The Kritios Boy - Discovery, Reconstruction, and Date-J.M.hurwitt-1989

The Kritios Boy: Discovery, Reconstruction, and Date
Author(s): Jeffrey M. Hurwit

Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 93, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 41-80
Published by: Archaeological Institute of America
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/505398
Accessed: 23-03-2019 15:09 UTC
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/505398?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Archaeological Institute of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

extend access to American Journal of Archaeology
This content downloaded from 206.189.169.41 on Sat, 23 Mar 2019 15:09:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
The Kritios Boy:
Discovery, Reconstruction, and Date*
JEFFREY M. HURWIT
For J.J. Pollitt
Abstract homogeneous deposit of Perserschutt; indeed, it is likely

Despite its frequent appearance in textbooks and his- that the statue's bodily parts were not buried until the
tories of Greek art, the Kritios Boy has never been the third quarter of the fifth century (an old photograph
subject of a discrete or detailed study. Perhaps as a result, showing the torso of the Kritios Boy in the company of
a number of misconceptions and errors have found their the Moschophoros, Angelitos's Athena, and the head of
way into the scholarship on the piece (the height of the the pedimental Athena from the Archaios Naos, and
statue, for example, is considerably greater than the al- often used as evidence for the torso's archaeological con-
most universally cited dimension), and certain problems text, has little or no documentary value). It is suggested
(such as the curious nature of the join at the neck) have that the statue may in fact have been created under the
gone unresolved. This article clarifies a number of issues stylistic influence of Kritios and Nesiotes (often doubted),
related to the discovery and reconstruction of the statue, that the Kritios Boy represents a young hero (Theseus, in
presents the results of work performed on the statue in all likelihood) rather than a victorious boy athlete (the
the spring of 1987 (when the head was removed from the usual identification), and that it was probably dedicated
torso, the join reexamined, and the post-World War II on the Acropolis after 480 B.C., in which case it was the
victim not of Persians but of either accident or Athenians.
restoration proved incorrect), and examines criteria for
identifying and dating the statue.
It is argued that the head and torso of the Kritios Boy, INTRODUCTION
though found at different times and in different spots,
certainly belong together and that there is no evidence of The marble statue known as the Kritios Boy
any ancient repair. Neither head nor torso came from a 698) is surely one of the most familiar of all
* With the dedication I wish to thank, in a AMA E. way,

small Langlotz,
a W.-H. Schuchhardt,
scholar and teacher whose excellence has always been an and H. Schrader, Die archaischen
inspiration and whose advice, friendship, and encourage- Marmorbildwerke der Akropolis
ment over many years have meant a very great deal to me- (Frankfurt 1939).
much more, I think, than he knows. Boardman, Archaic J. Boardman, Greek Sculpture:
This study was carried out with the aid of a summer fac- Archaic Period (London 1978).
Boardman,
ulty research grant from the University of Oregon Classical J. Boardman, Greek Sculpture:
in 1985
and a grant from the Stewart Endowment Fund in 1987, for Classical Period (London 1985).
which I am very grateful. I would like to thankBrouskari
Steven M.S. Brouskari, The Acropolis Mu-
Mil-
ler, then Director of the American School of Classical Stud- seum: A Descriptive Catalogue
ies, Athens, for making the library and resources of the (Athens 1974).
school available to me, and especially Evi Touloupa,
BundgaardEphor
1974 J.A. Bundgaard, The Excavation of
of the Acropolis, for generously permitting me to study the the Athenian Acropolis, 1882-
statue in detail, even to the point of removing the head from 1890 (Copenhagen 1974).
Bundgaard
the torso in order to reexamine the controversial join.1976
TheJ. A. Bundgaard, Parthenon and the
kindness and cooperation shown to me on the Acropolis Mycenaean City on the Heights
were extraordinary, and I am most appreciative. In addi- (Copenhagen 1976).
Dickins G. Man-
tion, the knowledge and encouragement of Alexander Dickins, Catalogue of the Acropo-
tis were invaluable. Conversations with Judith Binder, lis Museum 1: Archaic Sculpture
G. Despinis, M. Korres, and M. Sturgeon were informative (Cambridge 1912).
and stimulating, and my colleague K. Nicholson Furtwingler
showed A.meFurtwingler, "Statue von der
much about early photography. I wish to express my grati- Akropolis," AM 5 (1880) 20-42.
tude as well to the late G. Mylonas, Secretary Homann-Wedeking
General of the E. Homann-Wedeking, "Torsen,"
Archaeological Society, for permission to examine Folder 7 AM 60/61 (1935/1936) 201-17.
of the P. Evstratiadis Archive, and to Aliki Hurwit
H. Bikaki,
J. M.Ar-
Hurwit, The Art and Culture of
chivist of the Archaeological Society, for generously helping Early Greece, 1100-480 B.C.
me decipher Evstratiadis's minuscule and faded handwrit- (Ithaca 1985).
ing. I also thank Joan Mertens for permission Kavvadias-Kawerau
to study the P. Kavvadias and G. Kawerau, 'H
head of Harmodios in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 'Avaar-a'Ij ri 'AKpo7rdAEcow: Die
New York, and two anonymous AJA reviewers for their Ausgrabung der Akropolis vom
comments.
Jahre 1885 bis zum 1890 (Athens
In addition to the standard AJA abbreviations the follow- 1906).
ing are used in this article: Kokkou A. Kokkou, 'H pEptlfva yta r'Ttv ap-
41
American Journal of Archaeology 93 (1989)
42 JEFFREY M. HURWIT [AJA 93
sculptures (figs. 1-2). Th

book or survey of Greek
studies of Archaic sculp
studies of Classical sculp
and it figures prominent
momentous stylistic tra
statuary-the transforma
Classical-that occurred s
of the fifth century B.C
the statue seems to have
tous in the scholarly lite
preciated as an importan
stylistic document (as, f
tation of the increasing
ideal of aowpopovijm or
"discovery" of human fr
XaL?7r771E arriv
7wpwra povo-'ia (A
Payne H. Payne and G. Mackworth-Young,
Archaic Marble Sculpture from the
Acropolis2 (London 1950).
Raubitschek A.E. Raubitschek, Dedications from
the Athenian Acropolis (Cam-
bridge, Mass. 1949).
Richter G.M.A. Richter, Kouroi3 (London
1970).
Ridgway 1958 B. Sismondo (Ridgway), Observa-
tions on Style and Chronology of
Some Archaic Sculptures (Diss.
Bryn Mawr College 1958).
Ridgway 1970 B.S. Ridgway, The Severe Style in
Greek Sculpture (Princeton 1970).
Ridgway 1977 B.S. Ridgway, The Archaic Style in
Ridgway 1981 B.S. Ridgway, Fifth Century Styles in
Robertson M. Robertson, A History of Greek Art
(Cambridge 1975).
1 See, e.g., Boardman, Archaic 84-85, and Classical 21;
R. Carpenter, Greek Sculpture (Chicago 1960) 95-97,
104-105; Robertson 175-76; Hurwit 340-47; J.J. Pollitt,
Art and Experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge 1972)
15-18; and W.-H. Schuchhardt, Geschichte der griechi-
schen Kunst (Stuttgart 1971) 279-80. B.S. Ridgway once
called the Kritios Boy "the most perfect link between archaic
and classical, being the logical development of the one and
the true precursor of the other" (Ridgway 1970, 38). But
more recently, in "Late Archaic Sculpture," in C.G. Boulter
ed., Greek Art: Archaic into Classical (Leiden 1985) 1-17,
Ridgway, citing the uncertain date of the statue, apparently
does not consider it reliable evidence for the transformation
of style.
2 On owopoorvv7), see H. North, Sophrosyne (Ithaca

1966); cf. Hurwit 344, and D. Haynes, Greek Art and the
Idea of Freedom (London 1981) 33: "The Critian Boy's ex-
pression is deeply serious, almost grave, as if the new con-
Fig. 1. The Kritios Boy, Acropolis
sciousness Museum,
of freedom had already burdened him with a inv.
1.167 m. New restoration. (Photo: J. Hurwit)
sense of responsibility."
1989] THE KRITIOS BOY: DISCOVERY, RECONSTRUCTION, AND DATE 43
Fig. 3. The Tyrannicides of Kritios and Nesiotes (Ro

Fig. 2. The Kritios Boy. New restoration, three-quarter
view. (Photo: J. Hurwit) copies), Naples, Museo Nazionale (as exhibited in Na
Museum, Athens, 1985). (Photo: J. Hurwit)
never been the subject of a comprehensive degree

studyis
itit a derivative work, dependent on th
could call its own. It is, in fact, surprisingvances of statuary in bronze? Judgments concer
how little
we really know about it, and how widely
thescholars
date, stylistic affinities, and innovations of the
ue-concerning
differ over some significant aspects of the statue and its even the philosophical and so
precise standing in the history of Greek art.ideals theis,
There statue embodies-will always remain la
for example, the fundamental problem of its ly date:
subjective,
was even intuitive. But there are disa
the statue dedicated just before the Persian ments and misconceptions about other, more con
destruction
issues
of the Acropolis in 480 B.C., technically in the last as
fewwell. Some doubts linger, for instance,
whether
years of the Archaic period, or just after, in the head of the statue really belongs t
the first
years of the Early Classical period? There body
is its(the
old,pieces were not found together and it
alleged association with the Harmodios of even clear exactly when and where the body cam
the second
Tyrannicides monument (fig. 3) and thus light).
withSimple
the errors have crept into the scholarl
style of the sculptors Kritios and Nesioteserature and have stayed there. The height of the s
(a bit of
19th-century wishful thinking, many believe, is almost universally reported, even in the official
that has
logues and
nonetheless fixed the statue's modern sobriquet). Andpublications of the Acropolis collectio
0.86to
there is the related question of its originality: m.what
This is almost 31 cm too short: the true h
155
r//77,
00 Y
int
14s.
Fig.4. Plan of southeast Acropoli
of the statue as those decades necessitated the

preserved, construction ofthe
from a suit- top
the end of the able leg,
left museum (sculptures
is 1.167 and inscriptions
m.3 had been
Mo
cant aspects of storedstatue-its
the in the Propylaia, in a two-storied
unusual Turkish
example-have not
house onbeen given
the east side of the adequ
citadel, in a cistern west of
What follows here the
is Erechtheion,
an attemptor had been built into walls
tofor dis-
recti
situation, establish to
what
play to passersby), we
and the southeast in
corner fact
of the
not know) about the Acropolisstatue's
(fig. 4) was ultimatelydiscovery,
chosen as the most
archaeological context,
logical site, since to
the building
review
would sit low onand
the e
ions about its date,citadel and thus only minimally
history, and compete with the
even it
so to fix a little more
Classical structures
clearly
nearby. The building
its was autho-
prop
emergence of the rized in 1863 and digging style.
Classical for the museum's founda-
tions began, apparently on 19 September of that year,
THE DISCOVERY OF THE TORSO
under the direction of K. Pittakis and, after Pittakis's
The torso of the Kritios Boy was discovered
death, P.only
Evstratiadis. Almost immediately the exca-
about three decades after the Acropolis, vations
having hit been
the foundations of an ancient building (we
knowofficially
finally wrested from the Turks in 1833, was it as Building IV, at first considered an armory
decreed an archaeological site by young
or King Otho later an cpyaorr4ptLov, and now, by
XaXKo007'Kq,
some,made
(10 February 1834). The number of finds the Heroon
in of Pandion) and uncovered within
D3 ickins 264 was apparently the first to list the height of after the head had been removed for study) I remeasured the
the statue as 0.86 m. The same measurement is found in statue (see Appendix) and ascertained its true height; my
AMA 191 and Brouskari 124. This figure is consistently re- figure has been independently confirmed (by letter) by Dr.
peated in handbooks such as Boardman's (Archaic fig. 147),Touloupa, who kindly had the statue measured once more
histories such as Robertson's (caption to fig. 53d) and after final restoration (infra n. 52). The only other scholar I
R. Lullies and M. Hirmer, Greek Sculpture (New York know who lists the height of the statue more or less correctly
1960) 70, and catalogues such as Richter 149 (no. 190). Yet is W. Fuchs, Die Skulptur der Griechen (Munich 1979) 48,
at no time in the history of the recovery and recreation of the caption to figs. 34/35 (1.17 m). When complete, the statue
Kritios Boy from five separate pieces-head, torso, lower stood perhaps 1.24 or 1.25 m (about 4 ft) tall, and is there-
piece of upper left arm, left leg below the knee (two fore something on the order of two-thirds life-size or, for a
pieces)-did it, or any reassembled portion of it, ever meas- youth in the early fifth century, somewhat more.
ure 0.86 m. In 1987 (at the time of a temporary restoration
Fig. 5. Nineteenth-century photograph of Acropolis finds (left to right: Angelitos's Athena, Moscho
torso of Kritios Boy). N. Catsimpoolas Collection, Boston.
its walls a rich assortment of ancient statuary.4

