A ROMAN BRONZE FIGURE OF POLYKLEITOS' & DISKOPHOROS JULIO-CLAUDIAN, CIRCA LATE 1ST CENTURY B. C.-EARLY 1ST CENTURY A. D.
A ROMAN BRONZE FIGURE OF POLYKLEITOS' "DISKOPHOROS"
JULIO-CLAUDIAN, CIRCA LATE 1ST CENTURY B. C.-EARLY 1ST CENTURY A. D.
The radiantly-beautiful muscular youth standing in contrapposto with both feet flat on the ground, his weight on his right leg, the left bent at the knee with the foot splayed out, depicted nude but for sandals, his right hip thrust outward, his left arm lowered with the elbow slightly bent, the fingers curled around a now-missing attribute, the right arm lowered, the forearm once projecting forward, his torso with well-defined iliac crests, his head turned to his right and angled downward, his idealized face with a broad forehead and subtly-modelled brows that merge with the slender nose, the eyes inlaid in silver with the pupils recessed, the hair a mass of short wavy locks flowing in all directions and overlapping the tops of his ears
12 in. (30.4 cm.) high
Provenance
German Private Collection, 1990s.
Lot Notes
Polykleitos was one of the most famous and influential Greek sculptors of the High Classical Period. A native of Argos in the Peloponnesus, his artistic career flourished circa 460-420 B. C. The Roman writer Pliny tells us that Polykleitos wrote about his theories of rhythm and proportion. This sculptural Canon emphasized the juxtaposition of antithetical pairs, such as right and left, straight and curved, relaxed and tensed, rest and movement.
The Doryphoros or Spearbearer, and several other of his works are described in ancient literature, including the Diadumenos or Filletbinder, and the Kyniskos, known only from a statue base found at Olympia and subsequently identified as the Westmacott Athlete since the 19th century. His Amazon of Ephesus was famed for having been chosen in a competition over works by the sculptors Pheidias and Kresilas, while his most magnificent creation was said to be the colossal gold and ivory cult statue of Hera from the Heraeum of his native Argos. None of the master's original works are known to have survived, but several are recognized in Roman copies.
An additional work universally associated with Polykleitos is the so-called Diskophoros, even though no ancient source assigns such a statue to him. The type was identified as a Diskophoros from a single copy in the Museo Torlonia in Rome that preserves the vestiges of a discus on the upper left thigh. However, the attribution of this type to a discus-carrying athlete may be erroneous. The type was very popular with the Romans, as evinced by the numerous lifesized copies in marble that survive, some of which were used as portrait statues. There are also a number of versions in smaller scale in bronze, such as the present example. Many of the small-scale bronze versions and one marble head carry the attributes of Hermes, such as the kerykeion and a money-bag, and this may in fact be the identity of Polykleitos' original. That the figure stands with both feet relatively flat on the ground has suggested to some that this is one of the master's earliest works, dating to about 460 B. C., and must have come before his ponderation innovations as evinced in his Doryphoros. Pliny describes a statue by Polykleitos as nudus talo incessens or "naked man striding with the heel" and many have sought to see this type in that description, be it an athlete or a god (see Boll, "Diskophoros" in Beck, Bol and Buckling, Polyklet, Der Bildhauer der griechischen Klassik, p. 111-112).
For a marble version preserving the head, now in the Davis Museum of Wellesley, see no. 10.9 in Ridgway, "Paene ad exemplum: Polykleitos' Other Works" in Moon, ed., Polykleitos, the Doryphoros, and Tradition. For the marble head bearing Hermes' wings in the hair see no. 10.10 in the same publication. For a thorough listing of all of the known types, with variants and interpretations, see nos. I 1-48 in Kreikenbom, Bildwerke nach Polyklet. Closest in spirit to the present example is the slightly smaller Roman bronze Mercury in the Louvre, no. 8.11 in Hallett, "Kopienkritik and the Works of Polkleitos" in Moon, op. cit. The Louvre Mercury does not as carefully capture the Polykleitan details of the face and hair, as so beautifully exemplified here. It can be argued that the present bronze is one of the finest surviving echoes of Polykleitos' lost original.
Educational use only
