Restoring Sacred Power to the Parthenon

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Restoring Sacred Power to the Parthenon

Giving substance to the divine

For de Lara, the Parthenon functioned as a machine for metaphysical perception, carefully calibrated to produce awe through architecture, optics and the alchemy of materials. The spectacle of Athena was not only devotional – it was astonishing.

“The Parthenon must have had a tremendous impact,” he says. “These were the special effects of the ancient world. Imagine being an Athenian citizen who, in their lifetime, might have only encountered a limited number of awe-inspiring sights. To stand before a colossal statue of gold and ivory must have, even for a moment, made the divine feel tangible. Athens was a deeply religious society, and this statue was a fitting representation of a goddess of Victory, especially in a temple built after years of war.”

This interpretation reframes the Parthenon, not as a broken relic, but as a contemporary revelation. At the same time, it raises a deeper, almost ontological question: was the architecture designed to create belief, or merely to amplify it? Was the goddess meant to be fully revealed, or only partially glimpsed? Not dazzling in full Attic light, but radiant in suggestion?

“Practically all religions give symbolic expression to the dualistic concepts of light and darkness, often in conflict and tension,” de Lara points out. “Light and radiance have long been associated with life, knowledge, wisdom, insight, justice and goodness. For this reason, in many religions – including Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism – light is closely linked to the divine. One would expect the same in ancient Greek religion, yet it seems the Greeks assigned a slightly different meaning to sunlight, and often operated within darkness. The key discovery in this research is that the true beauty of the encounter with the goddess emerged not from full illumination, but from her radiance within the shadows.”

In that spirit, his 3D rendering goes so far as to introduce natural cracks into the surface of the statue’s face – a subtle nod to the passage of time, and a reminder that Phidias’ Athena was not only divine, but embodied. The sacred, in de Lara’s vision, is not merely presented – it is staged.

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