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This sculpture reproduces a Greek original of around 410 BC by a follower of Polyclitus. There are numerous copies of that work, known as the "Dresden Youth type" in reference to the best and most complete surviving example, now in the Albertinum in Dresden. From that work it is known that the young athlete was looking pensively at his left hand in which he held a now unknown object.
The boy is depicted as a victorious athlete, with a foliate wreath on his head. His right arm was originally bent, his hand touching the wreath. He has individualised features and a hairstyle typical of the late first century AD. His parents intended this image to reflect an image of their son as one of the famous athletes of the past, happy in the other world.
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
In order to emphasise Aphrodite’s nudity and arouse interest Hellenistic artists rarely depicted her entirely without clothes. Here the goddess’s mantle is held up between her legs. This sculpture follows a model of the second century BC in which Aphrodite looked into a mirror held in her left hand while covering her pubis with her right.
The sitter is a young man with a robust face, a thick, clipped beard and curly hair typical of the Trajanic period. He wears a lunula: an amulet in the form of a crescent moon that protected him against spells cast on his weapons and against the evil eye. One of a series of the Twelve Emperors given by Pius V to Philip II in 1568, it is likely that at that time this portrait was considered to depi
