| Vaison Diadumenos | |
|---|---|
 The Vaison Diadumenos on display in the British Museum | |
| Material | Marble |
| Size | 1.82m high |
| Created | 118-138 AD |
| Present location | British Museum, London |
| Registration | 1870,0712.1 |
The Vaison Diadumenos is a life size marble statue of an athlete found at the Roman city of Vaison, southern France. Since 1870, it has been part of the British Museum's collection. [1]
The statue known as the Vaison Diadumenos was discovered in the late nineteenth century in the Roman Theatre at Vaison-La-Romaine, department of Vaucluse, southern France. It was offered for sale to the Louvre, but the national museum refused to buy it on the grounds of the exorbitant price. It was later purchased by the British Museum in 1870, where it has remained ever since.
The sculpture is one of a series of Roman statues found across the empire that were modelled on a lost original made in bronze by the sculptor Polykleitos in about 440 BC. The Diadumenos was the winner of an athletic tournament at a games, still nude after the contest and lifting his arms to knot a ribbon-band across his head. The Vaison statue is missing his left hand and ribbon but is otherwise in good condition. The statue would have been displayed in a prominent position in the theatre, proudly demonstrating the sophistication of the local Roman citizenry and their commitment to the ideals of Ancient Greece.
The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world.
Salamis is an ancient Greek city-state on the east coast of Cyprus, at the mouth of the river Pedieos, 6 km north of modern Famagusta. According to tradition, the founder of Salamis was Teucer, son of Telamon, who could not return home after the Trojan war because he had failed to avenge his brother Ajax.
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Polykleitos was an ancient Greek sculptor in bronze of the 5th century BCE. His Greek name was traditionally Latinized Polycletus, but is also transliterated Polycleitus and due to iotacism in the transition from Ancient to Modern Greek, Polyklitos or Polyclitus. He is called Sicyonius by Latin authors including Pliny the Elder and Cicero, and Ἀργεῖος by others like Plato and Pausanias. He is sometimes called the Elder, in cases where it is necessary to distinguish him from his son, who is regarded as a major architect but a minor sculptor.
The Doryphoros of Polykleitos is one of the best known Greek sculptures of classical antiquity, depicting a solidly built, muscular, standing warrior, originally bearing a spear balanced on his left shoulder. Rendered somewhat above life-size, the lost bronze original of the work would have been cast circa 440 BCE, but it is today known only from later marble copies. The work nonetheless forms an important early example of both Classical Greek contrapposto and classical realism; as such, the iconic Doryphoros proved highly influential elsewhere in ancient art.
Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of ancient Greece. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
The Diadumenos ("diadem-bearer"), together with the Doryphoros, are two of the most famous figural types of the sculptor Polyclitus, forming a basic pattern of Ancient Greek sculpture that all present strictly idealised representations of young male athletes in a convincingly naturalistic manner.
Vaison-la-Romaine is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.The French archaeologist and hellenist Henri Metzger (1912–2007) died here.
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The classical sculptures in the Farnese Collection, one aspect of this large art collection, are one of the first collections of artistic items from Greco-Roman Antiquity. It includes some of the most influential classical works, including the sculptures that were part of the Farnese Marbles, their collection of statuary. The works are now displayed in the Naples National Archaeological Museum in Naples and the British Museum in London.
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The Arundel Head is a Hellenistic bronze portrait of a dramatist or king from Asia Minor, now kept in the British Museum. Dating to the 2nd-1st centuries BC, the head once belonged to the famous English collector of classical antiquities, Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel.