Title
Torso of nude male statuette
Content
I.D. no: 109957
Dimensions: Max. H. 20 cm; W.14.5 cm
Material: Rather fine-grain white marble
Provenance: Unknown
Current location: National Museum of Archaeology, Reserve Collection
Condition:
The statuette is headless and missing both arms from below the shoulders, as well as both legs from the upper thigh down. Head broken off at the lowest end of the neck. Genitals also missing. Prominent trace of a round puntello (diam. 1.5 cm) on the left side of mid-chest, and a hardly perceptible and pointed one at the bottom of the right thigh. Several chips of different sizes, as well as grainy weathering over the whole body surface.
Description:
The nude figure probably stood on its right leg, releasing its weight from the left one. It depicts a broad-shouldered young man with somewhat generic rendering of the thorax, without hinting at the bone cage underneath or even the abdominal muscles. Navel is prominently indicated. Reasonably well rendered anatomy of the backside.
Discussion:
A greatly reduced-scale version of a young athletic male, probably reproducing one of the iconic statues of such athletes (like those originally produced in bronze by well-known Greek sculptors of the Classical period, such as Polykleitos)[1] or religious images of divinities of the right age and youthful disposition (like Apollo and Hermes, but also occasional ones of Heracles).[2] The wide range of such prototypes start with the spear-bearer by Polykleitos in the decades around mid-fifth century BC, followed by structural and stylistic innovations introduced by the main sculptors of the fourth century BC and the proliferation of variants in the Hellenistic age and the mass production of copies in variously reduced sizes in the Roman world.[3] The life-size or larger statues were also often used to carry Hellenistic and Roman portraits.[4] But statuettes of reduced size were generally used for cult, or simply decorative purposes.[5] In this regard, the Valletta statuette seems to hark back to a type ultimately inspired by the Polykleitean standard. The less marked slant of the shoulders and hips suggest a derivation, even if a distant one, from the less familiar Diskophoros rather than the more influential Doryphoros of the same sculptor.[6]
Close parallels, especially in the analogous position of the puntelli and the rather softened transitions of the body planes, are the statues of Hermes in the former Museo Nuovo dei Conservatori,[7] and another male torso in Bowdoin College.[8]
The torso qualifies as a correct, naturalistic rendering of the anatomy of the male youthful figure, in spite of the small dimensions of the statuette, with some emphasis on the hip joints.
Dated, on stylistic grounds, to the first century BC or AD.
Bibliography: (previous publications of item):
Bonanno 1971: 63-65, no 8.
[1] For Polykleitos see Arias 1964; Lorenz 1972.
[2] A statuette representing Heracles in Madrid shows the same scheme, without the Polykletean chiastic correspondence between hips and shoulders (Garcia y Bellido 1949: 93, no 76, pl. 67).
[3] Among others, see Arnold 1969.
[4] Such as the ones in Lorenz 1972: pls 30-31.
[5] See Zanker 1974: passim, esp. pls 5, 11, 16. 17.
[6] Zanker 1974: pl. 1,2 (Diskophoros), pl. 5,6 (Doryphoros).
[7] Mustilli 1938: 50-51, no 140, pl. 34.
[8] Herbert 1964: 39, no 87, pl. 13. See also Hekler 1929: 24, no 14.