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This Roman statue reproduces with some changes the Lansdowne Hercules (Malibu, Getty Museum) by a pupil of Polyclitus made about 350 B. C. In addition to inverting the two sides of the model, this work changes the facial expression which stands out on account of its emotiveness. The hero is shown in a victorious pose holding a club (currently restored) and the pelt of the lion of Nemea. The death
This work is a Roman copy of the Discophoros ("the discus-bearer"), the first creation of the sculptor Polyclitus (active 460-420 B. C.). As is typical of Polyclitus’s art, the modelling of the body is clearly defined by the tense muscles and by the movement caused by his posture. The head, not preserved, was a little tilted and looked at an object he held in his right hand. In the best-known copy
This is a Roman copy of a statue of Athena, created between 450 and 440 B. C. by the Greek sculptor Myron, together with the figure of Marsyas. Installed on the Acropolis of Athens, between the Propyleus and the Parthenon, the original bronze group represented Athena who was angered by the attitude of the Marsyas who was shown in the attitude of picking up the double flute which she had rejected a
Double hermae of gods, similar to the image of the two-headed Janus, were created from the first century B. C. onwards for Roman collectors. Here, Aphrodite and her son Eros, the goddess and god of love, respectively, were brought together employing the heads of two masterpieces produced by artists from the circle of Phidias (440-420 B. C.).
This is a Roman copy of a famous work by Timotheus (c. 370 B. C.). This Greek sculptor, known for his activity in Epidaurus and in the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, shows Leda partly naked as a result of a sudden movement which opens her dress. This new feature was surpassed twenty years later by Praxiteles with the creation of the totally naked Aphrodite of Cnidus. The viewer has to imagine the abs
This is a Roman copy of an Athenian original from the early fourth century B. C. Its archaising appearance responds not only to the hermae tradition but also to the oriental nature of this particular manifestation of the god Hermes, in keeping with a prototype created for a Phoenician sanctuary in the Piraeus, the harbour of Athens.
This fragment of a Roman statue shows Silenus holding the infant Dionysus in his arms. It is a copy of a Greek original made between 290 and 280 B. C. by one of Lysippus´s pupils. The realistic features of Silenus, the young god’s master, pave the way for the naturalism of Hellenistic art. The herm was added in the seventeenth century.
The first political monument erected by the Athenian democracy was the group of the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogiton who, in 514 B. C., killed the tyrant Hipparcus. The two bronze statues by Critius and Nesiotes were set up in 477 B. C. in the Agora of Athens and they show the mortal attack of the aristocrats. The Prado head belongs to a herm which may have decorated the garden of a Roman vi
A miniature Roman reproduction of the famous statue that Phidias made for the Parthenon in Athens between 447 and 438 B.C. The original was about eleven meters in height and was of gold and ivory. The finest copies, of which the present is an outstanding example, are small works with certain differences in proportion and details. Here, the cleanness and depth of the vertical folds are notable and
A Roman copy of a Hellenistic image of the poet sculpted between 150 and 125 B.C. The author of the Iliad and the Odyssey was venerated throughout Classical Antiquity. He was imagined with a variety of physiognomies by Greek artists. This portrait corresponds to the Hellenistic blind-type, which was much repeated because of its tragic expression.
Hercules, who was deified for his superhuman labours, wears a hero’s band around his hair. With his beard and dignified appearance he resembles the Greek philosophers who venerated the hero as a model to be followed. The head reproduces a Greek statue of the late fourth century BC.
This is a Roman copy of an Attic work of about 410-400 B. C. representing Hermes in the form of a pillar. In Athens, the different types of hermae included those donated by councillors so they could be situated in a place in front of the Stoa Basileios or the Stoa Poikile of the Agora called the “place of the hermae”. The official nature of these hermae, whose bases often bore honorary inscription
This is a Roman replica of a work by Praxiteles of between 340 and 330 B. C. It depicts a beautiful satyr whose features lack the grotesque elements characteristic of this semi-animal divinity. The body perfectly reflects the s-shaped “Praxitelean curve” that gives it a relaxed appearance and emphasises the idea of the gods as beautiful, young, idle creatures. The skilled restorations by Bernini o
The Roman copy of Praxiteles’s most famous work was made circa 350 B. C. for the sanctuary of the goddess in Cnidus (Asia Minor). As the first female monumental nude in the history of art, in Antiquity the statue already attracted tourism (Pliny, Natural History 36,20). Aphrodite could be seen before taking a bath, leaving her dress on top of a water receptacle, as may be seen in two Roman version
This is a Roman copy of Polyclitus´s Diadumenos (ca. 420 B.C.). Polyclitus of Argos (active ca. 460-420 B.C.) was quite far along in his career when he conceived this figure —probably Apollo— tying a ribbon ("diadoumenos") around his temples as a symbol of victory. At that time, his idea of a canon of ideal proportions had been enriched by his experience of Athenian art, as can clearly be seen in
The central part of a late Hellenistic marble krater. The receptacle has high reliefs which show the mythical fight of the lapiths against the centaurs, understood in the fifth century B. C. as a symbol of the fight between Greek civilisation and Persian savagery. The figures reproduce the design which the famous painter Parrhasius made circa 420 B. C. to adorn the shield of Phidias’s Athena Proma
