Marble & Myth

The Sculpture Room

Six statues and the stories they carry

A small room of celebrated ancient sculpture, from Hellenistic originals to Roman marble copies of Greek bronzes that no longer exist. For each piece we give its date, material and present home, and the myth or ideal it embodies. The images here are new illustrations made for this site in the manner of museum photography; they are not photographs of the actual statues.

Illustration in the style of a museum photograph: an armless white marble goddess, draped from the hips down, standing in soft daylight against a pale grey wall.

Aphrodite of Milos

Date
c. 150–125 BCE
Material
Parian marble, carved in separate pieces
Original or copy
Greek original of the Hellenistic period
Now in
Musée du Louvre, Paris

Found in pieces in 1820 by a farmer on the island of Melos, near the ruins of the ancient town, the statue was soon shipped to France and presented to Louis XVIII. A fragment of an inscribed plinth, drawn at the time and later lost, named a sculptor from Antioch on the Maeander, which is one reason she is dated long after the Classical age she seems to recall. Her arms have never been found. Proposals for what they held include an apple, a mirror and a shield, and some scholars think she is not Aphrodite at all but Amphitrite, the sea goddess worshipped on the island. The calm face gives nothing away.

Illustration in the style of a museum photograph: a headless winged marble figure in windblown drapery on a stone ship’s prow at the top of a broad staircase.

Winged Victory of Samothrace

Date
Early 2nd century BCE (debated)
Material
Parian marble figure on a ship’s prow of grey Rhodian marble
Original or copy
Greek original of the Hellenistic period
Now in
Musée du Louvre, Paris

A French diplomat, Charles Champoiseau, found the shattered figure in 1863 in the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on Samothrace; the grey stone prow she stands on was recognized and brought to Paris later. Nike, Victory, has just alighted on the bow of a warship, the wind pressing thin drapery against her body and throwing it back behind her. She probably celebrated a naval victory, though which battle and which donor are still argued over. Her head and arms are lost; a hand found on the site in 1950 is displayed nearby. Since the 1880s she has stood at the head of the Daru staircase, where the climb becomes part of the work.

Illustration in the style of a museum photograph: a marble group of a bearded man and two youths struggling against great sea serpents, lit by soft daylight.

Laocoön and His Sons

Date
Late 1st century BCE or early 1st century CE (debated)
Material
Marble, assembled from several blocks
Original or copy
Work signed by three Rhodian sculptors, possibly after an earlier bronze
Now in
Vatican Museums (Museo Pio-Clementino), Vatican City

Unearthed in 1506 on the Esquiline Hill in Rome, the group was recognized almost at once as the sculpture Pliny the Elder had praised, the work of Hagesander, Polydorus and Athenodorus of Rhodes; Michelangelo was among those who came to see it in the ground. The Trojan priest who warned against the wooden horse writhes with his two sons in the coils of serpents sent from the sea, the scene Virgil describes in the second book of the Aeneid. Laocoön’s right arm was missing. A Renaissance restoration stretched it heavenward, until the original bent arm, found in 1906, was restored to the statue in the twentieth century.

Illustration in the style of a museum photograph: a nude marble athlete twisting back with a discus in his raised right hand, poised to throw.

Discobolus (Discus Thrower)

Date
Roman copy, 2nd century CE; lost original c. 460–450 BCE
Material
Marble
Original or copy
Roman marble copy of a lost bronze by Myron
Now in
Museo Nazionale Romano, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome

Myron’s bronze athlete is lost, but Roman collectors loved it, and several marble copies survive; the best preserved, the Lancellotti copy, was found on the Esquiline in 1781. The sculptor caught the instant before release, the body coiled like a spring, and the satirist Lucian later described the statue bent over and turned toward the hand that holds the discus. Myth gave the discus a darker side: Ovid tells how a throw by Apollo killed his beloved Hyacinthus, and Apollodorus how Perseus struck his grandfather Acrisius by accident. Sold to Hitler’s Germany in 1938, the Lancellotti marble came back to Rome in 1948.

Illustration in the style of a museum photograph: a youthful marble god striding forward, left arm outstretched, a cloak falling from his shoulder.

Apollo Belvedere

Date
Roman copy, c. 120–140 CE; lost original c. 330–320 BCE
Material
Marble
Original or copy
Roman marble copy, probably after a bronze attributed to Leochares
Now in
Vatican Museums (Museo Pio-Clementino), Vatican City

Known by the late fifteenth century and set up in the Belvedere courtyard of the Vatican under Pope Julius II, this Apollo strides forward with his left arm outstretched and a cloak over his shoulder, as if he has just loosed an arrow. The bow is gone, and so is his target: viewers have imagined the serpent Python at Delphi, the children of Niobe, or the Greek camp in the first book of the Iliad. In the eighteenth century Winckelmann made the statue the summit of ideal beauty. Napoleon carried it off to Paris in 1798, and it returned to Rome after his fall in 1815.

Illustration in the style of a museum photograph: a massively muscled, bearded marble hero resting on a club draped with a lion skin, head lowered.

Farnese Hercules

Date
Early 3rd century CE; lost original late 4th century BCE
Material
Marble
Original or copy
Enlarged Roman version signed by Glykon of Athens, after a bronze by Lysippos
Now in
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, Naples

Found in 1546 in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, this colossal figure entered the Farnese family collection and moved to Naples in the late eighteenth century. The signature of Glykon, an Athenian, is cut into the rock beneath the club; the design goes back to a bronze by Lysippos. Hercules leans his whole weight on his club, draped with the skin of the Nemean lion, his head bowed with fatigue. Only from behind does the viewer see what his right hand holds: the golden apples of the Hesperides, prize of one of his last Labours. It is a statue about the moment after effort, when even a hero is allowed to be tired.