Thanks to the many copies the Romans made of original Greek sculptures, the initial artist of most works can be traced back. It is the case of the unique marble Doryphoros by Polycleitus, created in bronze around 440 BC. The bronze original was a little larger than life-size.
The best-preserved copy of a Doryphoros or Spear
Bearer was retrieved from the volcanic ashes of Vesuvius in the buried city of
Investigations led to the reconstruction of the trail, followed by this important artifact after being stolen from Castellammare. This occurred between the end of 1975 and the beginning of 1976.
The looters sold the statue to an antique dealer in
It makes one wonder how it is still possible to drag around illegal antiquities without being detected, especially in the present case of a full-sized statue!
The Doryphoros stands out because of the perfection of its proportions, as Polycleitus is the first artist to establish the absolutely balanced and harmonious dimensions of the human body in his sculptures. He described its mathematical proportions in a lost treatise, the Canon of Polycleitus. His attitude was called contrapposto, in which the body's weight rested on one leg, and the other leg relaxed. Apparently, the sculptor has created 1500 works, none of which have survived.
Polycleitus' search for perfection fits entirely with the typical mentality of the Greeks in his time, in which artists, intellectuals, and statesmen strived for excellence. This idea lived on long afterward since it was still practiced by Alexander and his contemporaries.
With Phidias and Praxiteles, Polycleitus is considered one of the most important
sculptors of the Classical Greek era. So significant was his influence that
later artists like Skopas and Lysippos (Alexander's personal
sculptor) worked using the same references.
[Bottom picture from Positano News]
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