures on each pillar above. The sculptures were removed in 1864 by French paleologist Emmanuel Miller and placed in the Louvre museum in France, while the rest of the building collapsed and was destroyed. A fragment from a lost, fifth pillar was discovered in the city in the late twentieth century.
Greece is seeking the return of the sculptures, although with little success. In 2015 faithful copies of the four pillars were produced and have been exhibited ever since in the archaeological museum of the city. When first displayed that year, it was the first time in over one hundred and fifty years that the city got to see the enchanted sculptures in some form again.
Name
It is unknown what name, if any, the colonnade was known by in antiquity. During the Ottoman Empire, the monument was known by several bynames among the multicultural city's inhabitants. In Greek, they were originally called Είδωλα while in Judaeo-Spanish spoken by the Sephardic community, it was las Incantadas, meaning "the enchanted women", which also inspired the current Greek name, Μαγεμένες, while other names include portico of the idols, or Goetria ''.In modern times they are commonly referred to as the Caryatids of Salonica, and also Elgins of Thessaloniki based on their removal in 1864, similar to the Elgin Marbles, sculptures of the Parthenon removed by Scottishman Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin earlier the same century.
Location
It is believed that the portico was located in the Jewish quarter of Rogos behind the Bey Hamam, close to the Roman Forum. The fact that it had sculptures on both sides indicates that the building's use was intended for both sides. Various assumptions have been made as to what its use was, it is quite likely that it was the entrance to the Roman market, or that it was a dividing border between the palaestra and the platform, or even propylaea of the hippodrome.In a topographical plan by Ernest Hébrard, who was involved in the reconstruction of Thessaloniki after the Great Fire of 1917, its location was marked in the wider area behind the baths of Bay Hamam.
History
Early descriptions
The oldest reference to Las Incantadas comes courtesy of Italian traveller Cyriacus of Ancona in 1431, shortly after the Fall of Thessalonica to the Ottomans. He described it briefly as a demolished temple of Artemis on which figures of gods were depicted. The first depiction of the portico was made between 1685 and 1687 by Frenchman Étienne Gravier d'Ortières, where the basic layout of the monument is shown without a high level of detail, and is described as ruins of a palace. He was followed by British anthropologist Richard Pococke in 1740, who, although he described the sculptures of the columns, the designer who drew the pictures based on his descriptions depicted the monument without the sculptures as well as placing it in a fictional space that did not correspond to reality.The monument is also allegedly depicted on an unidentified, possibly Venetian, old map of Thessaloniki in which all the monuments of the city are marked with Italian descriptions. There under the title colonne it appears to have a total of eight columns in two sections of three and five respectively which join each other forming an angle, the monument as it was originally if some other part of them had not been destroyed even earlier.
Stuart and Revett
The most detailed description of the building with accompanying engravings was done in 1754 by British classicists James Stuart and Nicholas Revett who had been sent by the Society of Dilettanti, producing a number of pictures and engravings that were published for the first time in the third volume of The Antiquities of Athens in 1762. The monument is described as a Corinthian colonnade accompanied by statues at the top. In one of these pictures, where the building is depicted in its entirety, the inscription on the epistle ΝΓΕΓΕΝΗΜΕΝΟΝΥΠΟ can be seen, possibly mentioning the name of the sponsor of the work or the local lord of city. The part with the inscription, however, was no longer preserved during the period of the representation, but it means that the portico of Las Incantadas was considerably larger on both sides. A significant part of the building was below ground, and its actual height was significantly greater. Carrying out a partial excavation, they determined the total height of the building to be 12.70 meters.When comparing their engravings with the sole surviving photograph of the sculptures while they were still in the city, it becomes clear that Stuart and Revett depicted the arrangement of the pillars erroneously. In their works the two presented the order of the reliefs of the eastern side in reverse, from left to right. In the photograph however it is evident that in reality the order was the other way round than the one they drew in the paper, so that the far left first pillar in the engraving is in fact the rightmost fourth pillar, and vice versa for the pillar in the far right, which is actually the very first of the colonnade from left to right. The order in which they drew the western reliefs is correct.
In their writings they also conveyed the popular tradition of the Greek inhabitants, according to which the monument was part of a portico that connected with the palace of Alexander the Great. When the king of Thrace once visited the city, his wife fell in love with Alexander and they met secretly through this portico. As soon as the king found out about this, he had a magic spell cast on the building so that anyone passing by would be petrified. So the king's wife with her attendant were petrified and became statues, and so did the king with his magician who had gone to see if they had caught the witches, while Alexander did not appear that night as according to the story had been warned by his tutor Aristotle.
