Youth (Herakles?) leaning on a staff

Etruscan

Classical Period

about 460 B.C.

Medium/Technique Bronze

Dimensions Height: 8.4 cm (3 5/16 in.)

Credit Line Catharine Page Perkins Fund

Accession Number96.709

NOT ON VIEW

CollectionsAncient Greece and Rome

ClassificationsSculpture

Catalogue Raisonné Greek, Etruscan, & Roman Bronzes (MFA), no. 050; Sculpture in Stone and Bronze (MFA), p. 119 (additional published references).

DescriptionThe youth is standing on a small semicircular plinth, leaning cross-legged on a thin club, and wearing a chlamys. His right hand held something, perhaps a phiale. There is a fillet in the hair, and the locks falling over the forehead recall the Blond Boy from the Acropolis. A certain linear quality in the arrangement of the folds of the drapery also suggests the late Archaic to early Transitional periods (about 480 B.C.), but treatment of the muscles seems advanced by at least a generation. So does the line of the profile, seen in side view. The statuette possibly comes from the top of a candelaber. Brown patina with greenish corrosion.

ProvenanceBy date unknown: with Edward Perry Warren; purchased by MFA from Edward Perry Warren, October 1896