southeastAc-
angle of the citadel, though to avoid B
ing
cordingly, on 3 February 1864, Evstratiadis, IV Evstratiadis shifted the museum to the
recently
named general ephor, brought work in this area to a
Excavations resumed late in 1865, and the cons
halt. After testing another area northeast of the
tion ofPro-
the museum itself began on 30 December
pylaia and discovering ancient remains there as well,
museum was completed in 1874.5
There
it was decided to return to the original location at has
the been considerable confusion about wh
4 On Building IV see G. P. Stevens, "The Northeast

of it, asCor-
a workshop or stonemasons' yard has eloquen
ner of the Parthenon," Hesperia 15 (1946) port
1-26,
in esp.
the large amounts of marble chips discovered
21-25; also I.T. Hill, The Ancient City of Athens (London
vicinity: as Stevens himself notes, more marble chips
1953) 146, and R. J. Hopper, The Acropolis (London
found 1971)
here than anywhere else on the Acropolis; see
142. Stevens believed Building IV was built Stevens,
against-and
The Setting of the Periklean Parthenon (Hes
thus built after-the "Kimonian" circuit wall. Suppl.
Bundgaard
3, Princeton 1940) 46 n. 28. From 447 to 432, B
1976, 77-78 and 182 n. 188, criticizes Stevens's reconstruc-
gaard argues, Building IV was occupied by a team of s
tion and dating of Building IV, and his identification of it working
tors who, as under Pheidias, carved 12 metop
the Heroon of Pandion; Bundgaard believes thatthe it was built
Parthenon's Panathenaic frieze. Bundgaard's histo
before this part of the south citadel wall (K3, which he dates Parthenon is idiosyncratic and controv
the Classical
after 438; see p. 75) and that it functioned as anBut
ergasterion
his argument that Building IV preceded the Cla
"in which the sculptors working for Callicratessouth
[the archi-
citadel wall (it was built, in fact, against the
tect of a Periklean Parthenon begun, in Bundgaard's view, wall) seems solid.
naean circuit
in 455-eight years before the generally accepted date] had
I Descriptions of these excavations and the history o
been housed." The characterization of the building, or part
construction of the museum are given in Kavv
er the torso the of Kritios

discrepancies Boyrecords
between Evstratiadis's (the firs
and other
to come to light)
was discovered
contemporary durin
accounts of the excavations and, second,
but aborted excavation of 1863-1864 or the subse- to the existence of an old photograph (fig. 5) showing
quent excavation begun, in a nearby but different the torso of the Kritios Boy in the impressive com-
spot, in late 1865, and it has not been clear what pany
else of the statue of Athena dedicated by Angelitos
was discovered along with it. Sybel, Bundgaard, and(Acr. 140), the head of Athena from the gigantomachy
pediment of the late sixth-century Archaios Naos
Kokkou, for example, date the discovery to 1864,
Dickins and Brouskari to 1865, and Schuchhardt to (Acr. 631A), and the Moschophoros (Acr. 624), three
1865 or 1866.6 The confusion seems to have been statues that were almost certainly found within Build-
caused by a variety of factors, not least of which ing may IV during the excavations of 1863-1864, though
have been the 12 days' difference in the calendarsnot usednecessarily side by side.8
by Greece and the rest of Europe in the 1860s, so that First, the photograph. At least two sepia albumen
a work found, say, at the end of December 1865,prints ac- are known to exist: one (27 x 21 cm) is in the
cording to the Julian calendar then in force in Greece, collection of N. Catsimpoolas, Boston; the other has
would have been reported as having been discovered recently been acquired by the Getty Center for the
in early January 1866, according to the Gregorian History of Art and the Humanities. The name of its
calendar used elsewhere.7 But most of the confusion is photographer is unknown, but Dimitrios Konstanti-
attributable, first, to serious, indeed irreconcilable, nou is the best guess.9 Konstantinou was the first offi-
Kawerau 15-16; Dickins 1-5; Brouskari 13-15; Bundgaard nature of his other photographs, Martimianakis seems less
1974, 9-28; and Kokkou 194-201. These accounts differ likely than Konstantinou to have been the photographer of
among themselves in certain important details: Kokkou 196, this particular work.
e.g., states that excavation for the museum did not begin The photograph has appeared a number of times in the
until 1864 and implies that no important sculptures were scholarly literature, beginning with W. Hege and G. Roden-
found before then. Yet, as we shall see, at least two sculp- waldt, Die Akropolis (Berlin 1930) 8, fig. 4, with the caption
tures found during these excavations are said by Evstratia- "Archaische Skulpturen nach aus Ausgrabungen" (Ange-
dis himself to have come to light in late 1863. litos's Athena is cropped out of the illustration), and the
6 L. von Sybel, Katalog der Sculpturen zu Athen (Mar- comment that the sculptures had been assembled "in roman-
burg 1881) 347; Bundgaard 1974, 9 and 29, n. 1; Kokkou tischer Zuifalligkeit nach der Ausgrabung" (12). It appears
196; Dickins 264; Brouskari 124; Schuchhardt, AMA 191. in AMA 345 as fig. 405, where it is identified merely as "eine
7 The Greek government did not adopt the Gregorian cal- alte Photographie" taken "im vollen siidlichen Sonnen-
endar until 1922; the Orthodox church did not adopt it until schein." It is also illustrated (in an apparently higher quality
1923. See J.T.A. Koumoulides, Greece in Transition (Lon- print) in J. Charbonneaux, R. Martin, and F. Villard,
don 1977) 141. Archaic Greek Art (New York 1971) 108, fig. 117, and 404,
8 Contra Bundgaard 1974, 9, who implies that these three where it is described as a photo of "the Calf-Bearer as exca-
works, plus the Kritios Boy, were found together, at the vated on the Acropolis in 1864. Photo 1865, Acropolis Exca-
same time and en masse, in the south corner of Building IV; vations." That print, I am informed by M. Dany of Editions
as we shall see, this does not agree with Evstratiadis's own Gallimard (publishers of the Arts of Mankind series), was
records. supplied by the late Prof. Charbonneaux himself and was
9 I would like to thank Dr. Catsimpoolas not only for his returned to him soon after publication. The Catsimpoolas
kind permission to publish a copy of the print in his collec- photograph was most recently displayed in 1985 in an exhib-
tion, but also for his generosity in supplying considerable it of early photographs of Athens held at the Benaki Muse-
information about early photography in Greece. Jeanne um, Athens, and appears as no. 296 in the catalogue of that
Marty and Susan Wester of the Getty Center have also exhibit, Athens, 1839-1900: A Photographic Record
kindly provided information about the print in the Getty ar- (Athens 1985). It is entitled "Sculpture from the Acropolis,"
chives, including the fact that their print (which unlike the and it is dated to about 1880. (Since the Acropolis Museum
Catsimpoolas print has a negative number [42] written in was completed in 1874 and the major finds transferred to it
white beneath Angelitos's Athena) was part of a set of pho- in the late 1870s, this date is certainly wrong; infra n. 23.)
tographs of ancient sculpture and architecture that reput- The caption to the photograph says all the statues shown
edly belonged to the King of Italy. Wester writes me that were discovered in 1864 (whatever its date, it obviously
"included with the set was an oversized cabinet card with an could not have been taken before the discovery of the torso of
albumen print of a grave stele on the front and the stamp of the Kritios Boy), and misidentifies the head of the pedimen-
the photographer, D. Martimianakis, on the back." Marti- tal Athena as the head of a kore. The catalogue lists the pho-
mianakis began his career in Athens in 1875, but our photo- tographer as "unknown." For more on D. Konstantinou, see
graph is the only photograph of sculpture in the set that was A. Xanthakis, 'Io-ropia rg )TVLKjS9 ( oroTypa.pt'as, 1839-
not taken in a museum setting, and, as Wester again informs 1960 (Athens 1981) 57-61, 72-79.
me, "Greek photographers frequently purchased the nega- Albumen paper was invented in 1850 and remained in
tives of competitors, re-numbered the negatives, and sold the use until the end of the century; see B. Newhall, The His-
photographs as their own work." If we are to judge from the tory of Photography (New York 1982) 60.
cial photographer of the Greek ArchaeologicalAndService

it is not it even though Evstratiadis's own
and was active in the late 1850s (he began handwritten
working in catalogue of sculptures discovered during
Athens in 1858) and the 1860s. He displayedthe excavations
his work of 1863-1864 suggests that it is. This
at international exhibitions in Londoncatalogue
(1862) and
is found in Folder 7 of the Evstratiadis Ar-
chives kept24
Paris (1867), where he is known to have exhibited on file in the Archaeological Society,
photographs of Greek antiquities and Athens,
monuments
and is rather mysteriously absent from the ci-
from the Acropolis, including, perhaps, tations this one and(hebibliographies of every modern publica-
took the bronze medal back home to Athens). tion ofWho-the Acropolis sculptures. It was compiled, Ev-
ever took the photograph is usually assumed stratiadis himself notes, in 1878, some 14 years after
to have
snapped the shutter almost as soon as the the excavations it purports to document. He used his
sculptures
came out of the ground. The way the sculptures notebooks lie as his source, he says, but admits to having
about or lean against a large block-it is an inscribed them with later descriptions and obser-
supplemented
statue base of Roman Imperial date foundvations, "east of andthethat may be at the root of the problem. In
Parthenon" in 184010-at first glance lends anythe case, the catalogue lists 12 marble sculptures or
com-
position an air of spontaneity and gives the impression
fragments of sculpture and begins with entries for the
that they rest, just cleaned, beyond the edge Moschophoros
of the (found, he says, on 15 November
trench. The photograph has thus led a fair 1863-his
number datesofare Julian-at the "south end" of the
commentators to conclude that this was the archaeo- long wall of what we know as Building IV),12 Angeli-
logical context of the torso of the Kritios Boy-thattos's
it Athena (found on 11 December 1863, location
was discovered along with and at the same timeunspecified),
as and the head of the pedimental Athena
Angelitos's Athena, the head of Athena the Giant- (found in January 1864-he does not give the exact
Killer, and the Moschophoros. If the photograph re- day-toward the "eastern end" of the wall of Building
veals the archaeological context of the Kritios Boy, itIV).
is Three male torsos follow in the catalogue: a) the
obviously important documentary evidence for the torso of a nude boy or youth from neck to navel, b) the
date of the statue as well. So, for example, Ridgway: torso of a nude youth from the neck to the knees, and
"[Angelitos's Athena] was found in building the foun- c) another torso of a nude youth from the neck to the
dations of the Acropolis Museum, together with the knees, with one thigh broken. Evstratiadis comments
Moschophoros, the Kritian Boy, and the head of the on these torsos no further. The remaining six items in
Athena from the Peisistratid temple. Of these sculp- the catalogue include a small hand holding part of a
tures two are undoubtedly archaic, but Angelitos's garment, several feet, and fragments of wings and
Athena and the Kouros could be later... The mixed drapery.
fill of the finding spot for both the Kritian Boy and Evstratiadis does not supply the exact date or place
Angelitos's Athena, if not valid as positive evidenceoffordiscovery for any of the three torsos he lists, nor
a post-Persian date, is at least valid as negative evi-
does he give any measurements. But there can be little
dence, in being mixed and therefore not closely dat- doubt that the first torso he mentions is Acropolis
able."" The archaeological context of the torso of 302,13
the that the second is the torso of the Kritios Boy
Kritios Boy was, in fact, "mixed," as we shall see, (its
butlower left leg was added by Schrader decades
this, I believe, is not it. later),14 and that the third is Acropolis 692, which was
10 IG II2, 4210. The base now stands on the north side of the dates implied by Langlotz (1863/1864) and given by
the remains of the Temple of Roma and Augustus, evidently Schuchhardt (1865/1866) in the same catalogue of Archaic
not far from the spot it was discovered and probably not far sculptures (AMA 191).
from the spot of the photograph; for its discovery, see K. Pit- 12 According to Kavvadias-Kawerau 15-16, Evstratiadis
takis, ArchEph 1840, 303-304 [no. 363]. It also appears in assumed the duties of acting general ephor on 12 November
the background of the obviously posed outdoor photograph 1863, upon the death of Pittakis; the Moschophoros, then,
of Acr. 692 and the Kritios Boy, AMA pl. 118. would have been discovered only three days later.
11 Ridgway 1970, 31 and note on p. 42, citing the photo- 13 Nude male torsos from the Acropolis are hardly abun-
graph as evidence. Ridgway first argued for the Kritios dant, and I know of no other that can fit even Evstratiadis's
Boy's post-Persian date in her dissertation; see Ridgway scanty description. For Acr. 302, see AMA 196-97, where it
1958, 312-14. Bundgaard 1974, 29 n. 1, and 1976, 82, also is dated to around 490 B.C. Dickins 108 says 302 was
uses the photograph as evidence for the Kritios Boy's con- "found S.E. of the Acropolis in 1865" (surely he means
text, and E. Langlotz has apparently done the same thing, southeast of the Parthenon), but cites Brunn's article of
claiming that Angelitos's Athena was found together with 1864 (infra n. 15) in the bibliography of the piece. Needless
the Calf-Bearer, the Kritios Boy, and the head of the Athena to say, a statue cannot be mentioned in a journal published
"unter dem Museum"; see AMA 48. Schrader, as editor of the year before its discovery.
AMA, failed to note or reconcile the discrepancy between 14 The only other nude youth from the Acropolis that can
spondents as either a O-KvoO7)K7J or an obrwoOi ) and

