1969.05

Marble Statuette

Purchased. Preserved ht 17.8cm.

The figure is of smooth, fine, somewhat yellow marble. Missing are the head, the greater part of the right arm, the left hand, and the legs and drapery from just below the waist. The break at the left wrist has been cut smooth. The surface has been abraded on parts of the front and back but considerable areas of the original surface remain.

The figure wears a himation that is bunched around the waist and is drawn up across the back to fall over the left arm and shoulder. That the right arm came straight down and possibly held an object (such as a scroll) is suggested by the projecting knobs on the right hip and thigh. There is nothing in the fall of the drapery to suggest that it was clasped or pulled. The right leg was bent well back; the weight of the figure rested firmly on the left leg and thus produced a slight s-curve through the body and a lowering of the right shoulder. The head was probably angled slightly towards the left. The drapery is cut in clean deep folds and the surface is smoothly finished.

Technique and style suggest a relatively early imperial date but the pose and the arrangement of the drapery point to its being a copy of an original of the late fourth century BC. The type is of the portraits of philosophers: compare in general terms that of Menippos (Richter, Portraits of the Greeks [London 1965] ii, figs.1074-5) or the well-known statuette of Sokrates in the British Museum (e.g. Richter i, figs. 560-562; K. Schefold, Bildnisse der antiken Dichter Redner und Denker [second ed., Basle 1997] 176-177 fig. 83). Ours must have been a famous figure to be reproduced as a statuette.

The fourth-century and Hellenistic portraits of Greek philosophers were designed so as to project the image and style of their subjects in an almost propagandistic way. See the very useful discussions by R.R.R. Smith, “Kings and Philosophers”, in: A. Bulloch, E.S. Gruen, A.A. Long and A. Stewart (eds), Images and Ideologies: Self-Definition in the Hellenistic World (Berkeley 1993) 202-211, and then F. Decleva Caizzi’s “The Porch and the Garden: Early Hellenistic Images of the Philosophical Life” at pp. 303-329 in the same volume.

Folio Fine Art Ltd (London), Catalogue 65 (July 1969) no. 739 (ill.); J.R. Green with B. Rawson, Catalogue of Antiquities in the Australian National University, A.N.U. (Canberra, 1981) 92.