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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1922.171
Title
Head of a Young Divinity, Hero or Athlete, copy after a Greek prototype, c. 400-350 BC
Classification
Sculpture
Work Type
sculpture, head
Date
c. 50 CE
Places
Creation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Unidentified Site
Period
Roman Imperial period, Early
Culture
Roman
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/292052

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Thasian marble
Dimensions
28.5 cm h x 21.3 cm diam.
(11 1/4 in. h x 8 3/8 in. diam )

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
The head was bought in Paris (Alphonse Kann).

Student Paper: Brecher, Jonathan, "Determination of the Provenance of Classical Marbles through Isotopic Analysis," 1990, Freshman Seminar. (Filed in Student Paper Storage. Restricted to staff use only).

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Anonymous Gift
Accession Year
1922
Object Number
1922.171
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
20

Head of a Young Divinity, Hero, or Athlete

The head is turned very slightly to its left. The tip of the nose is broken away, and there is a chip above the break at the front of the neck. The hair, treated in heavy, "bear's-tooth" locks, has been cleaned of root marks, traces of which survive on all surfaces.

The prototype belongs to the period about 400 to 350 B.C. This copy would seems to date in the Julio-Claudian period, perhaps about AD 50. Most critics have treated this head as if it were a Greek original, part of an athletic or divine statue leading to the world of the Hermes of Praxiteles. Scholars who have questioned the head's authenticity have generally looked to the cleaned qualities of the surfaces and the shiny, heavily crystalline qualities of the marble from the island of Thasos. The head is most likely an early Imperial copy or adaptation of a statue, probably in bronze, of which few other versions have surfaced.

A.W. Lawrence wrote that this splendid head "has a forcefulness unknown in the fifth century, the result of minor innovations in the treatment of details; the lower part of the forehead bulges rather more, the inner corners of the eyes are more deeply set and the eyes themselves are narrower. It is, however, an unpleasant expression that results from the attempt to gain intensity of gaze by these means" (Lawrence, 1972, p. 182).

A head exhibited at the Royal Academy, Burlington House, when in the collection of Colonel F. Beddington, was published as a carving of about 150 BC in the school or wider circle of Lysippos. This athlete, with the swollen ear of a boxer, must be a Julio-Claudian copy of some statue set up late in the fourth century B.C. The head is not a replica of, only a parallel to, the Sachs athlete at Harvard, but it shows how and from what traditions such variations on Greek athletic art of the fourth century BC could survive (Chittenden, Seltman, 1947, p. 37, no. 165, pl. 53).

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Publication History

  • John J. Herrmann Jr., Thasos and the Ancient Marble Trade: Evidence from American Museums, Marble: Art Historical and Scientific Perspectives on Ancient Sculpture (Malibu)
  • Fogg Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum Notes, vol. 1, no. 1, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, December 1921), pp. 6ff., figs. 4, 5
  • Sidney Deane, "Archaeological Discussions", American Journal of Archaeology (1922), 26, pp. 204f., fig. 2
  • George H. Chase, Greek and Roman Sculpture in American Collections, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1924), p. 97, fig. 113
  • A. D. Fraser, "A Myronic Head in the Fogg Museum of Art", American Journal of Archaeology (1925), 29, pp. 70-75, fig. 1, pl. 2
  • Arnold W. Lawrence, Classical Sculpture, J. Cape (London, England, 1929), pp. 241-242, pl. 78b
  • Fogg Art Museum Handbook, Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1936), p. 11, ill.
  • "Three marble heads from Anatolia", Anatolian Studies Presented to William Hepburn Buckler, ed. W. M. Calder, University of Massachusetts Press (Manchester, England, 1939), pp. 261-262
  • George M. A. Hanfmann, An Exhibition of Ancient Sculpture, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1950), p. 14, no. 37
  • Agnes Mongan, Memorial Exhibition: Works of Art from the Collection of Paul J. Sachs [1878-1965]: given and bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, exh. cat., Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, 1965), cat. no. 83, illus.
  • Arnold W. Lawrence, Greek and Roman Sculpture, J. Cape (London, England, 1972), p. 182, pl. 46a
  • Karina Turr, Fälschungen antiker Plastik seit 1800, Mann (Berlin, Germany, 1984), pp. 151-152, no. k 25
  • Cornelius C. Vermeule III and Amy Brauer, Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 36, no. 20

Exhibition History

  • Memorial Exhibition: Works of Art from the Collection of Paul J. Sachs [1878-1965] Given and Bequeathed to the Fogg Art Museum Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 11/15/1965 - 01/15/1966; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 12/19/1966 - 02/26/1967

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu