Statue of the Diskobolos, from Castel Porziano, after Myron. Museo delle Terme, Rome.
Since we are chiefly dependent for our knowledge of Myron’s athletic work on the marble copies of the Diskobolos, which represents a new era in athletic art, and since this statue is perhaps the most famous athletic statue of all times, it will be well to speak of it here at some length. It is not, so far as we know, the statue of any particular victor, but rather a study in athletic sculpture.[1351] Of this work there are twelve full size replicas and several statuettes. We shall discuss only those which give us the best idea of the lost original. The most faithful copy is the superb marble statue in the Palazzo Lancellotti, Rome, discovered on the Esquiline in 1781 (head seen in Pl. [23]).[1352] As the head has never been broken away from the body, this copy preserves the original pose, whereas all other copies have the head turned in the wrong direction.[1353] The head and face preserve Attic proportions and the treatment of the hair and muscles differs from that of the other copies, which disclose later elements. The hair, in particular, shows signs of archaism, just as it must have been treated in the original, as evinced by Pliny’s criticism.[1354] The most carefully worked copy, however, is the Parian marble torso, which was found in 1906 at Castel Porziano, the site of the ancient Laurentum, and is now in the Museo delle Terme, Rome (Pl. [22]).[1355] This torso was already restored in antiquity. Since the villa in which it was found was built in Augustus’ day and was restored in the second century A. D., we have the approximate dates both of the origin and restoration of the statue. A weak copy, discovered in Tivoli in 1791, is in the Sala della Biga of the Vatican; the head, left arm, and right leg below the knee have been restored, the head wrongly (Fig. 34).[1356] A Græco-Roman copy discovered also in 1791, in Hadrian’s villa, is in the British Museum (Fig. [35]).[1357] Here the head, although antique, belongs to another copy, and has been set upon the torso wrongly, in such a way that the throat has two Adam’s apples. It looks straight to the ground and not upward as in the Lancellotti copy. There is a better replica of the torso in the Capitoline Museum, which formerly belonged to the French sculptor Étienne Mounot (1658–1733), who wrongly restored it as a falling warrior. It agrees in accuracy with the Lancellotti copy, though it is dry and lifeless, and is a better guide to the original than either the Vatican or British Museum replicas.[1358] A combination of these and other copies gives us an excellent idea of the original bronze. In Pl. [23] we give a combination of the Vatican torso and the Lancellotti head from a cast in Munich.[1359] Perhaps a better combination is that given by Bulle[1360] from a cast made up of the delle Terme body, the Lancellotti head, the right arm and the diskos from the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, the feet from the British Museum copy and the fingers of the left hand being freely restored.
Fig. 34.—Statue of the Diskobolos, after Myron. Vatican Museum, Rome.
Fig. 35.—Statue of the Diskobolos, after Myron. British Museum, London.
PLATE 23
