Date : between the Ist and the IInd century
Material : Marble
Acquisition : Gift of John D. Rockfeller (1932)
| Item 12 on 23
Greek Antiquities
Sculpture (Statue)
Area related
Ephesus (Turkey)
Site related :
Ephesus
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| Description |  |
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Copy of a Greek statue of ca. 450-425 B.C. Lower legs and feet have been restored with casts taken from copies in Berlin and Copenhagen. Most of the right arm, lower part of pillar, and plinth are eighteenth-century marble restorations.
In Greek art, the Amazons, a mythical race of warrior women from Asia Minor, were often depicted battling such heroes as Herakles, Achilles and Theseus. This statue represents a refugee from battle who has lost her weapons and bleeds from a wound under her right breast. Her chiton in unfastened at one shoulder and belted at the waist with a makeshift bit of bridle from her horse. Despite her plight, her face shows no sign of pain or fatigue. She leans lightly on a pillar at her and rests her right arm gracefully on her head in a gesture often used to denote sleep or death. Such emotional restrain was characterictic of classical art of the second half of the fifth century B.B.
The original statue probably stood in the precinct of the great temple of Artmesis at Ephesos, on the coast of Asia Minor, where Amazons had legendary and cultic connections with the goddess. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder described a competion held in the mid-fifth century B.C. between five famous sculptors, including Phidias, Polykleitos and Kresilas, who were to make a statue of an Amazon for the temple. This type of statue if generally associated with that contest.
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