CIRCA 1ST CENTURY A.D.

Athena Promachos as a statue type was already known in the Archaic Period. The most famous was Pheidias's colossal bronze from the 5th century B.C that stood on the Athenian Acropolis, although this version depicted the goddess standing rather than striding. The type that the Morven bronze replicates is best known from a fragmentary marble in Dresden and bronzes in London and Vienna (see pp. 45-52 and pls. 18-20 in Fullerton, The Archaistic Style in Roman Statuary). All share the same treatment of the mantle and aegis, and the bronzes, too, have a sphinx atop the helmet. According to A. Herrmann (p. 266 in True, et al., A Passion for Antiquities: Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, where there is a slightly different version) the type "has been considered either the neo-Attic adaptation of an early fifth-century original, or an invention of the late second-first century B.C."