Doryphoros

The Doryphoros (Greek Δορυφόρος Classical Greek Greek pronunciation: [dorypʰóros], "Spear-Bearer"; Latinised as Doryphorus) of Polykleitos is one of the best known Greek sculptures of Classical antiquity, depicting a solidly built, muscular, standing warrior, originally bearing a spear balanced on his left shoulder. Rendered somewhat above life-size, the lost bronze original of the work would have been cast circa 440 BC,^[1] but it is today known only from later (mainly Roman period) marble copies. The work nonetheless forms an important early example of both Classical Greek contrapposto and classical realism; as such, the iconic Doryphoros proved highly influential elsewhere in ancient art.

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(piano music playing) Steven: What is perfect? Well, the ancient Greeks thought the human body was perfect but, for them, it was not an individual that was perfect. It was almost mathematical precision, where the proportions of every part of the body were perfect in relationship to the others. Beth: We're looking at an ancient Roman copy of a Greek bronze original by the great artist, Polykleitos, who sought out to demonstrate just that. What would perfect ideal beauty be, thinking about the mathematical relationship of each part of the human body to the other, and in relationship to the whole? Steven: This is a sculpture called the Doryphorus. Doryphorus means a spear-bearer, and he would have, originally, been holding a bronze spear. We call it the Doryphorus. Polykleitos apparently called it Canon, not to mean a piece of armament, but a kind of idealized form that could be studied and replicated. That is, a set of ideas that you followed. Beth: The idea that you could create a perfect human form, based on math, was really part of a bigger set of ideas for the Greeks. If we think about Pythagoras, for example, Pythagoras discovered that harmony in music was based on the mathematical relationship between the notes. Steven: In fact, Pythagoras tried to understand the origin of all beauty through ratio and, so, it follows that the Greeks would be looking for that in one of the forms that they felt were most beautiful, that is the human body. The Greeks would perform their athletics nude, celebrating the body and its physical abilities. But, even when they represented figures in noble pursuits, like this figure, we have a figure whose clothes have been taken off. This is not because soldiers went into battle nude in ancient Greece, but because this sculpture is not about warfare. It's not a portrait of an individual. This is a sculpture that is about the perfection of human form. Beth: This was found in a palestra in Pompeii, a place where athletes would work out, perhaps as a kind of inspiration for them. Steven: So, that's another layer of meaning. The Romans loved Greek art, and had it copied in marble very often, and even in a city like Pompeii, we found thousands of sculptures that are copies of ancient Greek originals. This is based on a sculpture that is at the very beginning of the Classical Period, before the Parthenon sculptures, but it's after the Archaic figures, it's after the standing figure that we know as the Kouros. Here, the Greeks have turned away from the stiff renderings that had been so characteristic of the Archaic, and have, instead, begun to examine the human body and understand its physiognomy, This is one of the classic expressions of Contrapposto. Beth: The Doryphorus stands on his right foot, his left leg is relaxed, the right leg is weight-bearing, but the left hand would have been weight-bearing the spear. Similarly, the right arm is relaxed, so there's a sense of counterbalancing and harmony in the composition of the body. Steven: In a Kouros figure, you have both feet firmly planted, although one leg is forward, but, nevertheless, if you were to draw a line between the ankles, they would still be horizontal to the floor. Beth: And, in a Kouros, the figure is symmetrical. Steven: Here, both of those things have changed, and you see that his left ankle is up, and so you have a tilt of that axis, the axis of the knees are tilted in the opposite way. The hips are parallel to the axes of the knees, but also tipped, and then look what happens as a result of that. In those earlier figures, there was a perfect symmetry, and a perfect line that could be drawn down the center of the body. Here, there's a gentle S curve, and you can see, for instance, that his right side is compressed, compared to the left side, because the left hip is literally hanging down over that free leg. It's not being supported. Beth: To complete that sense of balance and harmony, Polykleitos turned the head slightly, breaking that symmetry of the Archaic Kouros figures. With the invention of Contrapposto by the Greeks, in the 5th century BCE, we would have, for the first time in Western art history, figures who seem fully alive, as though they move in the world. They're like us. Steven: This is a sculpture that is, for all of the complexity of what we've just discussed, is simply walking, but the mechanics of the human body walking are incredibly complicated, and here we have a civilization that not only was interested in understanding, through careful observation, how the body moved, but were interested, culturally, in capturing that. We have a society that puts human potential at the center. Beth: And creates figures who are not transcendent, who don't exist in a separate world, but who exist in our world. They're, in a way, ideal mirrors of ourselves. (piano music playing)

Conception

The renowned Greek sculptor Polykleitos designed a sculptural work as a demonstration of his written treatise, entitled the Κανών (or 'Canon'), translated as "measure" or "rule"), exemplifying what he considered to be the perfectly harmonious and balanced proportions of the human body in the sculpted form.