the excavation to a depth of about 3 m (without reach-
ing bedrock) of the fill within its south corner (fig. 4,
o). With apparent disappointment Brunn notes that
no intact or complete statues were found, but he lists
the major finds: "due torsi, uno giovanile, forse d'un
Apolline, l'altro di figura in eta piui fanciullesca. Pidi
importante sembra una testa di Minerva di quasi na-
turale grandezza e buonissima conservazione, che per
l'arcaismo delle sue forme ricorda lo stile delle meda-
glie arcaiche ... Pure di stile arcaico, sebbene un poco
pii recente, e un torso di Minerva senza testa e brac-
cia, alto 0, 80m., e, tranne le punte delle dita del pie
destro, ben conservato nelle parti restanti. E vestita di
lungo chitone con diploidion cinto attorno alle reni.
L'egida semplicemente ornata del Gorgoneion in re-
lievo ricade dietro le spalle molto al disotto della cin-
tura... Di un interesse anche pidi elevato e un' altra
scultura disgraziatamente molto frammentata, ese-
guita in marmo grigio attico e raffigurante in gran-
dezza quasi naturale un uomo barbato che porta in
ispalla una pecora."15 Pervanoglu and Decharme thus
reported to Brunn the discovery of only two male
torsos, not three. Leaving aside the identity of the
Apolline youth for the moment, it is likely that the
Fig. 6. Headless nude male
torso ofstatue,
the younger maleAcropolis
Brunn briefly mentions692.
("fi- (Ph
J. Hurwit)
gura in eta piui fanciullesca") is the torso Evstratiadis
describes as preserved from neck to navel (Acr. 302),
indeed broken at the right thigh when found and is but it is obvious that the well-preserved head of Mi-
now repaired (fig. 6). And so, at first glance, the old nerva is the head of Athena from the Archaios Naos,
photograph (fig. 5) would seem to corroborate, even that the torso of Athena without head or arms but
illustrate, his account, picturing four out of the first with aegis and gorgoneion is Angelitos's Athena (its
six items in his list. But doubts about whether the true height is 0.895 m), and that the statue of a
torso of the Kritios Boy should be in that list at all bearded man carrying an animal (a calf, not "una
arise when one turns to reports published in the Bulle- pecora" or sheep, as Brunn says) is, of course, the
tino dell'Istituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica im- Moschophoros.16
mediately after the excavations of 1863-1864 and That the first statue in Brunn's list-the Apolline
1865-1866, for they seriously contradict Evstratia- youth-is the third torso listed by Evstratiadis (the
dis's own catalogue of 1878. one broken at the thigh, Acr. 692, fig. 6) and that it
In the BdI of 1864, H. Brunn describes Evstratia- cannot be the Kritios Boy (for the simple reason that
dis's excavations on the basis of separate letters from the torso of the Kritios Boy had not yet come to light)
P. Pervanoglu and P. Decharme. It is, then, a report seems clear from the BdI of 1867, where, in another
at second hand. Still, Brunn notes the discovery of the Acropolis excavation report, Pervanoglu himself notes
foundations of Building IV (identified by his corre- that the discovery of Building IV in 1864 necessitated
be said to be preserved "from neck to knees," Acr. 665, was [supra n. 15] 87-88; Dickins 92 erroneously says it was dis-
found in 1887 northeast of the Erechtheion; see Brouskari covered in 1865, and Brouskari 75 erroneously says it was
61 and fig. 109. found in 1865 southeast of the Erechtheion); and two in-
15 H. Brunn, "Scavi dell'acropoli di Atene," BdI 1864, scriptions (Brunn [supra n. 15] 88-89, and E. Gerhard, AZ
83-89, esp. 85-86. See also Furtwaingler 20-42, esp. 25 n. 2. 22 [June 1864] 234*-235*). The inscriptions are Raubit-
16 Other items found at the time and apparently in the schek no. 210 (239-41, dated to the beginning of the fifth
same place were a fragmentary terracotta relief of a seated century) and no. 218 (248-50, dated shortly before the mid-
Athena; a fragmentary marble relief of a striding, armed dle of the fifth century).
Athena (Acr. 121; see AMA 305 and fig. 350, and Brunn
1865-1866.
shifting the location of the museum from the One of them is wrong, and I believe it is
southeast
Evstratiadis.(that
angle of the citadel more toward the Parthenon It is, of course, a serious matter to ques-
is, to the west) along the south Acropolis
tion wall, and of an excavator describing his own
the reliability
describes an assortment of finds from the new and excavation. But the choice we must make here is be-
large-scale excavations (he says they covered an area tween, on the one hand, a brief, data-less entry in a
of around 1000 m2) begun at the very end of 1865.17 catalogue of finds compiled 14 years after their sup-
Figuring prominently in his list is the following entry: posed discovery and, on the other, a fairly precise de-
"Corpo giovanile virile nudo, alto m. 0,72. Mancano scription-and an instructive comparison between
la testa e parte delle braccia e dei piedi; la gamba two statues explicitly said to have been discovered at
destra e un poco avanzata, il corpo ben proporzionato: different times and at different places-written and
il petto largo, la schiena di accurato lavoro incurvata; published promptly after the fact. Others may wish
le natiche piene: la testa era volta un poco a destra, leinstinctively to trust the excavator and accept the evi-
mani pendevano presso al corpo. Egli rassomiglia dence, sparse though it may be, of Evstratiadis's cata-
quasi del tutto all' altro corpo giovanile ignudo trovato logue (and, therefore, of the old photograph). But I
non e gran tempo qui vicino (vedi Bull. 1864 p. 85), find it less difficult and less objectionable to conclude
solo che questo e di lavoro duro ed arcaico, mentre that Evstratiadis, years later, made an understandable
quello e libero totalmente e bello."'1 The new torso, error, listing in one place all the male torsos he had in
that is, contrasts with the "stiff and Archaic" torso dis- fact discovered over the course of two or three years in
covered not very far away, presumably within the the southeast part of the Acropolis, than to accuse Per-
walls of Building IV, in 1863-1864-Acropolis 692 vanoglu of so badly mistaking or fabricating (to what
(fig. 6)19--and, with its right leg slightly advanced purpose?) the sequence of events on the Acropolis that
and with clear indications that its missing head was he reported quickly and fully to Brunn and the editors
turned to the right, can only be that of the Kritios Boy of BdI.20
(figs. 1, 2, 19). The torso of the Kritios Boy, I conclude, was found
Evstratiadis's catalogue suggests that the torso of during the excavations of 1865-1866-possibly very
the statue we know as the Kritios Boy was found late in 1865.21 What, then, is it doing in the company
sometime during the excavations of 1863-1864. Per- of the Moschophoros, Angelitos's Athena, and the
vanoglu says it was found during the excavations of head of Athena in the old photograph (fig. 5)? To
17 P. Pervanoglu, "Scavi sull' Acropoli d'Atene nel 1866,"made of any male torso), and U. K6hler, "Briefliches aus
BdI 1867, 72-82. Athen," AZ 24 (1866) 167-69, who indicates that the Mos-
18 Pervanoglu (supra n. 17) 75-76. The listed height (0.72chophoros and the head of Athena were found together, even
m), it should be noted, refers to the torso not only without its
though they were found months apart and in different spots
according to Evstratiadis's catalogue. Although the cata-
head, but also without the lower portion of its left leg (itself
put together from two parts), which was added later bylogue lists the date of the discovery of the head of Athena
Schrader. The height Pervanoglu gives for the torso comes vaguely as January 1864, Evstratiadis himself apparently
reasonably close to the 0.775 m I estimate for the height oftold D. Philios (in a personal communication two decades
the torso from the neck to the left knee (the join of the kneeafter the fact) that it was found in 1863 below layers of poros
to the lower leg is obscured by plaster). and marble chips inside Building IV; see D. Philios, "Tpds^
19 Brouskari 131 says 692 was "found southeast of the Par-
KeaAa'c k( 'ATTrrKs," ArchEph 1883, 93 and Bundgaard
thenon before 1864." Its findspot does indeed qualify as 1974, 9. The catalogue entry for the pedimental Athena it-
being southeast of the Parthenon, and it is indeed possible self makes no mention of the marble and poros chips, but,
that 692 was found in late 1863. Evstratiadis's catalogue, curiously, such a layer of marble chips is referred to in the
again, supplies no exact location or date. entry for another, much smaller head of Athena (either Acr.
20 Evstratiadis's reliability is called into question by other635 or 647) listed as the ninth item in Evstratiadis's 1865-
discrepancies that exist between his post facto catalogue and 1866 catalogue (infra n. 23). The 1863 date for the discov-
other, contemporary accounts of the excavations of 1863- ery of the head of the pedimental Athena is also found in A.
1864. For example, A. Conze, "Kalbtragender Hermes,"Boettinger, Die Akropolis von Athen nach den Berichten der
AZ 22 (July/August 1864) 169-73, clearly states that thealten und den neuesten Erforschungen (Berlin 1888) 67;
Moschophoros was found "in the beginning of this year"--Dickins 169; Schrader, AMA 345; and Brouskari 76. The
that is, at the beginning of 1864, though the date of discovery
torso of the Kritios Boy, in short, is not the only work whose
listed in Evstratiadis's catalogue is 15 November 1863 (27date of discovery is problematic.
November, Gregorian). In fact, the first notice of the discov-21 Since, according to Kokkou 197, the actual construction
ery of the Moschophoros would seem to be found in AZ 22 of the museum itself began on 30 December 1865, prepar-
(January/February 1864) 147*. In any case, the discovery atory excavations must have largely ceased by then. Again, a
of the Moschophoros along with the pedimental Athena,discovery in late December 1865 (Julian) would be equiva-
Angelitos's Athena, and two inscriptions is also reported bylent to a discovery in early January 1866 (Gregorian).
Gerhard (supra n. 16, where, incidentally, no mention is
judge from the nature ofthethe

