It was commissioned by a Greek king, made its creator a superstar and in his native Denmark attracted crowds like no other painting before. Then it mysteriously disappeared.
Now, nearly nine decades after it was last seen gracing the stairwell of the royal palace that would become the Athens parliament, Carl Bloch’s masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound, has found fame again in Greece.
“Its appeal has been astounding,” said Nikolas Papadimitriou, the director of the Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Museum beneath the Acropolis. “People stand before it transfixed. They’re completely mesmerised.”
On public display for the first time in the country, the painting has for months been attracting visitors who are spurred as much by the prospect of seeing a long-lost cultural treasure as hunger, perhaps, for a glimpse of freedom’s victory over oppression.
The painting’s popularity has been such that plans are now afoot to exhibit it elsewhere in Greece before the culture ministry, which has declared the work a protected monument, puts it on permanent display at the newly restored palace of Tatoi, north of the capital, later this year.
“At the age of 87 I don’t think I’ve seen anything like it,” said Dimitris Mavrikas, a retired merchant who had travelled from Agrinio in central Greece to see the work. “For me it’s all about the battle of human existence, the battle we wage to survive from the moment we are born.”
In an increasingly insecure world, it was, he said, a battle freighted with significance. “Who can dispute the fact that people have always been fighting for their liberty?” he said. “I’d heard so much about this painting and it hasn’t let me down. It provokes awe.”
At four metres high and three metres wide, the painting depicts the moment Prometheus breaks free from the chains that have bound him to a rock, the punishment that Zeus bestowed on him for daring to gift mankind the power of fire.
Condemned to have his liver pecked by an eagle in perpetuity – with the king god ensuring the organ is constantly renewed for the bird to feast on – Bloch evokes the drama of Prometheus’s liberation after Heracles’ unexpected intervention. He looks on incredulously as his tormentor falls from his body.
Papadimitriou said the painting’s allure could also be attributed to “its sheer size, in a country where we’ve never had big buildings to hang such pieces”.
Schoolchildren have visited the museum to take in the floor-to-ceiling treasure “and the reaction was always the same”, he said. “They stood there in silence, in total amazement.”
Known for his depictions of mythological heroes, Bloch was commissioned in 1864 by the young Danish-born king George I, who had assumed Greece’s throne the year before. Ensconced in his studio in Rome as revolutionary fervour spread, the artist worked furiously to finish the painting. When it was first exhibited in Copenhagen in 1865, Prometheus Unbound was hailed as groundbreaking and an unprecedented success.
“It would be right to say that it would be difficult to find its equal anywhere since the very beginnings of Danish art,” one critic opined.
But, for many, the power of the painting also lies in its extraordinary history. Its chance rediscovery in 2012 not only ended decades of speculation but resolved a thriller that had long haunted the art world.
Culture ministry officials in Greece were stunned when they came across the canvas rolled up in a tube while recording thousands of objects amassed in Tatoi from estates that had once belonged to the nation’s deposed royal family.
Last seen publicly at an exhibition in Copenhagen in 1932, historians surmised it had either been lost as it was transported by ship back to Greece or had fallen victim to fire. That looters had failed to spot the treasure – the royal estates had been frequently targeted by thieves – only added to the astonishment.
“It needed work,” said Melina Fotopoulou, the Greek culture ministry conservationist who oversaw its restoration. “In places there was mould, cracks and colour detachment that required restoration and as it had been rolled up for so long in the cylinder, the canvas was quite loose.”
The painstaking conservation work was made harder because of the painting’s size. “It was impossible to restore mounted on a frame and so was laid out on the ground where we worked on it intensely,” Fotopoulou said, adding there had been “quite a bit of nervousness” before the masterpiece was rehung. “We weren’t at all sure what it would look like framed but of course it is so impressive; it’s wonderful.”
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