Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
11 Ionian or East Greek
Head of a Kouros in Relief
The carving seems to be in unfinished condition. The marble is Dolomitic from Thasos, Saliari area, probably from the Aliki quarries (J.J. Herrmann, Jr.).
This head, in the Ionian style of the Archaic Artemision at Ephesos, comes from a semicircular monument, the drum of a column, or a votive base. Another fragment of the same monument, an East Greek Kouros of the Samian style, is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is also unfinished (Vermeule, C., January 1971, p. 38, figs. 44-45; Comstock, Vermeule, 1976, p. 15, no. 22, 69.982).
The presumption is that the monument or group of sculptures to which these heads belonged was left unfinished on account of disturbances connected with the Ionian revolt and the Persian wars.
On the analogy of the Archaic column drums from the Artemision at Ephesos, around 540 BC, this head can be seen as coming from a thin, long-garmented figure walking from left to right on the semicircular surface (Boardman, 1978, p. 62, fig. 57; Homann-Wedeking, 1968, pp. 120-121, fig. 25). The head in Boston, however, comes from a plumper figure, akin to the men from the Geneleos base at the Heraion on Samos, dated about 560 BC (Homann-Wedeking, 1968, pp. 93-94, fig. 17).
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