some years later, cast
torso of the Kritios Boy shadow
(fig. 19)
graph was taken when the
was mistakenly but sun
understandably was
substituted for the alm
overhead, and that roughly
in turn suggests
similar statue Acropolis it
692 (fig. 6)-Evstra- wa
day, in the tiadis himself,
summer.22 If afterthe
all, makes torso
little distinctionof
be- the
was not found tween
until them; or 3)
late the statues were
1865 or deliberately
even ar- earl
clear that the photographranged for the camera could
(they would not have
not had to have
before the summer of 186623 and that the other statues have been moved very far) to form a rather elaborate
in the picture had therefore lain around the eastern and even witty composition, again without any serious
part of the Acropolis for at least two years, since the documentary intent. For this photograph is not really
beginning of 1864 (interestingly, the paint in the eyes about an excavation but about heads and headlessness,
of the pedimental Athena is still vivid even after that and in it a careful balance between male and female
long an exposure to the elements). A lot could have plays an important complementary part. One should
happened to statues lying about the Acropolis for two note how the slightly diagonal, headless torsos of the
years in the 1860s, when large-scale excavations were Kritios Boy (male) and Angelitos's Athena (female)
under way and a museum was being built, and it flank a powerful vertical axis marked by the striking
would not have been remarkable if they were moved heads (bovine and human) of the Moschophoros
some short distance from their original findspots and (male) above and the head of Athena the Giant-Killer
regrouped in the course of all that activity. (female) below, and how Angelitos's Athena, a head-
But there seem to be three ready explanations for less body with her hand on her hip, seems almost a
the composition as photographed: 1) the photograph is wan spectator of the bodyless head of Athena set be-
just a random detail of a larger mass of sculptures tween the male figures; standing at the margins, she
haphazardly gathered together from the various exca- seems to long for completion.24
vations of the mid-1860s; the presence of the Kritios The first explanation cannot be positively excluded,
Boy (and, for that matter, the absence of Acr. 692 and but it should be noted that the earliest photographers
Acr. 302, which really were discovered with the Mos- were for the most part trained in the art of painting and
chophoros et al. within Building IV) was fortuitous; its conventions: Konstantinou and P. Margarites, his
the photograph was never intended to have true docu- partner from 1862 to 1865, even advertised themselves
mentary value and should be considered, above all, as as oWroyptOi OKaL owyp' oL, "photographers and
a snapshot (perhaps it was the way the lean of the painters."25 Randomness and spontaneity were not the
Kritios Boy complements the lean of the Moschopho- chief hallmarks or virtues of early photography in
ros, forming a triangle embracing the head of Athena, Greece or anywhere else. I happen, therefore, to favor
that caught the touring photographer's eye); or 2) in the third explanation. But in either of the last two
an attempt to document the great discovery of sculp- scenarios, the photograph would be posed: it is either
tures within Building IV in 1863-1864 for the camera an inaccurate if well-intentioned recreation,26 or it is
22 I thank M. Korres for pointing this out to me. It is alsoable to identify this fragment, but its drapery appears Clas-
likely that the camera was pointed almost due north and that sical, not Archaic.
the building captured out of focus in the upper left portion of Contrived photographs of works of art are almost as old
the photograph is the Turkish house that had been used for as the medium itself; see, e.g., Hippolyte Bayard's "Plaster
storage before the construction of the museum. There were Castsa of the 'Venus de Medici' and the 'Young Slave' on a
number of Turkish houses still standing on the Acropolis in Roof" (ca. 1839), illustrated in Newhall (supra n. 9) 24.
the 1860s and even later; see, e.g., Kokkou 198, fig. 80.
Bayard, the first photographer to exhibit his work in public,
23 If the old photograph was in fact one of those for which
and one who delighted in posing works of art for the camera,
D. Konstantinou won the bronze medal at the Paris exposi-
seems a fitting precursor for our photographer; for more on
tion in 1867, the summer of 1866 is indeed the most likely
him, see I. Jeffrey, Photography: A Concise History (Lon-
date. If Konstantinou was not the photographer, the photo-
don 1981) 25-26.
graph could date anytime between 1866 and the late 1870s.
For although the museum was completed in 1874, the stat-25 See Xanthakis (supra n. 9) 74 and "Greek Photograph-
ues do not seem to have been moved into it for a few more ers of the 19th Century," in Athens, 1839-1900: A Photo-
years; see Kokkou 197-98, and Kavvadias-Kawerau 15-16 graphic Record (Athens 1985) 26.
n. 2. At the beginning of his catalogue of finds from the exca- 26 The well known photograph purporting to record the
vations of 1865-1866, also in Folder 7 on file in the Archivessensational discovery of korai and other marbles northwest
of the Archaeological Society, Evstratiadis notes that stat-of the Erechtheion in January 1886 is an example of such a
uary was transferred to the museum in July 1878. recreation after the fact; see G.M.A. Richter, Korai (Lon-
24 The fragmentary sculpture in the center foreground, ap- don 1968) pl. II and Bundgaard 11 and fig. 4A. The excava-
parently another headless torso, also figures in the play be-
tion is in fact over; the sculptures themselves are nowhere to
tween heads and headlessness. I regret that I have not been be seen; and both excavators and workmen have been called
ground, and the records are less than comple

entific. Pervanoglu gives at least some idea of
ness of the bronze, marble, and pottery finds
62 items (heads, arms, feet, and so on, sketc
sometimes inaccurately described) are listed
er of Evstratiadis's catalogues of sculptures.2
ently found at the same time and roughly in
location (though at what level and just how
or near to the Kritios Boy it is impossible to s
1) part of the small statue of a scribe (Acr.
able to the late sixth century;29 2) the bronze
youth (N.M. 6590, fig. 30) whose style and
Fig. 7. Marble head of youth with fillet, Acropolis 699.

(Courtesy Deutsches Archaiologisches Institut, Athens)
an artfully contrived still-life, obeying the conventions

of an old genre in a new medium and arranged around
the largest, heaviest, and (to judge from the extensive
press it received in 19th-century journals) most sensa-
tional piece, the Moschophoros (the other, lighter
sculptures could have been moved by a couple of work-
men with relative ease). Whatever the case, the old
photograph turns out to be more important as a monu-
ment of the new art form in 19th-century Greece than
as a reliable archaeological document.27
What was the torso of the Kritios Boy found
Fig. with,
8. Restoration with Acropolis 699 atop torso
then? Again, the excavations of 1865 covered a lot AM
Boy. (After of 5 [1880] pl. 1)
back to pose stiffly for the camera, peering Moschophoros

down into the and the pedimental Athena, in two
empty trench where the find had been made. spots.
27 It is important to note as well that even if28onePervanoglu
prefers (suprathen. 17) 74-82. Evstratiadis's cata-
logue of findspresum-
evidence of Evstratiadis's catalogue to Pervanoglu's from the excavations of 1865-1866 (supra
ably eyewitness account and concludes thatn.the 23), compiled
torso (he of
tells the
us) in 1879, 13 years after the fact,
Kritios Boy was found within the walls of Building
includes no entry forIV in torso.
any male
1863-1864 after all, the old photograph can 29 Dickins
still in165-67;
no way AMA 207-209 (no. 309); and Brous-
kari 64. The scribe may
be considered a record of the torso's "archaeological con-be identical to the "seated figure"
text," at least not in the modern sense of the that is the first
term: forentry in Evstratiadis catalogue of sculptures
accord-
ing to Evstratiadis himself, the Moschophoros from 1865-1866,
and the buttwo
the imprecision of his descriptions
Athenas were found over the course of three here and elsewhere makes
months (No- identification difficult.
vember 1863-January 1864) and, at least in the case of the
have certain affinities with the head of the K

and whose date is almost as problematic;30 3
ble head of a youth (Acr. 657), probably fr
dedicated around 470;31 and, most import
life-size head in Parian marble of a youth
fig. 7) that cannot date much earlier than th
the fifth century and that is sometimes lin
style of Pheidias (or, at least, to the style of
on the Parthenon south metopes).32 If these
can be said to have formed part of the "arc
context" of the torso of the Kritios Boy, the
text was very Arc mixed after all, yielding
Classical, and even High Classical material.
Acropolis 699 was, in fact, the first head t
the shoulders of the Kritios Boy since the fif
B.C. In 1878 A. Furtwaingler concluded
longed to the torso discovered along with
1866 while the museum was being built, ev
the surfaces did not join, and in 1880 the
were put together, with a generous helping
in the Acropolis Museum (fig. 8).33 They
together until 1888, when another head
now atop the Kritios Boy's torso-was d
during the monumental excavations
Fig. 9. Head of Kritios of
Boy, right three-quarter view. (Pho- P.
and G. Kawerau.34 to: J. Hurwit)
30 The discovery of the bronze head is recorded by Per- ished left side, its twisted hair, and the series of holes pre-
vanoglu (supra n. 17) 75: "Di maggiore importanza ci sem- served over its right temple and forehead is, for once, defini-
bra una testa giovanile di bronzo con corona, di fino and tive. See also AMA 246 (no. 324) and pl. 152; Ridgway
diligente lavoro, per6 molto ossidata, alta m. 0,12m, forse 1970, 59 n. 2.
pure Apolline..." See also A. de Ridder, Catalogue des 32 Dickins 266-67; Brouskari 131 and fig. 252. Also
bronzes trouvis sur l'Acropole d'Athenes (Paris 1896) H. Schrader, Phidias (Frankfurt 1924) 128-34, figs.
288-89, no. 767, figs. 274-75 and pl. 6; G. Soteriades, in 113-15, 119; G. Lippold, Die griechische Plastik (HdA
MvY)opjera rijv 'EXXabo (Athens 1906) 37-43, pl. 11.2; III.1, Munich 1950) 161 n. 12; T. Dohrn, Attische Plastik
M.L. D'Ooge, The Acropolis of Athens (New York 1908) vom Tode des Pheidias bis zum Wirken der grossen Meister
103, 106-107, and fig. 41 (where the head is called pre-Per- des IV Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (Scherpe 1957) 69 n. 20; Rob-
sian); Schuchhardt (supra n. 1) 280-81, and Schuchhardt, ertson 344; and Ridgway 1981, 124-25, who appears to ac-
Die Epochen der griechischen Plastik (Baden-Baden 1959) cept its association with the Pheidian style and a date be-
70, fig. 31, who dates it after the Persian Wars; Robertson tween 447-438.
180 and 183 (first quarter of fifth century); Ridgway 1970, Acr. 699 may be the sixth item in Evstratiadis's catalogue
41, no. 11; Boardman, Classical fig. 10 (ca. 460); and of 1865-1866 (the head of a male, wearing a fillet, with
D. Finn and C. Houser, Greek Monumental Bronze Sculp- some traces of red paint preserved), though he gives the pre-
ture (New York 1983) 41-42, who give the height as 0.13 m served height of the head as only 0.19 m. It is, in fact, 0.225
and are not sure whether it dates before or after 480. Oddly, m high. Curiously, precisely the same dimension is listed for
the second item in the catalogue, described as a bearded
P. Kavvadias and T. Sophoules, Ta MovoE-ia r"v 'AOrlv^V" head.
a ) v 'AKpdroXct 'Avao-xa al (Athens 1886-1887) 19 and
pl. 16, say the bronze head was found in 1882. F. Studnicz- 33 See Furtwangler. Doubts about the slightly hydro-
ka promptly corrected them in "Zu dem Bronzekopfe 'Mu- cephalic creation were raised almost immediately: see
seen von Athen' Tafel XVI," AM 12 (1887) 372-75, where G. Treu, "Vermischte Bemerkungen," AZ 15 (1882) 70-72
he notes that the head was found "around 1866" during ex- (Treu does not doubt, however, that Acr. 699 and the torso
cavations for the foundations of the museum and that the of the Kritios Boy were found in the same place). Note in the
head was not certainly found in Persian debris (though "on reconstruction in Fig. 8 (actually an assembly of casts in
art historical grounds" he dates the bronze to before 480). Berlin) a suspicious jog in the line of the neck on the (prop-
31 Dickins 194 says simply that it was found "before er) right.
1881," but it is unquestionably the seventh item in Evstra- 34 Another object possibly found at the same time and place
tiadis's catalogue of 1865-1866. His description of its unfin- as the torso of the Kritios Boy was a fragment of an inscrip-
Fig. 10. Head of Kritios Boy, right profile. (Photo:

