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Artworks
Roman, 1st Century A.D. to Hadrianic / Early-Antonine
Roman Marble Torso of an EphebeRoman, 1st Century A.D. to Hadrianic / Early-Antonine After a Greek model, 5th Century B.C.
White MarbleRoman, 1st Century A.D. to Hadrianic / Early-AntonineH 73 x W 40 cm x D 20 cm
H 28 3/4 x W 15 3/4 cm x D 7 7/8 inchFurther images
This youthfull torso of an ephebe or athlete is depicted in a posture with the legs close together, resting on his left leg, and a fairly compact overall shape with the arms hanging close next to the body. The elements are reminiscent of statues of the Greek Early Classical period (5th Century B.C.); a model closely related to the kouros type.CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF
This youthfull torso of an ephebe or athlete is depicted in a posture with the legs close together, resting on his left leg, and a fairly compact overall shape with the arms hanging close next to the body. The elements are reminiscent of statues of the Greek Early Classical period (5th Century B.C.); a model closely related to the kouros type.
The headless torso still has the main part of the clavicula, both arms are broken just above the biceps, the left leg is broken above the knee and the right leg just below the hip. The phallus was sculpted separately and attached in the socket with cement. The marble ‘pin’ inside the socket is exceptionally still intact. On the right side of the torso is a circular hole just under 2 cm. This is authentic to the marble and was used to add a support to the free-floating arm.
The subject, a youthful athlete, has a soft, nuanced rendering of the flesh and musculature. Very subtle you can easily distinguish the pectoralis, sternum, clavicula, arcus costalis, rectus abdominis with a clear slightly curved linea alba, the linea seminlunaris and the intersectiones tendinosae. The twist in the hip from resting on his left leg beautifully pronounces the crista iliaca on both sides, followed down by the ligementa inguintalia. The slight hightening of the suprapubic area is typical for a youthful man, aged 15-18 years old.
The model for the torso has been attributed by Reinach to Apollo, Antinous, Dionysos, Narcissus, Hermes and an Athlete. Without distinctive attributes there’s no certitude towards pinning this torso down to one of these. If we consider Apollo, it could easily be one of the four famous representations of the god dating from the 5th Century B.C. and belonging to the so-called ‘severe-style’ period of the Greek sculpture: Omphalos Apollo, Kassel-type, Tiber-type and the Leptis-Ostia Apollo.
The slim hips, youthfulness are more reminiscent of an Antinous or Narcissus model. The Narcissus in the Metropolitan (Acc. N° 13.229.2) is a similar example of a Roman copy after the Greek 5th Century B.C. model. It is also one of the rare torsos where he rests his weight on his left leg. Dr Carlos Picon2 suggest this reversed pose is perhaps because the work was to be shown in a decorative setting as a mirror image with another statue. This is present in the San Ildefonso- group of Orestes and Pylades in the Prado.
A combination of Antinous represented as Apollo has been found in Delphi in 1894. This statue was found intact, on its original base and with its head still attached. There can be no doubt regarding the subject in this case and when comparing the torsos, the similarity is striking. Infra is a photographic list of the most similar and relevant models for this torso.
The subject, a youthful athlete, has a soft, nuanced rendering of the flesh and musculature. Very subtle you can easily distinguish the pectoralis, sternum, clavicula, arcus costalis, rectus abdominis with a clear slightly curved linea alba, the linea seminlunaris and the intersectiones tendinosae. The twist in the hip from resting on his left leg beautifully pronounces the crista iliaca on both sides, followed down by the ligementa inguintalia. The slight hightening of the suprapubic area is typical for a youthful man, aged 15-18 years old.
The model for the torso has been attributed by Reinach to Apollo, Antinous, Dionysos, Narcissus, Hermes and an Athlete. Without distinctive attributes there’s no certitude towards pinning this torso down to one of these. If we consider Apollo, it could easily be one of the four famous representations of the god dating from the 5th Century B.C. and belonging to the so-called ‘severe-style’ period of the Greek sculpture: Omphalos Apollo, Kassel-type, Tiber-type and the Leptis-Ostia Apollo.
The slim hips, youthfulness are more reminiscent of an Antinous or Narcissus model. The Narcissus in the Metropolitan (Acc. N° 13.229.2) is a similar example of a Roman copy after the Greek 5th Century B.C. model. It is also one of the rare torsos where he rests his weight on his left leg. Dr Carlos Picon2 suggest this reversed pose is perhaps because the work was to be shown in a decorative setting as a mirror image with another statue. This is present in the San Ildefonso- group of Orestes and Pylades in the Prado.
A combination of Antinous represented as Apollo has been found in Delphi in 1894. This statue was found intact, on its original base and with its head still attached. There can be no doubt regarding the subject in this case and when comparing the torsos, the similarity is striking. Infra is a photographic list of the most similar and relevant models for this torso.
