CIRCA 1ST CENTURY B.C.-1ST CENTURY A.D.

The sculptural type of a seated youth removing a thorn from the bottom of his foot, the so-called Spinario, is thought to have been created during the Hellenistic Period. The famous example in bronze in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, known since the 12th century, is now thought to be an eclectic Roman creation "in which the naturalism of the Hellenistic prototype is made more piquant by the addition of a head copied from an earlier Greek statue" (Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, p. 308). The type is known in several Hellenistic and Roman marble versions, including an example in the Baltimore Museum of Art, no. 152 in Vermeule, Greek and Roman Sculpture in America.