Vatican Meleager
- Title:
- Vatican Meleager
- Collection:
- Cornell Cast Collection
- Creator:
- Unknown (Roman copy)
attributed to Skopas of Paros (Greek original)
- Photographer:
- Alexandridis, Annetta
- Date:
- ca. 1890-1900
2nd c. CE (Roman copy)
ca. 340-330 BCE (Greek original)
2009 (image)
- Site:
- Esquiline or Janiculum Hills, Rome, Italy (discovery site, first half of the 16th c.) (original)
- Location:
- Warehouse
Esquiline or Janiculum Hills, Rome, Italy (discovery site, first half of the 16th c.) (original) - ID Number:
- CCC_0289
- Accession Number:
- Sage no. 115
289 - File Name:
- CCC_0289.tif
- Original Measurements:
- 210 (H) cm (complete statue)
- Culture:
- Roman, after Greek
- Style/Period:
- Roman Imperial, after Greek Late Classical
- Work Type:
- casts (sculpture)
- Materials/Techniques:
- plaster cast (sculpture)
marble sculpture in the round (original) - Subject:
- Meleager (Greek mythology)
Calydonian boar (Greek mythology) - Image View Type:
- overall
- Image View Description:
- from front
- Measurement:
- 56 x 38 x 35 (centimeters, height x width x diameter)
- Description:
- This is a section from a damaged cast of the Vatican Meleager, a Roman marble copy of a statue attributed to the fourth century sculptor Skopas of Paros. In the original, Meleager, represented as the victorious hunter, stands placing his weight on his right leg, looking to his left, and wearing a cloak around his neck that is fastened with a circular rosette brooch and that twists around his left arm and bellows out behind his forearm. His hair is curly and short and his expression is calm. He is flanked on his right by his hound and on his left by the disembodied head of the Calydonian Boar, which rests on a stump. Cornell's cast is preserved incompletely in a number of fragments. This record represents the separately cast tree trunk on which the head of the Calydonian Boar (cast separately) was set. The surface of the trunk is gnarled and lumpy in the original, as here. The bottom front edge of the piece is broken away at the base of the statue. There is a small amount of chipping along the top edge of the trunk at the join on which the separately cast head of the boar was placed, incompletely preserved in this cast. Several copies of this statue type are known. Its speculative attribution to Skopas is based on the sculptor's work as architect of and association with the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea. There, Pausanias reports (8.45-47), the temple's east pediment was decorated with sculptures representing Meleager and the Calydonian Boar hunt.
- Notes:
- Items in the Cornell Cast Collection are meant for inventory and reference purposes. Metadata may not be complete in all cases.
Pio Clementino no. 490 - Bibliography:
- Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 263-264
Andrew Stewart, Greek Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 185, 286, fig. 549
John Boardman, Greek Sculpture. The Late Classical Period (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995), 76 - Related Work:
- ID nos. 199, 253, 253a, 287, 287a, 289, 341, 416 belong together.
- Repository:
- Cornell University (current)
Rome, Vatican Museums (original) - Collecting Program:
- Cornell Collections of Antiquities
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The images in the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Casts are protected by copyright, and the copyright holders are their creators, generally Cornell University Library, Annetta Alexandridis, and Verity Platt. This collection of plaster casts owned by Cornell University was photographed by Cornell University Library, Alexandridis, Platt, and Andreya L. Mihaloew from 2010-2015, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Annetta Alexandridis. Cornell is providing access to the materials for research and personal use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Please contact Annetta Alexandridis and Verity Platt for more information about this collection, or to request permission to use these images.