Marathon Boy | |
---|---|
Material | Bronze |
Height | 1.3 meters |
Created | 340 –330 BC |
Discovered | June 1925 Aegean Sea |
Present location | Athens, Attica, Greece |
The Marathon Boy or Ephebe of Marathon is a Greek bronze sculpture found in the Aegean Sea in the bay of Marathon in 1925.
The sculpture is conserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens where it is dated to around 340–330 BC. [1] The Museum suggests that the subject is the winner of an athletic competition. With its soft musculature and exaggerated contrapposto , its style is associated with the school of Praxiteles. The upraised arm and the distribution of weight indicate that in his original context, this ephebe was leaning against a vertical support, such as a column. [2]
Before the advent of scuba diving, its chance recovery suggested the possibility that artistic as well as archaeological treasures had been preserved from human destruction in underwater sites. Other well-known underwater bronze finds have been retrieved, generally from shipwreck sites, in the Aegean and Mediterranean: the Antikythera mechanism, the Antikythera Ephebe and the portrait head of a Stoic discovered by sponge-divers in 1900, the Mahdia shipwreck off the coast of Tunisia, 1907; the standing Poseidon of Cape Artemision found off Cape Artemision in northern Euboea, 1926; the horse and Rider found off Cape Artemision, 1928 and 1937; the Getty Victorious Youth dredged up off the coast of Fano, Italy; the Riace bronzes, found in 1972; the Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo, in the Sicily Channel, 2003; and the Apoxyomenos recovered from the sea off the Croatian island of Lošinj in 1999.
Media related to Marathon Boy, NAMA X15118 at Wikimedia Commons
Maritime archaeology is a discipline within archaeology as a whole that specifically studies human interaction with the sea, lakes and rivers through the study of associated physical remains, be they vessels, shore-side facilities, port-related structures, cargoes, human remains and submerged landscapes. A specialty within maritime archaeology is nautical archaeology, which studies ship construction and use.
Praxiteles of Athens, the son of Cephisodotus the Elder, was the most renowned of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue. While no indubitably attributable sculpture by Praxiteles is extant, numerous copies of his works have survived; several authors, including Pliny the Elder, wrote of his works; and coins engraved with silhouettes of his various famous statuary types from the period still exist.
The shipwreck of Mahdia was found by Greek sponge fishermen off the coast of Tunisia in June 1907. The shipwreck near the modern town of Mahdia is dated to between 80 and 60 BC.
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.
Artemisium or Artemision is a cape in northern Euboea, Greece. The hollow cast bronze statue of Zeus or Poseidon, known as the Artemision Bronze, was found off this cape in a sunken ship, as was the Jockey of Artemision, a bronze statue of a racehorse and its jockey.
Antikythera or Anticythera, known in antiquity as Aigilia (Αἰγιλία), is a Greek island lying on the edge of the Aegean Sea, between Crete and Peloponnese. Since the 2011 local government reform, it is part of the municipality of Kythira island.
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.
The Antikythera wreck is a Roman-era shipwreck dating from the second quarter of the first century BC.
The Antikythera Ephebe, registered as Bronze statue of a youth in the museum collections, is a Greek bronze statue of a young man of languorous grace that was found in 1900 by sponge-divers in the area of the ancient Antikythera shipwreck off the island of Antikythera, Greece. It was the first of the series of Greek bronze sculptures that the Aegean and Mediterranean yielded up in the twentieth century which have fundamentally altered the modern view of ancient Greek sculpture. The wreck site, which is dated about 70–60 BC, also yielded the Antikythera mechanism, a characterful head of a Stoic philosopher, and a hoard of coins. The coins included a disproportionate quantity of Pergamene cistophoric tetradrachms and Ephesian coins, leading scholars to surmise that it had begun its journey on the Ionian coast, perhaps at Ephesus; none of its recovered cargo has been identified as from mainland Greece.
The Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo is a fragmentary over-lifesize ancient Greek bronze statue, of Magna Graecia whose refinement and rapprochement with the manner of Praxiteles has made it a subject of discussion. It is an example of a dancing satyr, a sculptural archetype in Hellenistic and Roman art. Another well-known example is the Faun from the House of the Faun, Pompeii.
The Victorious Youth, also known as the Atleta di Fano, the Lisippo di Fano, or the Getty Bronze, is a Greek bronze sculpture, made between 300 and 100 BCE, in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, displayed at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California.
The Artemision Bronze is an ancient Greek sculpture that was recovered from the sea off Cape Artemision, in northern Euboea, Greece. According to most scholars, the bronze represents Zeus, the thunder-god and king of gods, though it has also been suggested it might represent Poseidon. The statue is slightly over lifesize at 2.09 meters, and would have held either a thunderbolt, if Zeus, or a trident if Poseidon. The empty eye-sockets were originally inset, probably with bone, as well as the eyebrows, the lips, and the nipples. The sculptor is unknown. The statue is a highlight of the collections in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
George Fletcher Bass was an American archaeologist. An early practitioner of underwater archaeology, he co-directed the first expedition to entirely excavate an ancient shipwreck at Cape Gelidonya in 1960 and founded the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in 1972.
The Archaeological Museum of Olympia is one of the principal museums of Greece, located in Olympia. It is overseen by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, and, as of 2009, is directed by Georgia Xatzi. When the original building was completed and opened in 1888, it was the first museum in Greece outside of Athens.
The Archaeological Museum of Piraeus contains mainly sculptures, discovered in Piraeus and in the area of the Attic coast from Bronze Age to Roman times,
The Resting Satyr or Leaning Satyr, also known as the Satyr anapauomenos is a statue type generally attributed to the ancient Greek sculptor Praxiteles. Some 115 examples of the type are known, of which the best known is in the Capitoline Museums.
The Dokos shipwreck is the oldest underwater shipwreck discovery known to archeologists. The wreck has been dated to the second Proto-Helladic period, 2700–2200 BC.
The Jockey of Artemision is a large Hellenistic bronze statue of a young boy riding a horse, dated to around 150–140 BC. It is a rare surviving original bronze statue from Ancient Greece and a rare example in Greek sculpture of a racehorse. Most ancient bronzes were melted down for their raw materials some time after creation, but this one was saved from destruction when it was lost in a shipwreck in antiquity, before being discovered in 1926. It may have been dedicated to the gods by a wealthy person to honour victories in horse races, probably in the single-horse race. The artist is unknown.
The Antonino Salinas Regional Archeological Museum is a museum in Palermo, Italy. It possesses one of the richest collections of Punic and Ancient Greek art in Italy, as well as many items related to the history of Sicily. Formerly the property of the Oratory of Saint Philip Neri, the museum is named after Antonino Salinas, a famous archaeologist and numismatist from Palermo who had served as its director from 1873 until his death in 1914, upon which he left it his major private collection. It is part of the Olivella monumental complex, which includes the Church of Sant'Ignazio all'Olivella and the adjoining Oratory.
The Diana of Gabii is a statue of a woman in drapery which probably represents the goddess Artemis and is traditionally attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles. It became part of the Borghese collection and is now conserved in the Louvre with the inventory number Ma 529.