In order to grasp the aura of the masculin beauty of Greek statuary, curator Ian Jenkins from the British Museum, guides us via Socrates in a way which doesn’t need interpreting, shortening, nor adjusting3:
It is 431 B.C. Socrates is going to the wrestling school of Taureas where he is introduced to Charmides, Athens’ current pin-up boy, who is pursued everywhere by a great following of admirers. No one, we are told, looked at anything else, but all stared at him as if he were a statue. “Do you find him handsome?” Socrates is asked. “Yes, but, ... if he were to take his clothes off, he would be aprosopos, ... so perfect is the beauty of his body”. The Greek word literally means ‘without a face’. That is to say, Charmides’ appeal is equal to that of contemporary idealized sculpture which, according to the aesthetic of the day, reduced human personality to a general type. This transcendend any one individual’s looks to project beauty itself. Such beauty is both physical and moral. Charmides is not only kalos, but also agathos, that is beautiful and good or, as we might say, fair of face and sound of heart. Charmides is all the more admirable in Socrates’ eyes when it is observed that, although he is being paid so much attention, the youth’s own behaviour does nothing to provoke it, and makes himself all the more irresistible by virtue of his grace, charm and sophrosyne.
The latter may be translated as ‘temperance’. In the dialogue with Socrates that ensues on the nature of sophrosyne, Charmides reveals another attractive attribute in his flawless character, showing himself to be possessed of aidos, that is ‘natural modesty’. All these qualities add up to a state of physical and moral perfection for which the Greek word was arete.
The pursuit of excellence was both a personal and a social obligation, as becomes clear in a conversation recorded by Xenophon between Socrates and a fellow citizen called Epigenes. Socrates chides Epigenes for letting his body run to fat. The latter protests that he is a private citizen and not engaged in public life. Socrates replies that all men of fighting age have a public duty to maintain themselves in a permanent state of physical fitness, in case called upon to take up arms and defend their city. “Besides”, he concludes, “it is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit”.
The physical and moral attributes embodied by Charmides and prescribed for Epigenes are captured in the statue as is shown here. This marble copy is thought to be after a lost bronze work from the fifth century B.C.
It shows a boy, just past puberty, who stands with his weight resting on one leg, which posture sends a curve along the central line of the torso, the linea alba, from navel to throat.For the ruling class of men and youths in ancient Greece the achievement of arete or ‘excellence’ was closely tied up with honour. Before the age of democracy and, indeed, to a large extent during it, the pursuit of both qualities was open to
those ‘of good family’. Excellence and honour had also to be won by cultivating the right look and by conducting the right sort of love affair, by excelling at athletics and in public speaking and by donning arms to fight in defence of one’s city and, if necessary, dying the ‘beautiful death’ on the battlefield: kalos thanatos.
To represent the human body is a basic instinct, and in the ancient world the Greeks were by no means alone in their endeavour to show the human form as an object of beauty and bearer of meaning. Moreover, as in modern societies so in the ancient world, the living body itself was a vehicle for displaying personal and collective values, such as wealth, statues, tribe, gender, conformity and non- conformity, through dress, jewellery, tattooing, piercing and other forms of body modification. Never, however, was the self-conscious cultivation of the body in ancient art and life greater than it was among the Greeks and nowhere is it more evident than it is in their taste for nudity.
“Captive Greece took her wild captor captive and brought the arts to rustic Latium”, so quiped the Roman poet Horace in the reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus. This often quoted saying both illuminates and obscures the relationship of Greece and Rome. It illuminates by highlighting the regard that Romans had for the Greeks; it obscures by not emphasizing sufficiently the degree to which Greek art and culture flourished in Roman times and, indeed, the extent to which under philhellene emperors such as Hadrian in the second century AD, Greece became Rome and Rome Greece. Greek works appealed to wealthy Roman collectors just as ‘Old Masters’ have been collected in our own era. When original works were not available, Roman connoisseurs and collectors commissioned copies and adaptations of earlier Greek works. Thus the eclecticism of later Greek, so- called Hellenistic, art was kept alive in the Roman period, and earlier Greek styles and genres continued to circulate. This is the context in which we should situate our torso.
As much as Greek art was admired by the Romans, it was one part only of the intellectual humanism that defined the Greek legacy. In art, architecture, drama, philosophy and science the Greek experience first shaped modern western notions of what it is to be human. Greek sculpture is full of breathing vitality and yet, at the same time, it reaches beyond mere imitation of nature to give form to thought in works of timeless beauty. It is this humanism on the one hand and idealism on the other that characterizes the Greek representation of the human self. Wether we seek it in the conceptualized and early simplicity of Cycladic figurines or in the characterful portraits of later times, human form in art was both physical likeness and bearer of meaning for sensitive people whose art was motivated by lust for life in the tragic certainty of death.
Provenance
Riyahi Gallery, London (Mount Street 97, London W1K2TD), prior 1979 Bought from Riyahi by Mr B., Brasschaat, Belgium, by 1979
Art Agent T.C., Brussels, Spring 2021
Art Loss Register Reference: S00208460Literature
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