Fig. 11. Head of Kritios Boy, left profile. (Photo: J. H
J. Hurwit)
THE DISCOVERY OF THE HEAD

dis in 1863-1864 and avoided by him thereafte
it was
Kavvadias and Kawerau had begun to dig finished in April.36
in 1885,
The famous
and, after such spectacular discoveries as the head of the Kritios Boy (figs. 9-15) is said
most unanimously,
cache of korai found in a deposit behind the Acropolis to have been discovered in
between
wall northwest of the Erechtheion in late January the museum and the south wall of the
1886,35 it became clear that the museum,polis.37 Unfortunately,
just over a the phrase "between the
decade old, was simply not large enough toum and
hold the south wall" does not offer the kind o
every-
thing. In late 1887 Kavvadias asked Kawerau to one
cision planwould like. Does it mean the long, n
strip
an addition to the museum to hold the lesser between
finds, and the old museum and the sout
in January 1888 this annex-"to Mikro," (fig.it was
4), or the area between the museum anne
called-was begun. Ironically, it was builtthe directly
south wall, or the triangular area bordered
oldEvstratia-
atop the walls of Building IV, discovered by museum, the annex, and the south wall
tion (E.M. 6442) from the earlier of two dedications of Kal-

36 See Bundgaard 1974, 16 and fig. 47, and Kokkou 200
lias, son of Didymias, placed atop the Acropolis:
and fig. 81A.an in-
scribed Ionic pillar set up, Raubitschek suggests, after
37 See a vic-
Dickins 264; AMA 191; and Brouskari 124. P. Wol-
tory in the Panathenaia Games of 482 B.C., won by Kallias
ters, "Miscellen," AM 13 (1888) 226, says the head was
as a youth. He suggests further that the Kritios
foundBoy
east ofstood
the museum, but is, so far as I know, alone in
atop this first Kallias dedication; see Raubitschek 24-26.
that opinion. Interestingly, Wolters notes also that a few
The suggestion is considerably weakened by the fact that
fragments of thetheMoschophoros were found between the
inscribed fragment was not certainly found with the and
museum torso: it wall in 1888: ironically, then, if the
the south
is just as possible that the inscription was found near
old photograph the
(fig. 5) wrongly suggests that the torso of the
Propylaia. The idea has not won many followers,
Kritios Boyinwasany
found with the greater portion of the Mos-
case; see Ridgway 1970, 33 n. 3. chophoros, smaller parts of the Moschophoros may well
35 See Kavvadias-Kawerau 23-32. The late January date
have formed part of the archaeological context of the Kritios
is Julian. Boy, or its head, after all.
Fig. 12. Head of Fig.

Kritios 13. back
Boy, Headview.
of Kritios
(Phot
J. Hurwit)
Fig. 14. Head of Kritios Boy, view of break at neck. (Photo: Fig. 15. Head of Kritios Boy, top. (Photo: J. Hurwit)
J. Hurwit)
surely unlikely that by "museum" the annex-"to

have been formed immediately after the Persian Wars
Mikro"-could have been meant. But Kavvadias and (that is, they were not made up entirely of Perser-
Kawerau were, we know, active in the triangular areaschutt). Finally, Kavvadias believes he found the head
in 1888: a number of Kawerau's drawings of this area of the Kritios Boy in the same place that the torso was
and the area between the annex and the south wall are found, "as it seems from what Pervanoglu writes in
preserved, and so are some photographs.38 In contrast,the Bullettino of 1867"-not that Pervanoglu was
there are apparently no extant drawings or photo-
very precise about that.41
graphs which would document investigation of the
other likely locale, the narrow strip between the oldTHE PROBLEM OF THE JOIN
museum and the south wall.39 We nonetheless have The incongruity of Furtwdingler's creation of 1880
Kavvadias's own testimony that that was, indeed, the became obvious at once: Acropolis 699 was taken off
spot where the head of the Kritios Boy came to light. the shoulders of the Kritios Boy in 1888, and the new
In an article reporting the activities and discoverieshead discovered by Kavvadias set in its place, secured
of June 1888, Kavvadias mentions one trench laid(presumably) by means of an iron dowel but without
south of the Periklean Parthenon, which revealed theany plaster or cement that would hide the join
remains of "Pheidias' Workshop" (Building VI) and(fig. 16).42 No one (or practically no one) had any
the so-called "Mourning Athena" relief built into itsdoubt now that the new head belonged to the torso dis-
north wall,40 and a second trench laid "in that narrowcovered by Evstratiadis in 1865-1866.43 And with a
place between the Museum and the south wall of thezeal that suggests either some embarrassment that he
Acropolis, which, it seems, was not excavated at the had once doubted Furtwdingler's reconstruction only
time the Museum was built (in 1866)." From that to withdraw his opposition later or else great pleasure
trench came two important finds: 1) the torso of a that his original impulse had been vindicated,44
Nike (Acr. 694) and 2) the head of the Kritios Boy,P. Wolters, announcing the new join, emphatically
which, it was recognized immediately, fit the torso stressed its correctness: "Dieser Kopf . . passt auf
that had been supporting Acropolis 699 ever since den ... Knabentorso, und zwar Bruch auf Bruch, mit
Furtwaingler's join of 1880 (fig. 8). Kavvadias com- der unangreifbarsten Sicherheit, wenn auch der pari-
pares the fill in which these sculptures were found tosche Marmor, wie dies seine Natur ist, am Rande ei-
fill he had excavated a few months earlier "between nige Splitter verloren hat."45 Torso and head had fi-
the two museums and the south Acropolis wall" [that nally found each other, it would seem, and Wolters's
is, the triangular area between the old museum, the certainty that the surfaces of the head and torso
annex, and the south wall]. Thus, the findspot of the touched "Bruch auf Bruch" should, it might be
head of the Kritios Boy and the triangular area must thought, have ended the matter.
be two different places. The fills were comparable, in- But Wolters's word did not long remain good
cidentally, because they did not seem to Kavvadias to enough for everyone. The splintering (and smoothing)
38 Bundgaard 1974, pls. 129, 130, 134.1, 137.1, 137.2, pra n. 17), is all one can fairly conclude. Kavvadias also
143.2, and figs. 44-48. raises the possibility that Evstratiadis only dug foundation
39 The key map at the end of Bundgaard's 1974 publica- trenches for the walls of the museum, leaving large areas
tion of the drawings and photographs is, between the old unexcavated.
museum and the south wall, quite blank. 42 E. Gardner, "Archaeology in Greece, 1888-89,"JHS 10
40 For the Mourning Athena relief (Acr. 695), see Dickins (1889) 263; Dickins 264.
258-61; Brouskari 123-24; and Robertson 178. For a pho- 43 H. Lechat, "Les fouilles de l'Acropole," BCH 12 (1888)
tograph of Building VI as excavated and Kawerau's draw- 433-36, defended Furtwdingler's reconstruction (fig. 8),
ing showing the findspot of the Athena relief, see Bundgaard claiming that the substitution of the new head for Acr. 699
1974, fig. 54 and pl. 160.2. was precipitous, and that the new head is, among other
41 P. Kavvadias, "'Avao-Ka:al iv 7~i 'AKpdOroXhc," things, proportionately too small for the body. Lechat's de-
ArchDelt, June 1888, 103-104. Though not directly men- fense is the only one I know, and not even Furtwangler him-
tioning the discovery of the head, Kavvadias-Kawerau self agreed with him; see "Eine argivische Bronze," B WPr
39-40 discuss excavations conducted in June 1888 between 50 (1890) 132, 150. B. Ashmole, however, has also felt "un-
the "large" (that is, the old) museum and the south Acropolis easiness at the seeming discrepancy of scale" between the
wall, which would seem to clinch the narrow strip as the head and body; see JHS 56 (1936) 249.
findspot of the head. It is hard to see how Kavvadias could 44 See F. Studniczka, "Zusammensetzungen im Akropolis-
have found the head in the exact place the body was found if, museum," AM 11 (1886) 360-62, who reviews opinions (in-
as Kavvadias himself says (ArchDelt 1888, 103), he was excluding Wolters's) about the join of Acr. 699 to the torso up
cavating fill that had not been touched before. Perhaps Kav- to that time, ultimately deciding against the join.
vadias means the head and torso were found in roughly the 45 Wolters (supra n. 37) 226-27.
same area, which, reading Pervanoglu's report of 1867 (su-
longed to the torso at

question is whether th
the torso, or was mad
The question was first
was B. Ashmole who p
fact that though the
served, the edges of the
body and on the head,
ically chipped as thoug
ping runs round most o
course, ancient, and it
that a head from a co
been used in antiquity
ficult on any other hyp
tion of the breaks: the
forearms are perfectly
In Die archaischen M
lis, however, Schuchh
with Wolters's convict
nal connection of hea
sich die Hebungen und
flichen genau aufeina
einer ganz bestimmten
damit in seiner richtig
around the join at the
repeated modern attem
Fig. 16. Kritios Boy,body and straightening
as restored before W
cluded that if the
(Courtesy Deutsches Archiologisches head
Institut,
torso, it would have h
of the edges around identical
the in dimension
neck where head an
(fig. 16) ture-a veritable
eventually drew twin that attention
was somehow available for and
These a radical transplant-and
outer edges clearly did that is a possibility
not touchthat "
Bruch," even if theSchuchhardt
inner found extremely
surfaces difficult to entertain.48
did; and
nature of Parian Still, the ideato
marble that the damage around the neck
splinter is
like t
ters says, then whyancient
were (as most, ifthe
not all, of broken
it surely must be) andedge
tios Boy's arms, that contrast,
in the Kritios Boy was at some point
so repaired in an-
clean an
must be stressed that no
tiquity (either withone46 has hasever
its own head or another's)
least not in print) continued tothe
that find adherents.49
head Neglecting
of or dismiss-
the Kr
46 With the exception of Lechat (supra n. 43). gists." At the same time, Ashmole raises the possibility that
47 Payne 44. In his review of the first edition of Payne's some damage may have been inflicted upon the torso when
book, Ashmole himself, while emphasizing the peculiar Acr. 699 was added and then removed. But Gardner, writ-
chipping about the neck, finds it difficult to accept Payne's ing in 1889 (supra n. 42), says not only that the head discov-
conclusion that the head may be a substitute taken from a ered in 1888 fit the torso exactly, but also that "fortunately,
contemporary (and presumably also damaged) statue; see the surface of the break had not been cut away" when Acr.
JHS 56 (1936) 249. See also R. Lullies' review, Gnomon 14 699 was set atop the torso. In fact, the break on the torso (fig.
(1938) 73. 20) seems today, despite the modern drilling of a wide dowel
48 See AMA 194. There was, however, a tradition of (near- hole, to be in much the same shape as it was soon after dis-
ly) duplicate statues in Greek sculpture: Kleobis and Biton covery (cf. fig. 5); the print published in Charbonneaux et
are familiar examples. See B.S. Ridgway, Roman Copies of al. (supra n. 9) shows the break in somewhat better detail.
Greek Sculpture (Ann Arbor 1984) 6-9. Modern insult, in other words, does not seem to have added
49 As Ashmole (supra n. 47) notes, the damage around the very much to ancient injury in the case of the torso, and if
edge of the neck on the head "can hardly have been done in Schuchhardt were right we would expect to find similar
modern times, for the discovery of the head is recorded, and smoothing and wear on its break as well. Still, there is a
it was quickly fitted to the torso by responsible archaeolo- disturbing indication in an article of 1890 that it may not
Fig. 17. Kritios Boy, after removal of plaster around neck

(28 April 1987). (Photo: J. Hurwit)
ing the testimony of both Wolters and Schuchhardt,

