HELLENISTIC PERIOD, CIRCA 3RD-2ND CENTURY B.C.

Athletic competitions were held throughout the Greek world at numerous Panhellenic centers, including Olympia, Athens, Delphi, Nemea and Isthmia. The earliest was held at Olympia in 776 B.C. The victors of these competitions were seen as the living embodiment of arete - excellence and virtue - and were frequently honored by their home cities through the dedication of an honorary statue, either in bronze or marble. As J.J. Herrmann, Jr. and C. Kondoleon remark (p. 145 in Games for the Gods: The Greek Athlete and the Olympic Spirit), “Recognition by their fellow citizens at home and abroad brought glory and fame to victors and their hometowns.”

The elongated body and idealized visage indicates that this figure belongs to a well-defined group of under-lifesized depictions of athletes. For a similar example, see the so-called Bebenburg Youth, now at the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design (see no. 19 in B.S. Ridgway, Catalogue of the Classical Collection). While both examples share the same modeling of the torso, including the absence of a defined epigastric arch, and a sfumato-like quality of the face, the backside of the Rhode Island figure is summarily carved, thus leading Ridgway (op. cit.) to deduce that the figure served as a funerary statue. This athlete, by comparison, is sculpted in the round and was therefore likely made as a commemorative statue to celebrate a victory, either displayed publicly in the victor’s hometown or in a sanctuary where the games occurred. For another figure, similar in scale and quality, see the figure of a boxer, no. 71 in Herrmann and Kondoleon, op. cit.