Xenophon
Ca. 150. White marble.Galería Jónica Planta Principal Norte
The portrait of the writer Xenophon (430-354 b.c.e.), who was a disciple of Socrates in Athens and later commanded an army serving the Persians and Spartans, was identified in 1949, when a herm inscribed with his name was discovered in Alexandria (120 A.D., BA Antiquities Museum, inv. 25778).
Six Roman copies of this portrait are now known: the Alexandria herm, an incomplete portrait from Pergamon, the head in the Museo del Prado, a double herm from Athens, a head in the Vatican, and probably a head in Aphrodisias, which has not been exhaustively published. The direction of his curls is less clear in the Madrid replica than on the heads from Alexandria and Pergamon, due to the wide grooves. The different replicas vary slightly from each other, and thus, in Madrid and the Vatical, the beard beneath the mouth is combed diagonally to the left, which the other copies have symmetrically ordered curls. The hair above the right ear on the Pergamon head differs from the other replicas while, above the left ear of the Prado´s head, in a backward-facing sickle-shaped series of curls, there are two tufts of hair running the other way. These do not appear in any other copy. The copies come from the second and third centuries, A.D., at the end of Hadrian´s era and the beginning of the Antonine dynasty (Pergamon); the late Antonine dynasty (Prado), the beginning of the Severan dynasty (Athens) and the reign of Gallienus (Vatican).
It is not yet possible to reconstruct the statue of Xenophon. If the replica from Pergamon were a reproduction of the original in that sense, then Xeonophon would have been dressed with robes draped over his left shoulder, leaving his torso bare. The writer spent twenty years on a rustic estate in Skillous, near Olympia, and Pausanias (5,6,6) saw a marble portrait on a grave that must have belonged to Xenophon´s tomb (he died in Corinthia). This work´s style indicates it was probably made some time after his death, around 340/30 b.c.e.
Schröder, Stephan F, Catálogo de la escultura clásica: Museo del Prado I, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 1993, p.54-56