R. Carpenter, for example, claimed that "the head
does not fit the body, break-for-break; on some pre-
vious occasion it had been broken off, and the restorer
smoothed away the ragged fracture line and used a
cement of marble to make a join. Since no such resto-
ration seems to have been attempted in modern times,
we must conclude the repair was ancient ... "50 Car-
penter, then, implies that the head, though repaired,
originally belonged to the torso while Payne suggests
the head was transplanted from another work, and
they do not even agree as to what constitutes evidence
of a repair, Carpenter citing the smoothing of the
edges at the break, Payne citing the chipping.
Fig. 18. Kritios Boy as restored by I. Meliades, aro
In his review of Payne's study of the(Courtesy
Archaic mar-
Deutsches Archiologisches Institut, Ath
ble sculptures from the Acropolis, Ashmole noted that
"had Payne lived, he would doubtless have established
precise nature of the damage at the neck, and
possibility
or disproved the actual fit of the break of of an ancient repair justified a re
the head with
tion of
that of its present torso: and that is the first the
step inbroken
any surfaces in an attempt to se
questions.
further approach to the problem."51 It is, On a28 April 1987, therefore, the
admittedly,
plaster covering the break at the neck was r
problem that seems to exist only for English-speaking
scholars-Greek and German archaeologists haveof the Kritios Boy was lifted
and the head
bronze
generally had no doubts about the join-but dowel that had secured it in place
lingering
questions over the way head and torsotorso.52
join, over the
have been an uncommon practice to move or turn the new kind of damage or wear seen around the edges of the neck on
the head is another (and I think extremely dubious) matter.
head atop the torso until it securely fit; see B. Graef, "Die
Gruppe der Tyrannenm6rder und stilistisch verwandte 50 Carpenter (supra n. 1) 96. See also Pollitt (supra n. 1)
Werke in Athen," AM 15 (1890) 19. Whether such fittings 15; Hurwit 347; and Ridgway 1958, 314-15.
were frequent enough-and Graef and his contemporaries15 See Ashmole (supra n. 47) 249.
insensitive and irresponsible enough-to have caused the
52 The work was carefully performed by the Acropolis
than he should actually

cause it did not find its p
the head, in Meliades's r
as far to the (proper) rig
downward, as it should h
the torso, the head enhan
trapposto of the entire f
feel capable of assessing t
(and who have, for examp
accurately restored Kriti
works as the Blond Boy)
somewhat "better" work.
There is, in any case, no doubt that the head can, in
fact, be "properly fitted" to the torso-that it belongs.
The broken surface of the head in particular is cer-
tainly damaged and worn (figs. 13-14); both broken
surfaces have had dowel holes drilled into them in
modern times (the one drilled into the torso is particu-
larly wide and has destroyed an appreciable area of
the original surface, figs. 19-20);54 and the surfaces do
not join quite as effortlessly or completely as Wolters
Fig. 19. Torso of Kritios Boy. (Photo: J. Hurwit)
The bronze dowel had been inserted, and the

ter (apparently tinted to blend with the color
marble) applied to the break, in the late 1950s o
1960s, when I. Meliades supervised the restorat
virtually every mended sculpture in the Ac
Museum, taking them apart, replacing their r
and hazardous iron dowels and clamps with br
and putting them back together again.53 The
Boy (it unexpectedly became clear as soon
plaster began to be removed) was put back tog
incorrectly: the head did not sit squarely on th
but hovered almost one centimeter above it, sup
by plaster and dowel but not by marble (fig. 17
is, for roughly a quarter century the Kritios B
somewhat distorted, and all photographs
between 1964 (when the Acropolis Museum
opened) and 1987 showFig.him with
20. Detail, torso a (Photo:
of Kritios Boy. slightly
J. Hurwit) talle
Museum's able technicians Demetrios Maraziotes and La- 11 cm long and 0.08 cm in diameter, and the break at the
zaros Zakharopoulos. I warmly thank them for their efforts,neck was left unplastered, essentially restoring the work to
patience, and cooperation. The head was removed to theits appearance before World War II.
apotheke for study, while the torso remained on display on 13 See Brouskari 15, and Kokkou 201.
the floor of the museum. Impressions were taken of the 54 For the dimensions of the preserved surfaces and the
broken surfaces at the juncture of the head and torso and are dowel holes drilled into them, see Appendix. The bronze
stored in the apotheke. Dr. Touloupa has informed me bydowel removed in 1987 was 1 cm in diameter and 11.1 cm
letter that the Kritios Boy was reassembled on 23 Junelong, and had been glued into the cutting of the torso.
1987: the bronze dowel was replaced with a titanium dowel
Fig. 21. Kritios Boy, back left side of neck. (Photo:

Fig. 22. Acropolis Kore 687, back view of head. (Photo:
J. Hurwit) A. Anagnostou, courtesy Acropolis Museum)
and Schuchhardt implied. They do not fit every break flow from the head through the break into the torso
for every break: the inner surfaces on the left side of has always suggested in any case.
the neck, for example, do not touch (there is a rela- There is, moreover, no evidence of tool marks or
tively large cavity in the surface of the head on that recutting on either broken surface, so that any argu-
side, fig. 13), and there are other slight gaps as well. ment for an ancient repair is seriously undermined. It
This, the loss of considerable marble from around the must be noted, however, that repairs are not so un-
edges, and the angle of the break itself mean that common in marble dedications that stood on the Acro-
perching the head atop the torso without the aid of a polis in the Archaic period or just after, and to fix a
supporting dowel is risky business. Nonetheless, parts broken or damaged votive neither offended the reli-
of the two inner surfaces, especially on the right side of gious sensibilities of the dedicant nor was regarded as
the neck and in front, do touch. And, most important, an affront to the divinity. But no repair, in fact, looks
when the head is repositioned atop the torso, there is like the sloppy kind of operation Payne and Carpenter
indeed a point at which it finds a natural bedding. hypothesize for the Kritios Boy. When Kore 687 suf-
There is even one small spot-at the back of the neck, fered damage to the top of her head, for example, the
on the left-where the outer edges of head and torso damaged area was cleanly sliced off at an angle to-
virtually join (fig. 21): they come close enough to leave ward her left ear, and the surface was carefully pre-
little doubt that head and body originally belonged to pared for a replacement piece with anathyrosis,
each other, and this is what a close examination of the
dowel, and glue (fig. 22).55 In addition, it was not un-
way the musculature, lines, and planes of the neck usual for Archaic sculptors to insert heads into torsos
55 For the repair of Kore 687, see Dickins 245, and AMA for a dowel used in a repair.
59, no. 19 and pl. 28; the hole might be the remnant of one Other late Archaic or Early Classical Acropolis marbles
originally drilled for the long rod of a meniskos, rather than that were definitely or possibly repaired in antiquity are
with mortise and tenon-Korai 598, 600, 604, and areas are clearly discernible, and on the back of the
651 are examples from the Acropolis-to say nothing neck, where one irregular area has suffered splinter-
of the large number of arms that they routinely in- ing (fig. 12). And whereas the edge of the neck on the
serted, cemented, and even pinned into place.56 Greek head is worn and smooth, the edge of the neck on the
sculptors knew how to put two pieces of marble to- torso has remained fairly sharp (fig. 20). The damage
gether when they wished, and so it is not clear why, if at the juncture of head and body, in other words,
we assume (as I think we must) that the head of the seems limited mostly to the head. The broken surface
Kritios Boy originally belonged to the body and the of the torso has been damaged much less extensively,
break at the neck had once been sharp, an ancient and the relative crispness of the break here is not at all
restorer would have had to treat the "ragged fracture" inconsistent with the fairly sharp breaks of the arms
as roughly as Payne and Carpenter imagine. The neat (fig. 19). Besides, the break below the right knee is
worn virtually as smooth as the edge of the neck on the
refitting of other heads to other bodies (e.g., the Parian
head, the surface of the broken nose is so smooth it is
marble Peplos Kore's),57 has in modern times re-
almost glassy (fig. 9), and severe chipping and erosion
quired little more than a thin layer of plaster, and one
have both taken their toll on the Kritios Boy's ele-
wonders why an ancient repairman would have had to
gantly rolled locks of hair as well (figs. 10-12), so that
take such drastically different, not to say atypical and
any hypothesis citing such wear on the neck as a sign
inefficient, measures to hide the break of the Kritios
of repair must, to be consistent, also claim that the
Boy. (Smoothing the fractured edges, it seems to me,
right leg (and the nose and coiffure) of the Kritios Boy
would make it harder for plaster or cement to adhere
was repaired as well-which no one claims. The dam-
to the marble.) The technique that Payne and Car-
age around the neck is surely the result of unsystem-
penter variously hypothesize-either chipping away atic decapitation (violent or accidental) and unpredict-
at the marble or rubbing it down and then filling the able natural wear. It is not evidence of a repair.
gaps generously with mortar to conceal the break-is, The differences of wear seen on the head and torso
to my knowledge, unparalleled during this period. of the Kritios Boy are attributable, I surmise, to differ-
When a piece of marble was added to a statue, dam- ent histories after separation: circumstances and the
aged or not, in the sixth or early fifth century58 it was years were simply kinder to the edges of the break on
done carefully, cleanly, and systematically. The splin- the torso. But the kind of splintering and smoothing
tering and smoothing around the neck on the head of seen around the neck of the Kritios Boy does seem to be
the Kritios Boy do not seem systematic or workman- characteristic of Parian (and other island) marble, as
like enough to be the result of a repair. Wolters believed. Other sculptures in the Acropolis
Ashmole and Payne are, moreover, simply wrong to Museum have suffered, here and there, the same kind
suggest that there is "chipping round most of both of damage (though admittedly not to the degree of the
broken surfaces": large splinters are present, in fact, Kritios Boy): the Rampin Rider (Acr. 590),59 Kore
only on the front of the neck (fig. 16), where two oval 677,60 Acropolis 692 (fig. 6),61 Acropolis 699 (fig. 7),
1) Kore 670 (ca. 520 B.C.): island marble, right forearm re- 58 Supra n. 55.
paired in Pentelic marble. See Brouskari 70-71; 2) Kore 59 Payne pl. 1 la-b.
643 (ca. 510 B.C.): Parian marble, with top of head repaired 60 Payne pl. 18.
in "Attic" marble. AMA 131-32; 3) Nike 694 (ca. 480 6' It must be noted, however, that Acr. 692 was in 1900
B.C.): Parian marble, with traces of iron dowel and curiousmistakenly fitted with the head now atop the draped youth,
holes in front. Possible signs of repair. Akroterion of Ar- Acr. 633: see R. Delbrtick, "Eine archaische Jtinglingsfigur
chaios Naos? Dickins 257-58; 4) Inscription 4184 (ca. des Akropolismuseums," AM 25 (1900) 373-91 and pls.
500-480 B.C.): Dedication of Onesimos (ca. 500), possibly 15-16, and Dickins 254. It is hard to believe the severe dam-
restored by his son Theodoros (ca. 480) after suffering damage around the neck (which contrasts with the fairly clean
age. Raubitschek 246-48, no. 217; 5) Acr. 140 (ca. 480): breaks of the arms and legs) could have been the result of
Angelitos's Athena, possibly reworked or repaired after 480, adding and removing the head at that time (it was removed,
when it became, perhaps, a model for red-figure vase-paint- at least, by Schrader). There is also a roughly rectangular
ers of 470-460 (infra n. 71). Brouskari 129-30; AMA socket (2.8 x 4.5 cm, 6 cm deep) in the neck of Acr. 692,
48-49; 6) Acr. 695 (ca. 460 B.C.): "Mourning Athena" re- obviously for the attachment of a head. The socket is proba-
lief. Folds over left heel recut, surface unpolished. J. Frel, bly ancient, but it is impossible to tell whether its use was
"Reparations antiques," AAA 5 (1972) 74, no. 2. primary or secondary-that is, whether it secured the origi-
56 See Dickins 132-33 (598), 135 (600, whose right arm nal but separate head (which would, to my knowledge,
was secured with a metal pin), 137 (604), and 190-91 (651). make Acr. 692 unique among kouroi) or whether it secured
The archer Acr. 599 also had his right arm secured with a a head (original or replacement) after a repair, in which
pin; see Dickins 133-34 and Brouskari pl. 246. case Acr. 692 should be added to the list, supra n. 55.
57 See Brouskari pl. 100.
all of which have suffered splintering at the neck,but

