Leseprobe

51 Head of a statue of Apollo (‘Diadumenos’) c. 160/180 CE; copy of a lost bronze statue by Polyclitus, c. 430/420 BCE Parian marble; height chin to crown 26 cm Purchased from the collection of Flavio Chigi, Rome, in 1728 Inv. no. Hm 71 Polyclitus’s bronze statue of Apollo measured approximately 185 centimetres in height and was probably melted down sometime after the fall of the Roman Empire. Numerous copies from the period 100 BCE to 200 CE, however, have survived. Working with piece-moulds of plaster, the sculptors created marble copies of such accuracy that it is even possible to reconstruct the disposition of each curl of hair in the original. The copies also show that, rather than holding a bow and arrow in his hands, as is customary in many other statues of this god, this Apollo is in fact about to bind his thick head of hair with a victor’s fillet or ribbon. An identification of the figure as Apollo was only made possible because the sculptor who made the earliest of the 30 surviving copies, (which dates to around 100 BCE and stood on Delos, one of the Cyclades islands) added a crucial identifying attribute: a quiver of arrows resting on the statue support next to the figure’s supporting leg. In the Roman period the statue was simply called Diadu- menos (Pliny, Naturalis historia ) or ‘the fair one, binding a ribbon’ (Lucian, Philopseudes or The Lover of Lies ).  |  sk