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The Greek Kouros in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Gisela M. A. Richter
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Extract

Whenever our store of Greek sculpture is enriched by a new example of major importance, the new-comer naturally arouses great interest. The question immediately arises whether it conforms with what is already known of the Greek sculpture of that period or whether it reveals new features. In either case it becomes the object of keen discussion, for we are almost as eager to test the soundness of the edifice we have tentatively set up as to enlarge it.

The newly-acquired archaic marble statue in New York (Pls. IV, V) is such an important new-comer. Under the circumstances I have gladly accepted the invitation of the Editorial Committee of this Journal to present a short note on the statue pending its more detailed publication in Metropolitan Museum Studies and Brunn-Bruckmann-Arndt, Denkmäler.

The significance of the New York statue lies in the fact that it is the best preserved and so the most representative example of the earliest ‘Apollo’ figures—or kouroi as we now preferably call them—of Greece. That is, it stands at the beginning of the long line of development which began about 600 B.C. and culminated about a century and a half later in the Apollo of Olympia. Its only important contemporaries are the famous colossal figures from Sounion, one extensively restored, the other a mere torso, and the Dipylon statue, of which only the head and one hand have survived. The preservation of the New York statue, on the other hand, is astonishingly good.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , 1933 , pp. 51 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1933

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References

1 A preliminary publication appeared in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum, 1932, pp. 218 ff.

2 Rhomaios, , Antike Denkmäler, IV, pls. 47–56, pp. 91Google Scholar ff.

3 Buschor, , in AM. LII, 1927, pp. 205Google Scholar ff., and LV, 1930, pp. 163 ff.

4 The marble is white and large-grained, evidently Island. The height of the figure without the plinth is 6 ft. 4 in. (1·93 m.); that of the head 12 in. (30·5 cm.). The plinth was already embedded in the modern rectangular base when the statue arrived at the Museum, but from a photograph taken previously the height of the plinth can be computed to be about 2⅜ in. (6 cm.). Its form is irregular, roughly following the contours of the feet.

5 For other instances of male figures with necklaces cf. the Dipylon head, the bronze statuette from Delphi (Fouilles de Delphes, V, pl. 4), and a torso in Markopoulo (Buschor, in AM. LII, 1927, p. 208Google Scholar).

6 Similar bands appear in the Sounion and Delphi youths.

7 The cutting of the left nostril is entirely preserved; that of the right nostril is mostly gone, except for a small portion at which point are traces of red.

8 The examination was made at the Metropolitan Museum by James J. Rorimer, associate curator of the department of Decorative Arts and author of Ultra-Violet Rays and their Use in the Examination of Works of Art.

9 The statue is evidently not the one claimed to have been unearthed in Attica by two Greek peasants in the spring of 1932, for it already was in New York in October 1931.

10 Cf. Buschor, in AM. LII, 1927, pp. 211Google Scholar f. The dating is based on the progressive development of Greek sculpture between 650 and 550 B.C. and on relations with vase paintings.