CIRCA 2ND CENTURY A.D.

The legendary hunter Meleager was the youngest of the Argonauts, who successfully killed the Calydonian boar that terrorized the local people. Here he is depicted nude but for a chlamys fastened over his right shoulder and draped over his back. This is one of about forty Roman sculptures of the hero to have survived and likely based on a 4th century B.C. original attributed Skopas of Paros (see the example in the Vatican Museums, no. 3 in S. Woodford, “Meleagros,” LIMC, vol. VI). For a statue of Meleager at the Art Institute of Chicago, simlar but of slightly older age and with different arrangemnt of drapery, see p. 21 in C.C. Vermeule III, Greek and Roman Sculpture in America: Masterpieces in Public Collections in the United States and Canada.