At some point in the 2nd century AD, the Greek medical writer Galen wrote about the Doryphoros as the perfect visual expression of the Greeks' search for harmony and beauty, which is rendered in the perfectly proportioned sculpted male nude:

Chrysippos holds beauty to consist not in the commensurability or "symmetria" [ie proportions] of the constituent elements [of the body], but in the commensurability of the parts, such as that of finger to finger, and of all the fingers to the palm and wrist, and of those to the forearm, and of the forearm to the upper arm, and in fact, of everything to everything else, just as it is written in the Canon of Polyclitus. For having taught us in that work all the proportions of the body, Polyclitus supported his treatise with a work: he made a statue according to the tenets of his treatise, and called the statue, like the work, the 'Canon'.^[2]

Polykleitos is known as the best sculptor of men, with the primary subjects of his works being male athletes with idealized body proportions. He was interested in the mathematical proportions of the human form, which led him to write an essay the Kanon, on the proportions of humans. The Doryphoros is an illustration of his writings in Kanon on the symmetry between the body parts. Polykleitos achieved a balance between muscular tensions and relaxation due to the chiastic principle that he relied on. "Scholars agree that Polykleitos based his calculations on a single module, perhaps the terminal section of the little finger, to determine the corresponding measurements of each body part" (MIA Doryphoros Plaque).

Description

The Doryphoros is a marble copy from Pompeii that dates from 120–50 BC. The original was made out of bronze in about 440 BC but is now lost (along with most other bronze sculptures made by a known Greek artist). Neither the original statue nor the treatise have yet been found; it is widely considered that they have not survived from antiquity. Fortunately, several Roman copies in marble—of varying quality and completeness—do survive to convey the essential form of Polykleitos' work.

Head of *Doryphoros* excavated at the Villa of the Papyri in Pompeii

The sculpture stands at approximately 6 feet 11 inches tall. Polykleitos used distinct proportions when creating this work; for example, the ratio of head to body size is one to seven. The figure's head turned slightly to the right, the heavily-muscled but athletic figure of the Doryphoros is depicted standing in the instant that he steps forward from a static pose. This posture reflects only the slightest incipient movement, and yet the limbs and torso are shown as fully responsive.

The left hand originally held a long spear; the left shoulder (on which the spear originally rested) is depicted as tensed and therefore slightly raised, with the left arm bent and tensed to maintain the spear's position. The figure's pose is classical contrapposto, most obviously seen in the angled positioning of the pelvis. The figure's right leg is straightened, depicted as supporting the body's weight, with the right hip raised and the right torso contracted. The left leg bears no weight and the left hip drops, slightly extending the torso on the left side. The right arm hangs positioned by the figure's side, bearing no load. It is perhaps the earliest extant example of a free-hanging arm in a statue.^[3]

In the surviving Roman marble copies, a large sculpted tree stump is added behind one leg of the statue in order to support the weight of the stone; this would not have been present in the original bronze (the tensile strength of the metal would have made this unnecessary). A small strut is also usually present to support the right hand and lower arm.^[4]

Extant Roman copies

The sculpture was known through the Roman marble replica found in Herculaneum and conserved in the Naples National Archaeological Museum but, according to Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, early connoisseurs such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann passed it by in the royal Bourbon collection at Naples without notable comment.^[5] The marble sculpture and a bronze head that had been retrieved at Herculaneum were published in Le Antichità di Ercolano, (1767)^[6] but were not identified as representing Polykleitos' Doryphorus until 1863.^[7]

For modern eyes, a fragmentary Doryphoros torso in basalt in the Medici collection at the Uffizi "conveys the effect of bronze, and is executed with unusual care", as Kenneth Clark noted, illustrating it in The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form:^[8] "It preserves some of the urgency and concentration of the original" lost in the full-size "blockish" marble copies.

Perhaps the best known copy of the Doryphoros was excavated in Pompeii and now resides in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli [Naples, Museo Nazionale 6011]. Held in the same museum is a bronze herma of Apollonios [height 0.54 m, Naples, Museo Nazionale 4885], considered by many scholars to be an almost flawless replica of the original Doryphoros head.

A well-preserved, Roman period copy of the statue in Pentelic marble, purchased in 1986 by the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA), has received some attention in recent years.^[9] This copy is 1.98 m high and dates to the first century BC or first century AD.^[9] It is the best-preserved surviving copy of the Doryphoros, though missing its left arm, a finger from its right hand, and its right foot.^[10] The sculpture was supposedly found in Italian waters during the 1930s and spent several decades in private collections before being loaned to the Munich Glyptothek in the late 1970s, and bought by the MIA in 1986.^[10] The Italian government asserts that the statue was illegally excavated between 1975 and 1976 from the Verano hill at Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples, and has issued an international warrant for confiscation and return of the work.^[11]

Another copy was found in 2012, in the Roman thermae of Baelo Claudia (outside of Tarifa, near the village of Bolonia, in southern Spain).^[12]^[13]

Influence

The Doryphoros was created during the high Classical period. During this time, there was an emphasis put on the ideal man who was shown in heroic nudity. The body would be that of a young athlete that included chiseled muscles and a naturalistic pose. The face is generic, displaying no emotion. Some scholars believe that Doryphoros represented a young Achilles on his way to battle in the Trojan War, while others believe that there is confusion whether the sculpture is meant to depict a mortal or a hero. There have also been discussions on where these sculptures would be located during high Classical period, depending on where they were discovered. For example, the copy in Naples was found in the municipal Gymnasium of Pompeii, which leads us to believe that one may have been placed near fitness programs of the youth. Copies were also common for patrons to place in or outside their home.

