Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic ArtHyde, Walter Woodburn
History
Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art
Hyde, Walter Woodburn
Olympics; Sculpture, Greek; Sports -- Greece
The statue discovered in the ruins of Hadrian’s villa in 1742 and now
in the Capitoline Museum,[676] which represents an ephebe nude, except
for a chlamys thrown around the middle of his body, standing in an easy
attitude with his left foot resting upon a rock and bending forward
with the right arm extended in a gesture, was formerly looked upon as
a resting pancratiast. Because of its general likeness to Praxitelean
figures—the head is especially like the Olympia _Hermes_—Furtwaengler
interpreted the figure as that of Hermes Logios or Agoraios, the god of
eloquence, and assigned it to an artist near to Praxiteles. However,
it is probably nothing else than an idealized portrait of the age of
Hadrian or the Antonines, and represents an ephebe, probably a victor,
assimilated to the type of Hermes.[677]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.—Bronze Statue of a Youth, found in the Sea off
Antikythera. National Museum, Athens.]
Another example of assimilation may be the much-discussed bronze statue
in the National Museum at Athens, which was accidentally discovered
in 1901, along with the rest of a cargo of sculptures which had been
wrecked off the island of Antikythera as it was on its way to Rome
about the beginning of the first century B. C. (Fig. 7).[678] This
statue, the best preserved of the cargo, is a little over lifesize
and represents a nude youth standing with languid grace, the weight
of his body resting upon the left leg, while the right is slightly
bent and the right arm is extended horizontally, the hand holding
a round object now lost and variously interpreted. In short, the
pose strongly resembles that of the Vatican _Apoxyomenos_ (Pl. 29).
Opinions as to the age and authorship of this statue have been very
diverse, ranging from the fifth century B. C. down to Hellenistic
times and ascribing it to many masters and schools. Kabbadias, who
published it, in conjunction with the other objects, directly after
their discovery,[679] thought it would prove to “rank as high among
statues of bronze as does the _Hermes_ of Praxiteles among those of
marble,” and characterized it as “the most beautiful bronze statue
that we possess.” Waldstein praised it in no less exaggerated terms,
and classed it along with the _Charioteer_ from Delphi (Fig. 66) as
among the first Greek bronzes, if not among the finest specimens of
Greek sculpture.[680] He followed Kabbadias in assigning it to the
fourth century B. C. and in interpreting it as Hermes. He at first
ascribed it to Praxiteles or his school, but later he thought it more
Skopaic.[681] Th. Reinach placed it in the early fourth century B. C.,
but regarded it as the work of a sculptor influenced by Polykleitos,
naming the youthful Praxiteles or Euphranor.[682] He explained the
pose as that of a man amusing a dog or a child with some round object.
A Greek scholar, A. S. Arvanitopoulos, assigned the work to the fifth
century B. C. and to the Attic school, referring it possibly to
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