much, andit does matter whether the Kritios
Acropolis 689 (the Blond Boy),62 whose neckmadehasbefore
not 480 or after, before the Persian d
only suffered some splintering in front butof
tion some
the Acropolis or after. It matters beca
smoothing all around as well. A few works, like the
Kritios Boy is the earliest extant, well-preserv
head of the small Kore 650 (now in thestanding
Acropolissculpture to break fundamentally w
storeroom), have had their features nearly formula of the automaton-like Archaic kouro
worn away.
One final observation: despite the extensive body loss of organism now, not a mechanism, a
is an
marble, it is possible from certain angles important
to read theto try to determine whether that i
lines of the two oval splintered areas at the front
tion-anof innovation
the that goes hand in hand wi
neck as continuing over onto the torso,sculptor's
as actuallynew concern to endow the human for
overlapping the break (fig. 16).63 If that is so, this
~Oos~, self-consciousness, and o4coopoov7ml--c
damage would have occurred at the time the latehead was
Archaic artists naturally or whether it w
broken off. And it is perhaps not too fanciful to by
tened imag-
the destruction, quite literally, of the
ine how that happened: someone intent onAthenian
decapitat-sculptural heritage.6" In addition, t
ing the statue took an axe or similar instrument and of the Kritios Boy is at stake, for
originality
delivered two sharp blows to the throat, causing
Persian the
date would place the statue in the vang
large oval chips to fly off, and perhaps onechange
blow more
and (since there are no other com
to the back of the neck, where there is the works
third, extant
large from before 480) ahead of its tim
splintered area (fig. 12), and the head a rolled. The
post-Persian date would make it more of its
question remains when and why the decapitation of
more dependent upon supposedly "greater" w
the Kritios Boy occurred, and if it was deliberate there
bronze-even, perhaps, more ordinary. Most sc
can be only two plausible answers: either the
haveblows
thus felt compelled to take a firm positio
were delivered by a triumphant, vengeful,the mutilating
majority of those who have done so have d
Persian in 480, or they were delivered by an economi-
statue to the decade between 490 and 480-mor
cal, practical Athenian sometime later, when the Kri-
cifically, to the years just before 480. Alscher
tios Boy's fate as packing material in the fill
man, of Fuchs,
the Harrison, Karusos, Lullies, Pay
southeast corner of the Acropolis was sealed. Thus we head a long list of scholars who
Schuchhardt
come to the problem of date. the Kritios Boy had stood on the Acropolis for n
than a few years when the Persians came and
DATE
it down.66 Those who have dated the statue
Given the nature of the evidence, it may seem
years at 480, and even as late as 470, appea
after
least as wise as it is safe to date the Kritios
much Boy to list, and their number includes
shorter
"around 480," and leave it at that.64 The exact year
(though notof all) of those who believe the stat
the Kritios Boy's creation does not, in fact, matter
repaired in antiquity.67 No argument is likely
62 For the Blond Boy, see Brouskari 123 and 67 See fig. 234;
Carpenter (supra n. 1) 97, who dates the Kritios
AMA 197-99, no. 302, and pls. 125-27. Boy "a full decade later than the Persian incursion on Attic
soil"; Ridgway
63 See also AMA pl. 123 (upper left), and Payne 1958, 315 and Ridgway 1970, 38; and Pollitt
pl. 109.2.
(supra n. 1) 15. and
64 Thus, e.g., Robertson 176, who is noncommittal They apparently believe the repair was not
an attempt
whose caption for the Kritios Boy (fig. 53d) reads only to patch
"first up the statue after the Persians hacked
away at
quarter of fifth century." Robertson's laudable it but after to
aversion accidental damage done during erection
of the dedication
precise dating is well known; see Between Archaeology and in the post-war period. Athenians of the
Art History (Oxford 1962) 22-23. fifth century were probably no more or less clumsy than we
are. But
65 See Hurwit 340-55. For another view of the an earthquake
ideals rep- or severe storm is just as likely a
cause of damage as Athenian ineptitude. At all events, those
resented by or embodied in the Kritios Boy, see B. Fehr's
who believe that the statue was repaired must choose from
Bewegungsweisen und Verhaltensideale: Physiognomische
the following scenarios: a) the statue was carved, broken,
Deutungsmiglichkeiten der Bewegungsdarstellung an grie-
and repaired all before 480 (accidents and earthquakes pre-
chischen Statuen des 5. und 4. Jhs. v. Chr. (Bad Bramstedt
sumably happened before as well as after the Persian inva-
1979) 25-30.
sion), only to be cast down forever by the barbarians; b) the
66 L. Alscher, Griechische Plastik II.1: Archaik und die statue was set up before 480, damaged by the Persians in
Wandlung zur Klassik (Berlin 1961) 173; Boardman, Ar- 480, repaired by Athenians after the Persians left later that
chaic 84; Fuchs (supra n. 3) 47-48; E.B. Harrison, Agora year, and then irreparably damaged when the Persians re-
XI: Archaic and Archaistic Sculpture (Princeton 1965) 13; turned again in 479 (an overwrought scenario I once consid-
C. Karusos, Aristodikos (Stuttgart 1961) 19 and 55, no. G4; ered myself; see Hurwit 347); c) the statue was dedicated
Lullies and Hirmer (supra n. 3) 70; Payne 44-45; Schuch- before 480, broken by the Persians, and repaired in the Ear-
hardt (supra n. 1) 279-80. ly Classical period, and stood in its mended state until after
suade everyone, program

but and the Periclean
there are addition
at to theleast
south cita- fou
ria on which
fairdeldating
wall originally begun,a
of the
most still Kritios
agree, by Kimon
based: archaeological context,
sometime state
after the battle of Eurymedon of pr
around 466.69
the dearth of marble dedications
A post-Persian Kritios Boy would not have been on the the
the years between 480
only and
Early Classical victim450, and
of such a program: styli
the well
An assessment of each criterion follows. known "Mourning Athena" relief is universally dated
around 460, yet it was built into the north wall of
Archaeological Context
Building VI (Pheidias's Workshop) south of the Par-
Kavvadias says the head of the Kritios Boy, found
thenon less than 20 years later;70 and Angelitos's Athe-
with an apparently Archaic but possibly repaired
na, which (whatever the date of its creation) was ap-
Nike (Acr. 694), came from a deposit that did not look
parently still around in 470 or 460 to inspire the paint-
like Perserschutt.68 The torso of the Kritios Boy was
er of a red-figure oinochoe in New York,71 was taken
apparently found with, among other things (some of
down to be used as fill (along with the Moschophoros,
them Archaic), a head that dates around or after the
Acr. 692, and the head of Athena the Giant-Killer) in-
middle of the fifth century (fig. 7). Those are the sa-
side Building IV not long afterward.
lient "facts" about the mixed archaeological context of
If the Kritios Boy was a victim of Athenians instead
the statue, and they tell us that there is no archaeo-
of Persians, it was no less a victim for that. One won-
logical reason why the Kritios Boy could not be post-
Persian. They do not tell us, of course, that the Kritios ders whether a post-Persian Kritios Boy could have
Boy must be post-Persian. But since the torso of the been the victim not merely of Periclean landscapers
Kritios Boy was apparently not buried until Acropolis wishing to pack a fill solid, but also of a quasi-ritual
699 was, no earlier than 450 and perhaps as late as the "killing"-a Classical attempt to render the statue,
early 430s, then one is permitted to draw some conclu- possessed of the numinous power of an ,yahAa,
sions, if only in the form of alternative conditional sen- "harmless" through decapitation, much as, in an ear-
tences. If the Kritios Boy was dedicated before the Per- lier period, weapons buried in tombs or dedications
sians came, then it lay around the Acropolis, broken buried in sanctuaries were intentionally bent or dam-
(for we assume the barbarians would not have missed aged, putting them out of use and robbing them of any
toppling it), for at least 30 years, until a discarded power they might otherwise have exercised for ill from
Classical, even Pheidian, head could accompany at beyond the grave.72 Perhaps Angelitos's Athena
least its body underground. But if the Kritios Boy was (which apparently still had her head on when the oi-
dedicated sometime after 480, then it was either acci- nochoe in New York was painted)73 and the statue to
dentally knocked over and shattered or it was purpose- which Acropolis 699 (fig. 7) belonged and which
fully removed from display, broken up, and interred probably lost its head early in the third quarter of the
by Athenians during what seems to have been a major fifth century, were intentionally decapitated for the
relandscaping of the southeast area of the citadel after same reason. And so, perhaps, were those Archaic ko-
the middle of the fifth century, a landscaping that rai, if any, who had not already lost their heads to the
probably had much to do with the Periclean building Persians.
the middle of the fifth century; or d) the dedication, damage,tios Boy while excavating to a depth of 13 m within the
repair, and burial of the statue all took place betweensouth wall (see Pervanoglu [supra n. 17] 73). Of course, we
480/79 and about 440. It should be noted that possibility c) do not know at what depth the torso was found, but if
is not necessarily precluded by the Oath of Plataia, which, Acr. 699 really was discovered with it, it may have been at a
according to Diodoros (11.29.2), directed only that the tem-higher level, in the fill behind what is normally taken to be
ples burnt and destroyed by the barbarians not be rebuilt: itthe Periclean addition.
did not forbid the repair of private dedications like the Kri- 70 See supra n. 40. If, as some believe, this relief was a
tios Boy. But those who do not believe the statue was re- dedication of Kimon's workmen (Brouskari 124), it is per-
paired at all have a much simpler choice: either the Kritios haps easier to see why it was removed and used as building
Boy was decapitated by Persians in 480, or it was decapi-material for a Periclean structure so soon after it was dedi-
tated by accident or by Athenians later. cated. But, in fact, we do not know the function or purpose
68 Supra n. 41. of the work.
69 See Stevens 1946 (supra n. 4) 24: "When the fifth-cen- 71 Metropolitan Museum of Art 08.258.25 (near the
tury circuit walls of the Acropolis were built, the ground Deepdene Painter). See G.M.A. Richter and L.F. Hall,
level in the southeast part of the Acropolis was greatly Red-figured Athenian Vases in the Metropolitan Museum of
raised." Bundgaard 1976, 75-77, again, dates the entireArt (New Haven 1936) 114-15 and pl. 88, no. 84.
south wall after 447 and part of it (K3) as late as 438. It72 This has been suggested to me by Judith Binder.
should be noted that Evstratiadis found the torso of the Kri- 73 Supra n. 71.
If by Perserschutt one means a homogeneous depos-

