Title
Nude male torso
Content
I.D. no: 17249
Dimensions: Max. H. 62 cm; Max. W. 29 cm
Material: coarse-grain white marble
Provenance: Unknown
Current location: National Museum of Archaeology, Reserve Collection
Condition:
The figure is headless and missing completely the right arm and most of the left arm, as well as both lower legs from the knees down. The genitals are also missing. Small chippings affect the whole body with a major concentration below the right armpit. A clear remnant of a large broken support on the outside of the right thigh and two smaller attachments lower down on the left thigh, as well as a squarish one just below the left hip-joint.
Generally well preserved marble surfaces, in part verging on the polished
Description:
The figure stands on its right leg and releases its weight to slightly bend the left knee in a faint, or feigned attempt to step forward. The position of what is left of the missing arms suggests that the right arm was raised high up and the left one hanging down by the side. The torso is that of a smaller-than-life-size statue of a young boy still in his puberty, judging from absence of pubic hair and the still soft and supple forms of the chest and slightly inflated abdomen, as yet free from the muscular bone structure that characterises freestanding statuary of older athletic boys or young men.
The figure preserves part of the originally curly hair of which three s-shaped ones are visible over the left shoulder and on the nape. Their location could be seen to suggest that the head was originally directed downwards and slightly turned to the right, as in the case of a ‘torso of a boy’ published by Eugénie Strong in 1928.[1] The rough, unsmoothed finish of the surviving tufts of hair contrasts strongly with the almost polished treatment of the flesh surfaces.
Discussion:
The torso probably represents a young boy with still delicate, immature body forms. His spine is strongly arched with shoulders thrust back and pelvis and abdomen pressed forward. The scheme is identical, but reversed, in the heavily restored Roman statue of Eros in the Capitoline Museum, probably modelled, if not copied, from a Greek original dated to the fourth century BC.[2] The soft modelling and the surviving traces of hair are also analogous. Our torso, however, lacks any evidence for wings and it is more likely that it represented a young god, such as an Apollo or a Dionysus. A similar torso of a young god in the Vatican is also assigned to the first half of the fourth century BC;[3] it has, however, longer hair and lacks traces of puntelli. Typologically and stylistically related to the Maltese statue are also two torsi in the Magazzino of the Vatican Museum.[4] In them the modelling is similarly soft and the muscles of the thorax are barely suggested.[5]
Therefore, for the iconography of the figure represented by this marble torso, we have only the surviving three traces of missing attachments to go by, apart from the male physical attributes and young, childlike features highlighted above, namely: 1) a major support on the outside of the right leg on which the torso leans in order to provide greater stability to the statue; 2) a square-shaped attachment (puntello) on the right hip, significantly characteristic of Roman copies of original Greek sculptures in bronze to compensate for the major weight of the marble and its propensity to breakage; 3) a further small attachment of an animate or inanimate object lower down on the left thigh. So far no sculptural representation of a boyish figure that fits this combination has been identified, and suggestions are welcome.
Both iconographically and stylistically, the original sculptural model combines reminiscences of Polykleitian rhythmic posture with Praxitelean softness in the treatment of the still immature body. These combinations are typical of several works of plastic art of the Hellenistic age in general and are, therefore, difficult to assign to a specific date, or even century of that age.[6]
This fragmentary torso is, therefore, most likely a good quality Roman copy of an as yet unidentified Greek bronze statue.
Bibliography: (previous publications of item):
Ashby 1915: 78, no 15: ‘unknown provenance’; Zammit 1919 (Valletta Museum): 25, no 11: repeats parts of Ashby’s description; Zammit 1931: 15; Bonanno 1971: 66-68, no 9.
[1] Strong 1928: no 8, pl.16.
[2] Rome, Musei Capitolini 410: LIMC III: 880. See Martens 2025: 366-67, fig. 171, with a discussion of the type and relative literature.
[3] Amelung 1903: 237, no 95, pl. 25.
[4] Kaschnitz-Weinberg 1936-37: 81-82, nos 160-61, pl. 11.
[5] Cfr. also the “torso of Dionysos?” in Lippold 1956: 148, no 64, pl. 70.
[6] For a comprehensive discussion of the subject see Bol 2007 and its review by Holtzmann 2011.