Download Italian, second half of the 18th century Bust of the Doryphoros (After

Italian, second half of the 18th century
Bust of the Doryphoros (After the Antique – probably cast at the Fonderia Borbonica)
Bronze
58 cm (22 ¾ in.) high overall
This impressive bust was made in the second half of the 18th century and is a version of a Roman
Augustan period bronze of a youthful ‘Hercules’ in the Museo Nazionale di Napoli (no.5610). The
Roman work is itself after a Greek marble known as ‘Doryphoros’, thought to be by Polyklitos,
dating from the 3rd quarter of the 5th century. The Doryphoros is a subject of significant importance
as it represents a Greek model of idealised male beauty, which resulted from Polyklitos’ studies into
the mathematical proportions of the human body. The Greek sculptor Apollonio of Archia worked
during the time of the Emperor Augustus and made many of the Roman copies after the antique. It
was likely he who made the bronze version of the Doryphoros which is now in the Museo Nazionale
di Napoli (no.4885). This was excavated 1759 at the site of the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, and
the present version of it was likely cast soon after its discovery, possibly for one of the wealthy
‘Milordi’ who had visited the historic sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum as part of their ‘Grand Tour’,
as was the fashion among Europe’s aristocratic elites in the second half of the 18th century.
Literature:
Related literature:
E. Pozzi. Le Collezioni del Museo Nazionale di Napoli. Rome, 1989., p. 162
L.R. Wojcik. La Villa dei Papiri ad Ercolano. Rome, 1986., p.91
T. Piroli. Le Antichita di Ercolano. Rome, 1789.