Bronze Apoxyomenos
Apoxyomenos (athlete scraping his body with a strigil). Found at . Ephesus, Harbour High School , Palaestra , Selçuk, Asia Minor, Turkey. 1st century AD Roman copy of a bronze original by Polykleitos ca. 320 B.C. Medium: Bronze. Already at the beginning of the Austrian excavations in 1896, one of the most important finds was made: in the southwest corner of the palaestra of the Hafengymnasium, a total of 234 fragments of a broken bronze statue were found. The head and shoulders were well preserved, so that the statue type was immediately recognized. It is an athlete who purifies himself after the physical training that took place in the palaestra of a high school. To remove the sand and oil with which one rubbed oneself, a στλεγγίς (strigilis), a scraping blade, was used. The athlete brushes out this tool (not preserved here) with the thumb of his left hand and cleans it. The seemingly random snapshot of an introverted person points to a model from the 4th century BC as well as stylistic features of the statue. Finally, it was considered that the statue should be understood as a copy of the famous "Apoxyomenos" (the scraping one) of Lysippus. Bronze statues from antiquity are rarely preserved, as the valuable material was usually melted down. Often we "owe" the tradition to a catastrophe such as the sinking of a ship or, as here, an earthquake in which the sculpture was thrown from its pedestal and shattered by falling parts. In Vienna, the fragments were reshaped by the sculptor Wilhelm Sturm and screwed onto brass strips. The larger parts produced in this way were mounted on a skeleton of square iron rods and the statue was filled up to the neck with a special cement that was supposed to provide stability as well as close the gaps. In 1996, another statue of the same type was discovered in the sea off the Croatian coast (Muzej Apoksiomena, Mali Lošinj). This excellently preserved "twin" allows a direct comparison of two bronze copies and a reassessment of copyists in antiquity.
Antikensammlung, VI 3168
Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
Reworked and upscaled 08/02/2024
IMG_8711-02
Bronze Apoxyomenos
Apoxyomenos (athlete scraping his body with a strigil). Found at . Ephesus, Harbour High School , Palaestra , Selçuk, Asia Minor, Turkey. 1st century AD Roman copy of a bronze original by Polykleitos ca. 320 B.C. Medium: Bronze. Already at the beginning of the Austrian excavations in 1896, one of the most important finds was made: in the southwest corner of the palaestra of the Hafengymnasium, a total of 234 fragments of a broken bronze statue were found. The head and shoulders were well preserved, so that the statue type was immediately recognized. It is an athlete who purifies himself after the physical training that took place in the palaestra of a high school. To remove the sand and oil with which one rubbed oneself, a στλεγγίς (strigilis), a scraping blade, was used. The athlete brushes out this tool (not preserved here) with the thumb of his left hand and cleans it. The seemingly random snapshot of an introverted person points to a model from the 4th century BC as well as stylistic features of the statue. Finally, it was considered that the statue should be understood as a copy of the famous "Apoxyomenos" (the scraping one) of Lysippus. Bronze statues from antiquity are rarely preserved, as the valuable material was usually melted down. Often we "owe" the tradition to a catastrophe such as the sinking of a ship or, as here, an earthquake in which the sculpture was thrown from its pedestal and shattered by falling parts. In Vienna, the fragments were reshaped by the sculptor Wilhelm Sturm and screwed onto brass strips. The larger parts produced in this way were mounted on a skeleton of square iron rods and the statue was filled up to the neck with a special cement that was supposed to provide stability as well as close the gaps. In 1996, another statue of the same type was discovered in the sea off the Croatian coast (Muzej Apoksiomena, Mali Lošinj). This excellently preserved "twin" allows a direct comparison of two bronze copies and a reassessment of copyists in antiquity.
Antikensammlung, VI 3168
Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
Reworked and upscaled 08/02/2024
IMG_8711-02