Description
Diadoumenos by Polykleitos Large Head Bust. This is a replica of an original from the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Made of cast stone and placed on pedestal. About: This bust was taken from the magnificent full figure is is now in the National Museum in Athens. The Diadoumenos statue (h. 1.95 m.) depicts a young athlete, fixing the fillet around his head. It is a Roman copy of the famous bronze original made by the Argive sculptor Polykleitos in ca. 430 B.C. It was found on Delos and dates to the early 1st century B.C. It is one of the most recognized sculptures of the Hellenistic age, the birth of Classical sculpture. The Diadumenos (“diadem-bearer”), together with the Doryphoros and Discophoros, are the three most famous figural types of the sculptor Polyclitus, forming three basic patterns of Ancient Greek sculpture that all present strictly idealised representations of young male athletes in a convincingly naturalistic manner. The Diadumenos is the winner of an athletic contest at a games, still nude after the contest and lifting his arms to knot the diadem, a ribbon-band that identifies the winner and which in the bronze original of about 420 BCE would have been represented by a ribbon of bronze.[1] The figure stands in contrapposto with his weight on his right foot, his left knee slightly bent and his head inclined slightly to the right, self-contained, seeming to be lost in thought. Phidias was credited with a statue of a victor at Olympia in the act of tying the fillet around his head; besides Polyclitus, his successors Lysippos and Scopas also created figures of this kind.
