Works of Art
Hellenistic statuette of a nude warrior
Period: 3rd-2nd Century B.C.
Culture: Hellenistic, Greek World
Category: Array
Dimensions: Height: 13.5 cm
Price: SOLD
Provenance: Acquired from Gawain McKinley, London and Paris, 1985.
Condition: The statuette is in solid bronze; the two rectangular tenons visible under the feet were used to fix it to its base. The surface of the metal, a deep brown color, is partially covered in a green patina.
Description
This statuette recalls a very famous sculptural type, that which the archaeologists recognize as the Poseidon of Lysippos, the original of which was found in Corinth. The sculptor of Sicyon represented the god of the sea with the features of a man, mature and bearded, in the prime of his life: he is nude with his right leg elevated and his foot placed on a dolphin. His right hand holds no attribute while the raised left arm supports a trident; the head was slightly turned towards the right, the gaze perhaps surveying his domain, the high seas. The bronze original of Lysippos was lost, but it is possible to create a reconstruction from some copies that have been found – they are generally incomplete – as well as from coins.
Here, only the head differs from the typology of the Lysippan work: the personage represented is a clean shaven man, adult but young, with strongly idealized features and hair cut short and carefully styled, arranged in undulating curls above the forehead; he wears an Attic helmet with a pointed brow guard. His body, supple and athletic, presents musculature of the chest and back that is nearly exaggerated in its development; the right hand would certainly have held a long cylindrical object, like a lance or a scepter.
Moreno recognized that the standing position, with the right foot elevated and the gaze turned forward, had some elements in common with the posture of the eponymous heroes – that is to say the heroes that had given their names to a region or the mythic founders of a city – some of whom had already been represented in the fifth century, for example on the southern frieze of the Parthenon. During the Hellenistic period and at the end of Republican Rome, some princes and generals reused exactly the schema of the Poseidon of Lysippos, as shown on certain coins that were produced (cf. for example the coins of Sextus Pompeius and of Octavian from the second half of the 1st century B.C.) and especially a famous bronze statuette found in Herculanum: the young man represented is posed with his foot on a boulder wearing a chlamys and sandals, but for the rest, the image is a replica of the Lysippan type. Generally, the archaeologists identify this personage as Demetrios Poliorcetes (one of the didacts, son of one of the generals of Alexander the Great, Antigonos Monophtalmos).
Due to the lack of precise attributes, the young man represented in this statuette is unidentifiable: the idealized face is young and most probably that of a mythological hero – the statuette may have been offered as an ex-voto at a sanctuary or at a heroon? – as an individual portrait of a prince or general.
Bibliography
MORENO P. et al., Lisippo, L’arte e la fortuna, Roma, 1995, pp. 220-225 et pp. 409-414.
For the portrait of Demetrios Poliorcetes, see:
LEHMANN P. A New Portrait of Demetrios Poliorketes ? in The Paul Getty Museum Journal, 8, 1980, pp. 107-116.
STEWART A., Greek Sculpture. An Exploration, Yale, 1990, n. 623-625.
For the type of helmet, see:
PFLUG H., Schutz und Zier, Helme aus dem Antikenmuseum Berlin und Waffen anderer Sammlungen, Bâle, 1989, pp. 27-28 and pp. 63-65, nn. 31-34.