A Roman marble male torso
Circa 1st Century A.D.
The youthful figure standing in contrapposto, with the weight on his right leg, his left shoulder slightly raised, depicted nude, of athletic form, the muscular torso with well-pectorals, abdominal muscles and iliac crests, with rounded buttocks and muscular back, the dorsal muscles emphasised by a sunken depression along the spine, 40cm high 注脚Provenance:
with Maxburg Galerie Antiken, Munich.
Professor Wilhelm Kreutzberg (1932-2019) collection, Munich, acquired from the above in April 1976.

Based on the rendering of the abdominal musculature, which is comparable to Greek statuary types of c. 450-420 B.C. (cf. Polykleitos' Diadoumenos), the present torso is likely a Roman copy of a Greek original from the 5th Century B.C. The modelling of the body is in the Polykleitan style, in particular in its use of chiasmos. The Romans developed a great interest in Polykleitos' work during the 1st and 2nd Centuries A.D., frequently emulating his style. This preoccupation with his work is demonstrated by Pliny the Elder's description of Polykleitos as 'having attained the highest excellence in statuary' (Pliny, NH 34.19).

For a similarly modelled torso, see C. Vermeule, Greek and Roman Sculpture in America, California, 1981, no. 26.