“The Antikythera Ephebe”
The young, nude male figure is standing in a “contraposto” pose, bearing his weight on his left leg, while the right one is posed relaxed to the right and behind. He would held in his right hand a round object and in the left one something oblong.
“The Ephebe” has been identified as Apollo, “Literate” Hermes, Heracles, victorious athlete and also as a funeral statue. According to the two dominant views, the figure depicts either Perseus, holding the head of Medusa in his right hand (Pausanias 2, 21, 6) and the adamantine sickle (harpe) with which he beheaded her in the left, or Paris, holding the Apple of Discord to give it to the most beautiful of the goddesses, Aphrodite, in his right hand and the bow, with which he killed Achilles, in his left.
The majority of scholars consider “the Antikythera Ephebe” as the work of a sculptor belonging to the Argive-Sicyonian school of successors to Polykleitos, probably Kleon the Sicyonian.
- Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. n. Χ 13396
- Ca 340 – 330 BC
- H. 1.94 m.
- Bronze
- Provenance: Ancient shipwreck in the sea off Antikythera, December 1900
Bibliography
- Βλαχογιάννη, Ε. (2012). Τα Γλυπτά. Θεοί και ήρωες μέσα από τη θάλασσα, Στο Ν. Καλτσάς, Ε. Βλαχογιάννη & Π. Μπούγια (Επιμ.), Το ναυάγιο των Αντικυθήρων, το πλοίο, οι θησαυροί, ο μηχανισμός, σσ. 80-81, αρ. 23. Αθήνα: ΥΠ.ΠΟ.
- Dafas, K.A. (2019). Greek Large-Scale Bronze Statuary, The Late Archaic and Classical Periods, BICS Supplement 138, pp. 68-82, pl. 58, 60-71, London: Institute of Classical Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
- Καββαδίας, Π. (1990). Ἀνακοίνωσις περὶ τῶν ἐκ τῆς παρὰ τὰ Ἀντικύθηρα θαλάσσης ἀγαλμάτων, ΠΑΕ 1900, 98, 100, 102, εικ. 5.
- Ridgway, B.S. (1997). Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture, pp. 340-342, pl. 83 a-d., Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.