The canonic proportions of the male torso established by Polykleitos ossified in Hellenistic and Roman times in the muscle cuirass, exemplified by the Augustus of Prima Porta, who wears ceremonial dress armour modelled in relief over an idealised muscular torso which is ostensibly modelled on the Doryphoros.^[14] The same depiction has the legs of the emperor arranged in the same manner as the stance of the Doryphoros.

Another example of the influence the Doryphoros had on sculpture much later than its initial conception can be seen in Michelangelo's David, now located in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence. The contrapposto style, idealised youthful male nudity, and overall antiquitical inspiration all show echoes of Polykleitos' Doryphoros. There is a chance however that the David was not so much designed with the Doryphoros in mind specifically, but the wider style contrappostic proportioning of which Polykleitos spread as a result of his work, as seen in the aforementioned Prima Porta statue, or with the statue of the Apollo Belvedere.

Modern images

A Doryphorus-type of the canon Polycleitus, ca. 1886–1889. Nicholas Catsimpoolas Collection, Boston Public Library
3D model of replica at the National Gallery of Denmark

References

External videos
Polykleitos, Doryphoros, Smarthistory^[15]

^ Warren G. Moon, ed. Polykleitos, the Doryphoros, and Tradition, 1995: essays by various scholars resulting from a symposium at the University of Wisconsin, 1989, stimulated by the purchase of the Minneapolis Doryphoros.
^ Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis ("On the doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato") 5.3; noted in Richard Tobin, "The Canon of Polykleitos" American Journal of Archaeology 79.4 (October 1975:307–321) pp308f, with somewhat differing translation.
^ Hafner, German (1969). Art of Crete, Mycenae, and Greece. Translated by Bizzarri, Erika. New York: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated. p. 162.
^ De la Croix, Horst; Tansey, Richard G.; Kirkpatrick, Diane (1991). Gardner's Art Through the Ages (9th ed.). Thomson/Wadsworth. p. 163. ISBN 0-15-503769-2.
^ Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900 (Yale University Press), 1981:105.
^ Le Antichità di Ercolano vol. V 1767, pp 183–87, considered at the time to be a portrait sculpture of Lucius, son of Agrippa (noted by Haskell and Penny 1981:118 note 10).
^ By Carl Friedrichs, in Der Doryphoros des Polyklet, Berlin, 1863.
^ Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, 1956, fig 26 p. 69.
^ ^a ^b "Doryphoros". Minneapolis Institute of Art. Retrieved 10 August 2022.
^ ^a ^b Recker, Jane (25 May 2022). "This Ancient Roman Statue Embodies the 'Perfect' Man. But Was It Stolen?". Smithsonian Magazine.
^ La Redazione Marta (23 February 2022). "Castellammare di Stabia: il ritorno del Doriforo di Policleto" [Castellammare di Stabia: the return of the Doryphoros of Polyclitus]. Sardegna Reporter (in Italian). Finalmente è arrivata la notizia tanto attesa: la Procura della Repubblica di Torre Annunziata ha avviato la rogatoria internazionale per la confisca e restituzione del Doriforo. Questo è stato reso possibile dal lavoro instancabile degli investigatori e ad una serie di accordi internazionali per contrastare il traffico illecito di opere d'arte. [Finally the long-awaited news has arrived: the Public Prosecutor's Office of Torre Annunziata has issued an international warrant for the confiscation and restitution of the Doryphoros. This was made possible by the tireless work of investigators and a series of international agreements to counter the illicit trafficking of works of art.]
^ VV. AA.,Una copia del Doríforo en las Termas Marítimas de Baelo Claudia Archived 2017-12-07 at the Wayback Machine, p.1307, en Actas del XVIII Congreso Internacional de Arqueología Clásica, volumen II, pp.1303-1308, Mérida (2014), ISBN 978-84-606-7949-3.
^ Vincenzo Franciosi, Il Doriforo di Pompei (en italiano), p.11, en Pompei/Messene. Il "Doriforo" e il suo contesto, Università degli Studi Suor Orsola Benincasa (2013), ISBN 978-88-96055-52-6.
^ J.J. Pollini, "The Augustus of Prima Porta and the transformation of the Polykleitan heroic ideal" in Moon 1995:262-81.
^ "Polykleitos, Doryphoros". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Archived from the original on October 27, 2014. Retrieved February 20, 2013.

v t e Polykleitos
Sculptures	Doryphoros Diadumenos Discophoros
Related	Polykleitos the Younger (son) Artistic canons of body proportions

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