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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1919.507
Title
Torso of a Standing Man
Classification
Sculpture
Work Type
sculpture
Date
50 BCE
Period
Hellenistic period, Late
Culture
Greek
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/292558

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Pentelic marble
Dimensions
actual: 15.5 cm (6 1/8 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Probably from Athens.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William de Forest Thomson
Accession Year
1919
Object Number
1919.507
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
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Descriptions

Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
48

Torso of a Standing Man

The workmanship is crude, the back hardly modeled. The head and neck are broken away, as are the right arm from the area above the elbow and the lower areas of the drapery, as well as the plinth.

The man wears his cloak over the left shoulder; the right hand appears to hold the edge of his cloak as it falls down along his right side. The left leg is preserved almost to the left foot, and it shows the weight was on the right leg. The object held in the left hand, in front of the folds of the cloak, may be a bird, in which case this could be a small statue of Asklepios or a person making an offering to the god of medicine. Perhaps this is a statue of Hippocrates.

The bird ought to be a cock or rooster, since pet birds are generally held by children in Attic funerary sculpture (as in the stele of Melisto, about 340 B.C., no. 24, above), but the surfaces are too worn to say with confidence here. When Asklepios himself is accompanied by a cock, the bird is usually being offered to him by an attendant (or Gallus, making a sacrifice), as in the Juturna precinct near the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum (Boni, 1901, pp. 114-117, fig. 75). These representations are usually connected with statues in which Asklepios holds a rotulus or scroll in one hand, which could conceivably be the case here if the god rather than Hippocrates or a votary were represented.

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Publication History

  • 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. 65, no. 48

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