The well-known metopes from Selinus in Sicily are good examples.
The majority of the metopes which I have seen represent either a Greek and an Amazon or a Centaur and Lapith, in violent conflict.
There seems to me the greatest possible difference in merit between the metopes and the other two parts of the ornament.
Even in the separate decorations, such as the metopes and friezes, the graceful women and the long-flowing draperies of the Ionic school were combined with the muscular nakedness of the Doric athlete, as represented by Doric masters.
In this form the decoration is almost always in two friezes, a natural consequence of the shape of the vase; the metopesor geometrical compartments only come in with form 37.
Almost all the sculptured metopes are in the museum, and are of the highest interest to the student of archaic art.
Its sculptural decoration appears to have been but scanty; the metopes were plain.
An interesting comparison is afforded by the metopes (The Labours of Hercules) from the Temple of Jupiter at Olympia, earlier and transitional in style but admirable in craftsmanship.
The ruined state of the metopes and frieze has proved a very fortunate circumstance; for it was owing solely to this that the building escaped the ravages which were going on in the Parthenon.
Some of the metopes represent the labours of Hercules; others the exploits of Theseus; and there are some which were never adorned with any sculpture.
Yet the basreliefs in which this peculiarity occurs belong to the best period of Greek sculpture, and the groups are not unworthy for spirit and design to be placed by the side of the metopes of the Parthenon.
The metopes were probably filled in with shutters of some kind which Orestes knew how to open.
The frieze alone is low, and the metopes consequently small, being framed by massive triglyphs, the chamferings of which have circular or lanceolate endings.
The masking of the metopeswould thus have been not only purposeless, but even detrimental; it was reasonable, however, to sheathe the ends of the beams themselves by small boards, which should at once protect and ornament them.
It is also important in the history of sculpture from the remains of metopes carved with scenes of the gigantomachia.
The Zeus upon one of the metopes of the southern temple on the eastern plateau of Selinous (Fig.
There can be no further doubt as to the development and original function of the metopes of the Doric entablature when it is considered that the Greeks, as late as the time of Euripides (Iphig.
It is not probable that windows existed in the wall between the columns; the supposition is more natural that some of the side metopes were unclosed, and provided the pteroma with sufficient daylight.
That which had at first been open was treated as a dark-red background; the metopes and tympanon thus clearly outlining the reliefs and groups of statues which ornamented them.
It is known that in early astylar temples the metopes were left open like the spaces between the ends of ceiling-rafters.
There seem to have been windows between these figures, but it is not clear whence they borrowed their light, unless it was admitted by the omission of the metopes between the external triglyphs.
Relief carvings in the friezes and metopescommemorated the favorite national myths.
On the metopes of the frieze the Twelve Labours of Heracles were depicted, and along the sides of the roof gargoyles projected in the form of lions’ mouths.
The most of this frieze and fifteen of the metopes are preserved in the British Museum.
It is very noticeable that these reliefs, unlike the others which in general furnish the closest analogies, the metopes of the temple at Selinous and the pediment of the Megarian Treasury at Olympia, have the ground unpainted.
But we have attempted to include every Greek temple known to have had pediment-figures or sculptured metopes or frieze, and have thus, for the sake of completeness, registered some examples which are valueless for the main question.
Hence it was in imitation of the arrangement of the tie-beams that men began to employ, in Doric buildings, the device of triglyphs and the metopes between the beams.
Above the architrave, the triglyphs and metopesare to be placed: the triglyphs one and one half modules high, and one module wide in front.
Note 3: That is: two metopes with a triglyph between them, and half of the triglyph on either side.
The triglyphs having been thus arranged, let themetopes between the triglyphs be as high as they are wide, while at the outer corners there should be semimetopes inserted, with the width of half a module.
Those who would make the metopes all alike, make the outermost intercolumniations narrower by half the width of a triglyph.
Hence the metopes next to the corner columns do not come out perfectly square, but are too broad by half the width of a triglyph.
For the triglyphs ought to be placed so as to correspond to the centres of the columns, and the metopes between the triglyphs ought to be as broad as they are high.
But the result is faulty, whether it is attained by broader metopes or narrower intercolumniations.
The spaces left (due to the fact that the metopes are broader than the triglyphs) may be left unornamented or may have thunderbolts carved on them.
In these ways all defects will be corrected, whether in metopes or intercolumniations or lacunaria, as all the arrangements have been made with uniformity.
This is not because it is unlovely in appearance or origin or dignity of form, but because the arrangement of the triglyphs and metopes (lacunaria) is an embarrassment and inconvenience to the work.
And though individual carvings excel them in precision and beauty, as a series denoting the exact progress of Greek Sicilian art from its crudest to its most perfected form, the metopes are unsurpassed.
Moreover, these metopes from the temples of Selinus recall a story so tragic, so amazing, that comparisons fail and mere words avail little to picture its horror.
Yet so rapid was the development of the sculptors that within a century the first metopeshad become curiosities, and the later work so superior it is hard to realize it was produced in the same age.
This alternating principle is observed in metopes and triglyphs.
The frieze of the entablature contains sculptures only in the metopes of the east front and in those of the sides immediately adjoining it; the frontal metopes represent the labours of Heracles, the lateral the exploits of Theseus.
The best preserved metopes of the Parthenon belong to the south side and represent scenes from the contest between Lapiths and Centaurs (cf.
The two pediment-groups and the metopes of this temple show such close resemblances of style among themselves that they must all be regarded as products of a single school of sculpture, if not as designed by a single man.
These metopes differ markedly in style from one another, and must have been not only executed, but designed, by different hands.
Relief-sculpture might be applied to Doric metopesor an Ionic frieze.
This summary treatment of the hair is, in fact, more general in the metopes than in the pediment-figures.
Appealing to the sculptures themselves for information, we find among the metopes such differences of style as exclude the notion of single authorship.
The twelve sculptured metopes of the temple do not belong to the exterior frieze, whose metopes were plain, but to a second frieze, placed above the columns and antae of pronaos and opisthodomos.
The main lines of the composition are somewhat monotonous, but this is a consequence of the subject, not of any incapacity of the artist, as the other metopes testify.
Like the poros sculptures of Attica, these Selinus metopes seem to have been covered with color.
The metopes between the triglyphs in the frieze of the entablature (I.
And metopes are sculptured in higher relief than friezes.
The marbles which occupied the pediments and the metopes of the temple have been in large part recovered, having been probably thrown down by earthquakes and gradually buried in the alluvial soil.
The Treasury of the Athenians, erected at the time of the Persian Wars, was adorned with metopes of singularly clear-cut and beautiful style, but very fragmentary, representing the deeds of Heracles and Theseus.
The metopes of the temple are in the same style of art as the pediments, but the defects of awkwardness and want of mastery are less conspicuous, because the narrow limits of the metope exclude any elaborate grouping.
The metopes of the Treasury of Sicyon at Delphi (Plate IV.
Other heads and some highly-finished fragments of bodies come apparently from the metopes of the same temple.
Even more archaic metopes have in recent years been brought to light, one representing a seated sphinx, one the journey of Europa over the sea on the back of the amorous bull (fig.
The name of Selinus in Sicily, an early Megarian colony, has long been associated with some of the most curious of early sculptures, the metopes of ancient temples, representing the exploits of Heracles and of Perseus.
The metopes were the long series of square spaces which ran along the outer walls of temples between the upright triglyphs and the cornice.
Payne Knight wrote the preface, in which he maintains that the friezes andmetopes of the Parthenon were not the actual work of Phidias, "but .
They are termedmetopes and sculpture commonly occupies them.
The metopes represent the battles between the Centaurs and Lapithæ, at the nuptials of Pirithous.
As compared with the east entrance of Mount Pleasant, the Cliveden detail is richer in the paneled soffits of the corona and the paneled metopes in alternation with the triglyphs of the frieze.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "metopes" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
