Kouros is the modern term given to free-standing Ancient Greek sculptures that depict nude male youths. They first appear in the Archaic period in Greece and are prominent in Attica and Boeotia, with a less frequent presence in many other Ancient Greek territories such as Sicily. Such statues are found across the Greek-speaking world; the preponderance of these were found in sanctuaries of Apollo with more than one hundred from the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoion, Boeotia, alone. These free-standing sculptures were typically marble, but the form is also rendered in limestone, wood, bronze, ivory and terracotta. They are typically life-sized, though early colossal examples are up to 3 meters tall.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthiest art institution.
The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone: the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
The National Archaeological Museum in Athens houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the greatest museums in the world and contains the richest collection of Greek Antiquity artifacts worldwide. It is situated in the Exarcheia area in central Athens between Epirus Street, Bouboulinas Street and Tositsas Street while its entrance is on the Patission Street adjacent to the historical building of the Athens Polytechnic university.
Classical sculpture refers generally to sculpture from Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, as well as the Hellenized and Romanized civilizations under their rule or influence, from about 500 BC to around 200 AD. It may also refer more precisely a period within Ancient Greek sculpture from around 500 BC to the onset of the Hellenistic style around 323 BC, in this case usually given a capital "C". The term "classical" is also widely used for a stylistic tendency in later sculpture, not restricted to works in a Neoclassical or classical style.
The Kroisos Kouros is a marble kouros from Anavyssos (Ανάβυσσος) in Attica which functioned as a grave marker for a fallen young warrior named Kroisos (Κροῖσος).
The so-called Blond Kouros's Head of the Acropolis is the head of a lost marble statue of a young man of ca 480 BC, in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece. The head and part of the pelvis were found in 1923 northeast of the museum site on the Acropolis of Athens. It belongs to the late archaic or early classical period. The curly hair points more to the Archaic than the Classical period.
The marble Kritios Boy or Kritian Boy belongs to the Early Classical period of ancient Greek sculpture. It is the first statue from classical antiquity known to use contrapposto; Kenneth Clark called it "the first beautiful nude in art" The Kritios Boy is thus named because it is attributed, on slender evidence, to Kritios, who worked together with Nesiotes or their school, from around 480 BC. As currently mounted, the statue is considerably smaller than life-size at 117 cm, including the supports that replace the missing feet.
Marion True was the former curator of antiquities for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. True was indicted on April 1, 2005, by an Italian court, on criminal charges accusing her of participating in a conspiracy that laundered stolen artifacts through private collections and creating a fake paper trail; the Greeks later followed suit. Though the charges against True were eventually dropped, the legal actions brought to light many questions about museum acquisitions, administration, repatriation, and ethics.
Delphi Archaeological museum is one of the principal museums of Greece and one of the most visited. It is operated by the Greek Ministry of Culture. Founded in 1903, it has been rearranged several times and houses the discoveries made at the Panhellenic sanctuary of Delphi, which date from the Late Helladic (Mycenean) period to the early Byzantine era.
The large, grave statue of a youth from Attica known as the Munich Kouros is located in the Glyptothek in Munich, Germany, under inventory number 169. The Kouros was acquired by the Glyptothek in 1910.
The Lansdowne Heracles is a Roman marble sculpture of about 125 CE. Today it is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum's Getty Villa on the Malibu Coast, Los Angeles. The statue represents the hero Heracles as a beardless Lysippic youth grasping the skin of the Nemean lion with his club upon his shoulder. The work was discovered in 1790 in Tivoli, Italy, on the site of Hadrian's Villa, where many fine Hadrianic copies and pastiches of Greek sculptures had been discovered since the 16th century. Today, the sculpture is considered to be an example of Roman-era improvisations on the Greek sculptural style of the fourth century BCE rather than a copy of a specific Greek original.
Kleobis (Cleobis) and Biton are two Archaic Greek Kouros brothers from Argos, whose stories date back to about 580 BCE. Two statues, discovered in Delphi, represent them.
The Archaeological Museum of Thasos is a museum located in Limenas on the island of Thasos, Eastern Macedonia, Greece. It occupies a house that was built in 1934 and recently extended. Storerooms and workshops have been restored, and are fully operational. These include the shop, the official functions room, the old wing, the prehistoric collection, and the new section.
Gods in Color or Gods in Colour (original title in German: Bunte Götter – Die Farbigkeit antiker Skulptur is a travelling exhibition of varying format and extent that has been shown in multiple cities worldwide. Its subject is ancient polychromy, i.e. the original, brightly painted, appearance of ancient sculpture and architecture.
The Sounion Kouros is an early archaic Greek statue of a naked young man or kouros carved in marble from the island of Naxos around 600 BCE. It is one of the earliest examples that scholars have of the kouros-type which functioned as votive offerings to gods or demi-gods, and were dedicated to heroes. Found near the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion, this kouros was found badly damaged and heavily weathered. It was restored to its original height of 3.05 meters (10.0 ft) returning it to its larger than life size. It is now held by the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
The Kouros of Apollonas, also called the Colossus of Dionysus, is a 10.7 metre tall unfinished statue of light grey Naxian marble with a weight of around 80 tonnes. It is located in an ancient quarry near Apollonas, a small town in the northern part of Naxos, one of the Cycladic Islands in the Aegean Sea. The statue is a kouros dating from Archaic period of Ancient Greece, around the turn of the seventh and sixth centuries BC.
The Funerary monument for an athlete is an Ancient Greek relief that depicts a young nude male holding two pomegranates over his head in his left hand, and an aryballos in the other. He stands facing right in profile to the viewer, with one foot stepping out in front of the other. The relief is 98 x 24 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches and is carved in marble.
The New York Kouros is an early example of life-sized statuary in Greece. The marble statue of a Greek youth, kouros, was carved in Attica, has an Egyptian pose, and is otherwise separated from the block of stone. It is named for its current location, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Metropolitan Museum of Art said in "Marble statue of a kouros (youth)" that "The statue marked the grave of a young Athenian aristocrat."
The Euthydikos Kore is a late archaic, Parian marble statue of the kore type, c 490–480 BCE, that once stood amongst the Akropolis votive sculptures. It was destroyed during the Persian invasion of 480 BCE and found in the Perserschutt. It is named after the dedication on the base of the sculpture, “Euthydikos son of Thaliarchos dedicated [me]”. It now stands in the Acropolis Museum.