Late eighteenth to twentieth centuries
also produced engravings in 1782, which was published in 1831 by French archaeologist Esprit-Marie Cousinéry, with a drawing quite similar to that of the house by Stuart and Revett from the same angle. In 1800 excavations around the building were carried out by French consul Félix de Beaujour who gave its total height as 12,5 meters, with a column length of 1,98 m. above ground 5,49 m. underneath. Beaujour requested to take the fourth pillar, which was the best preserved one, but his offer was declined by the local pasha.Similar buildings existed in various cities that were once part of the Roman Empire. In early twentieth century French archaeologist Paul Perdrizet, who examined the sculptures after they had been moved to the Louvre, brought up the third-century pillared building Piliers de Tutelle from the city Bordeaux in France, which shows several similarities but is no longer preserved as it was demolished in 1677.
Removal
Emmanuel Miller was a French palaeologist who was sent on a mission by Napoleon III to acquire antiquities from other countries outside France. He was escorted by painter and photographer Pierre-Désiré Guillemet. Miller himself described their trip on a diary he kept, where he says that at first he had gone to Mount Athos in order to find rare manuscripts. There, after facing the suspicion of the monks, he failed to collect anything of value, and then he passed on to Thasos, from where he obtained a large number of antiquities. During his meeting with the French consul, the consul told him that he should not leave anything behind or the British would have them. Learning about the attractions of Salonica he learned about the monument that was located, he asked permission from the governor to remove the sculptures, but the pasha told him that he would have to get permission from the imperial capital Constantinople, which was done soon after as the French embassy intervened and the permission was given by the Grand Vizier.He came to Thessaloniki on October 30, 1864, arriving on a French warship, and he ran aground not in the port of the city but in another location on the advice of the French consul, so that the transfer of the antiquities would remain as unnoticed by the general public as possible. Miller then learned from the French ambassador that a message had come from France asking him to expropriate not only the marble reliefs but the entire monument, reliefs, columns, metopes, etc. This proved impossible as the weight would have been enormous, as he did not have the necessary equipment but neither could the ship bear such a weight. The news of the removal of the monument were spread and caused an uproar among the Thessalonican population. Miller wrote how he did not understand why they reacted this way since the janissaries had a hobby of shooting the sculptures for fun, and the Jewish owner of the house next to the monument occasionally broke pieces and sold them to tourists.
Shortly before the removal began, Guillemet took a photograph of the monument standing on a neighboring building, which is the only known photograph surviving of Las Incantadas' original location in Thessaloniki. At the same time, it had become known that Las Incantadas would be removed, and there was an outcry from the inhabitants of the city and minor incidents followed. On November 1, Miller began the removal work, cordoned off the area, and had the assistance of Turkish police who kept the crowd at bay, while in the days that followed they would throw water at the crowd to keep it from congregating.
So the slab that was over the pillars with the reliefs was removed first, and then the pillars themselves. One of them, that of the goddess Nike, fell to the ground as it escaped the winch and in its fall a small part of it that was not on the side of the sculpture was broken. On the 12th of November, the removal of the pillars was completed, and their transport began, together with the architrave and the stylobates, with the bullock carts that had been assisted by the Turkish pasha. Transporting through the narrow streets of the city with its potholes and sharp corners proved to be particularly difficult. After the completion of the transport and unloading of the sculptures on the French warship, Miller extended his stay in the city for a few more weeks, until the end of December, and with regard to the heavier parts of the monument he stated in his writings that if he were unable to move them then he would leave them on the streets, and that perhaps the church of Hagios Nicolaos could make use these marbles.
Miller, who had desired to move the entire monument and erect it in France was unable to do due to the insufficient tools and ships; he regretted having destroyed the entire colonnade when it became clear he could not move it as well and would only be able to take the four pillars, pieces of the architrave and the capitals of the five columns. He wrote that demolishing the entire thing just for the sculptures was no better than vandalism or the work of barbarians. Miller, not being an archaeologist himself, did not make any topographical studies or other notes about where the monument was located. When delivered to the Louvre, there was no accompanying inventory of the finds, and the pieces were mixed up with others taken from Thasos.