Boy, and since the surface of the Kritios Boy itself is, it
it of material destroyed by the Persians in is usually
480 and assumed, too fresh to have suffered very
buried in the ground immediately after the much weathering
war as either, the Kritios Boy must be pre-
part of some vast clean-up project, then thePersian,
termtoo.76
does In fact, the state-of-preservation argu-
ment, when
not seem appropriate for the fill of the southeast partconsidered in light of the archaeological
evidence
of the Acropolis.74 The archaeological context of(such
theas it is) from the southeast corner of the
Kritios Boy (as far as we can reconstruct Acropolis,
it) and the leads to precisely the opposite conclusion.
Thethat
history of this portion of the citadel suggest Blondpre-
Boy's head was found (in September 1887)
Persian and post-Persian materials were notmingled,
in a clear deposit of Perserschutt77 but in shallow
that pre-Persian statues could and did lie fill
aboutwithin
for a corner of Building IV (inside corner "m,"
decades after the destruction, and that Athenians of mid-fifth century workshop or heroon
fig. 4), the same
the Periclean era undoubtedly removed whose
somesouth
Early corner yielded, i.a., the Moschophoros
Classical monuments (and even a High and
Classical
Angelitos's Athena.78 If the Blond Boy is pre-Per-
work or two) and could even have done them
sian,harm as
it was presumably exposed to the elements for as
well. But archaeology still tells us nothing much as two or even three decades before burial with-
definitive
about the date of the Kritios Boy itself. in Building IV, and the remarkable condition of its
surface and especially the colors that were still vivid
State of Preservation when the head was found become harder to explain,
One of the most popular, if odd, reasonsnot for easier.
dating So, too, with the Kritios Boy, which also
the Kritios Boy before 480 has been that has thetraces
Blond of paint (red) preserved in grooves between
Boy (Acr. 689) is preserved so well. "The preservationthe rolls of hair on the back right side of his head:79 the
of the [Blond Boy's] surface makes it impossible assumption "the to better the surface, the less time ex-
avoid the conclusion that it was dedicated before the posed to the elements" will invite a date for the dedi-
Persian destruction," writes Payne,75 and since the cation of the statue closer to the probable date of its
style of the Blond Boy has seemed to many more de- burial in the middle or third quarter of the fifth cen-
veloped and therefore later than that of the Kritios tury. That is, it will favor a post-Persian date.
74 On the Perserschutt, see W. D6rpfeld, "Die Zeit des al- which Raubitschek's inscription no. 218, found together
teren Parthenon," AM 27 (1902) 379-416, and Dickins with the Moschophoros inside Building IV, belonged.
5-9. Consistent, homogeneous deposits of Perserschutt in 17 Payne 45 n. 2. The fact that the yellow paint on the
this part of the Acropolis are elusive, to say the least. What- Blond Boy's hair and in his eyes was still vivid when discov-
ever the date of the Kritios Boy, the idea that the Athenians ered (in 1887) but quickly faded has also suggested that the
carefully swept the Acropolis clean and immediately buried statue could not have been exposed to the elements for very
all the works destroyed by the Persians upon their final re- long before destruction and burial. Yellow is, it is true, a
turn to Athens in 479 cannot be maintained (contra Ridg- fugitive color, but it did not flee from the Blond Boy quite as
way 1970, 31). The process was surely a long and haphaz- quickly as many believe: it was apparently still visible in
ard one. It probably began in 479 or soon after, since the 1912, when Dickins (249) wrote, a quarter-century after
inscribed base of the Moschophoros was used in the con- discovery. And yellow is still to be seen on the so-called
struction of a square room found below (and therefore built "Graces" relief (Acr. 702), carved and colorfully painted
before) Building IV's southeast corner (see Bundgaard around 510-500, two decades or so before the Persian inva-
1976, 77). It continued well into the 460s or even the 450s, sion and any possible burial; Brouskari 59, and AMA
when Building IV itself apparently was built and the Mos- 311-12 and color pl. 6.
chophoros, Acr. 692, Angelitos's Athens, the pedimental 76 So, e.g., Alscher (supra n. 66) 173. Cf. Ridgway 1970,
Athena, and a mid-fifth century inscription (Raubitschek 31. Brouskari 130 implies that the lack of weathering on
no. 218) buried within it as fill. And if the controversial little Angelitos's Athena argues for a pre-Persian date for it as
Acropolis kore 688 was also a victim of the Persians, the well.
process was not completed until about 438, when the statue 77 Contra Brouskari 123. See Kavvadias-Kawerau 34:
was built into the foundations of the Propylaia; see AMA 62 "Die Aufschtittung scheint nicht von der Art zu sein wie die
and pls. 30-32. nach den Perserkriegen ausgeftihrte."
Some Early Classical monuments seem to have found 78 For the discovery of the Blond Boy, see P. Wolters, AM
their way into the fill of the north Acropolis wall as well. 12 (1887) 266; J. Harrison, "Archaeology in Greece, 1887-
E. Loewy, who favored a date of around 440 for the north 1888," JHS 9 (1888) 121-23 (Harrison says the colors on
wall, argued that none of the objects found in the so-called the head were fading fast); Dickins 248, 250; Kavvadias-
Persian debris there was actually buried shortly after 480; Kawerau 34; and Bundgaard 1974, 17, 31 n. 62 (correcting
see Der Beginn der rotfigitrigen Vasenmalerei (Vienna and Kavvadias and Kawerau's inadvertent location of the find at
Leipzig 1938) 52ff. And Raubitschek 462 concedes that the northwest corner of the museum), and pl. 127.2.
"Puzzling as it may seem, some dedications which were set 7" There is also a small, faded patch of red on the back of
up after 480 B.C. were buried before the middle of the fifth the head, about 5 cm below the remains of the meniskos.
century." Again, they probably include the dedication to
Boy stood for years with his
rain-a few pockmarks on the
left, suggest that much of th
when the head was still attach
after his destruction, his tors
partially buried in the earth,
But while not much more help
date of the statue than is its m
text, the state of preservation
theless seems to preclude at l
scenario: the statue is not lik
cated, broken, and buried all
The argument that it was
knocked down by the Persian
posited in the ground along wit
schutt in 479 cannot be maint
Boy stood out in the open,
Fig. 23. Kritios Boy, detail of buttocks. (Photo: imply
(which would J. Hurwit)
a post
broken bodily parts did (whic
The assumption, however, may not date
pre-Persian be entirely
and no imm
without flaw. The state of preservation of a particular
479, or dedication and acciden
sculpture is as much a function of its original location
the post-Persian period, with
atop the citadel as the length
theof its exposure,
third quarter of and
thewecent
generally have no way of knowing how protected
by the edges of the neck on th it
might have been from the consistent
elements. For withexample, the
a dedication in
surface of the Moschophoros (fig. 5), for all its breaks,
riod, intentional decapitation
is remarkably well preserved, yet no one doubts
landscaping of thethat it
citadel, a
was exposed to the elements on the
burial Acropolis
in the ground, for
but at
since
least 70 or 80 years before the
blePersians ever set foot
is unpredictable andon
work
the citadel.80 Moreover, the(fig.
surface of the Kritios
7) suffered at least Boy
as muc
is not as well preserved as it is usually
even shorter said
spantoofbe. Thenot
time,
surface of the face, it is true, is remarkably
confidently fresh (figs.
excluded.
9-11), and it is tempting to believe that the hair roll
protruding above deflected damage from
Independent the face
Marble or
Sculpture
offered some protection, like the brim of a cap (the
cal Acropolis
statue's umbrella-like meniskos,
Thereif it really
has been a had one ten
general
[fig. 28], would have helped, too). Yet
logically the smoothing
problematic statues l
of the edges of the neck, of the 480
fore nose, and ofthere
because the hair-
are so
the toll taken primarily by natural erosion
sculptures after
left from thede-
Early
capitation-implies either High
considerable exposure
Classical) to T
Acropolis.
the weather or particularlyAcropolis
rapid wear.
koreAnd
688while the
pre-Persian
surface of the Kritios Boy'sabsence
torso still retains muchpost-P
of immediately of
its original, highly polished Acropolis
sheen in front (figs.
rather than2, 20),
its fin
the back of the statue (if it to
ever wasbeen
have as highly
in thepolished)
foundatio
has lost its luster, and there pylaia.81
is extensive, if fine,
There pitting
is also the beli
or pockmarking over both
calshoulders
dedicationand buttocks
on the citadel w
(figs. 21, 23). It is possible to account
been forstatistically,
bronze: these differ- a m
ences in wear in various ways.
betterPerhaps the
chance of Kritios
being pre-Pe
80 See Ridgway 1970, 31. 82 For bronze as the medium of choice in the Early Classi-
81 Boardman, Archaic 86 andcalfig. 161;
period, see, see also
e.g., Raubitschek n.use
479: "The 74 above.
of island
Payne, on the other hand, marble,
calls and ofher
marble inEarly
general for theClassical;
making of statues, see
Payne 40 n. 2. was discontinued at Athens some years after 480 B.C. The
can be stated, not unfairly, in the form dated to around 460;84 2) Acropolis 599, the
of a syllogism:
virtually all freestanding marble statues from
cuirassed the datable to 470-460;85 and 3
archer
Acropolis date before 480; the Kritios lis
Boy699
is a(fig.
free-7), the Kritios Boy's erstwh
standing marble statue; therefore, the Kritios
which, Boy Pheidian or Parthenonian
though
dates before 480. But while we need not dispute
seems the (and to Ridgway too fine) to
too large
predominance of bronze sculptures over marble
longed to aones
metope and is thus probably a r
after 480, or doubt that artistic activity one of those
on the immedi-great rarities: an original, non-
ately post-Persian Acropolis was less than tural,intense, a marble sculpture in the roun
Classical,
pre-Persian dating of the Kritios Boy cannot This rest very is not large: even if we acce
company
firmly on these grounds. The reasoning is circular,
equivocal pieces as post-Persian and throw in
and it can revolve the other way: for if the
tios Kritios Boy Boys besides, the total is only
and Blond
was dedicated after 480, then the supposed dearth
it is large of
enough to demonstrate that not al
marble dedications on the Early Classical Acropolis on the Acropolis were of br
sian dedications
would not seem so severe. And if the Kritios
the high Boy is
quality of a few pieces (Acr. 699, f
post-Persian, so might be the Blond Boy, ple) and so on. to prove that not all Early C
is enough
Indeed, if one excludes from the discussion controver-
mid-fifth century marble dedications were
sial pieces like the Kritios and Blond Boysrate. and
The Acro-
dearth of marble dedications from
polis kore 688, there is a noticeable shortage of imme-480 and 450 is, in short, only
polis between
diately pre-Persian dedications from the relative to the number of Archaic marbles fou
Acropolis.
As it is, there are, not counting theiedKritios
on the and
citadel and, presumably, to the n
Early Classical
Blond Boys, four marble freestanding sculptures from bronzes that stood atop it
the Acropolis that may date to the years
notbetween 480 as to compel a pre-Persian da
so complete
and 450, and at least three more that certainly do. The
Kritios Boy.
four possibilities are the Propylaia kore (688), which
would then be an Early Classical coda to the The
Style: longAttribution
Ar- to Kritios and Nesiote
chaic series, Angelitos's Athena, which (given
Therethe
areevi-
a large number of original stat
dence of the oinochoe in New York andthe certain
fifthparal-
century whose artists we cannot n
lels with the "Mourning Athena" relief there and
are athe
large number of sculptors from
Athena in the heroic gathering depicted on the whose
century Niobid names we know but who ar
Krater) no one, perhaps, would have thought to date
sented by not a single extant, original stat
to the Archaic period had it not been found
work with the to us only from the literary
is known
Moschophoros, and two small heads, one or,belonging
when we areto lucky, from Roman copies)
toto
a victorious athlete (Acr. 644), the other play matchmaker and assign such an
an ephebe
or, possibly, to an Athena (Acr. 634).83 The indepen-
statues to such sculpture-less artists has be
dent marble statues that certainly date between 480
irresistible, even though attribution, much of
and 450 (and in one case probably later) is are: 1) Acro-
neither science nor art, but educated guess
polis 3718, the badly eroded head of a part
female statue
of optimists.87 Even so, the urge to att
numerical decline of marble sculpture, however, already

believes it is Archaic. Payne omits it from his study of the
begins a whole generation earlier and it isArchaic accompanied
Acropolis marbles by
and so would seem to date it later.
an increase in the number of statues made of bronze." 86 See Ridgway 1981, 124-25. From later in the century
83 For the Propylaia kore, see Brouskari 128; Ridgway comes, very likely, Alkamenes' "Procne and Itys" (Acr.
1970, 31, 34-35, and Karusos (supra n. 66) 55 (H5, "nach 1358); see Brouskari 165-66, and Ridgway 1981, 175-76.
480"). For Angelitos's Athena, see Brouskari 129-30; for 87 To cite one instructive example from the Acropolis it-
the oinochoe in New York, see supra n. 71; for the Niobid self, the head 2344 has been called by one scholar a Roman
Krater, see Robertson pl. 87c. For Acr. 644, see Dickins copy of a work by the young Pheidias and by another the
186-87; Brouskari 100; AMA 246-47, no. 325, suggests it is work of Onatas; see G. Dontas, "Un' opera del giovane
possibly pre-Persian, since there are traces of burning above Fidia?" ASAtene 37-38 (1959-1960) 309-20, and J. Ddrig
the right eye. For Acr. 634, see Dickins 179-80 (dated late in J. Boardman et al., The Art and Architecture of Ancient
fifth century!); Brouskari 98; and AMA 136-37, no. 110. Greece (London 1967) 278. The alacrity with which schol-
Payne does not include it. ars have attributed the bronze warriors from Riace to such
84 See AMA 140, no. 117 and pl. 105 (top). It is suggested sculptors as Pheidias or Onatas, or the bronze victor in the
that the head may be from a cult statue, but the evidence is Getty Museum to Lysippos, even though no Pheidian, Ona-
slight. tan, or Lysippan originals otherwise survive to compare
8' See Brouskari 128-29; AMA 202-203, no. 307; and Ka- them to, suggests the urge is still going strong. There were
rusos (supra n. 66) 55 (H4, "nach 480"). Ridgway 1977, 76 hundreds, perhaps thousands, of large bronzes created in the
Kritios Boy to the Since

great FurtwAngler,
Early Classica
tios, or to the artistic team of which
the attribution K
has b
have been the dominant partner,
as possible, is
from com
scholars today jection,
would with
not find conside
very har
evidenceis simply Dickins, the
not there: no"attribu
origina
by Kritios and Nesiotes survive;
his school as far
cannot be
they worked only concurs;
in bronze, Charbonnea
not marb
boy himself
masterpiece, the group just be
of the tyrannic
ton and Harmodiosonly
(fig. accepts
3), is known on
the attr
al Roman that vary
tios, but copies
among
also adds thth
whose style
thus not
lieving itbeis, may
complete
if not a
faithful to the original."88
then at leastStill,
a if it c
produ
tained that the Kritios Boy is
Wedeking by Kritio
finds it dif
Kritios
are grounds for believing himself,
that it may but
at
influenced by his style, and at
the copies ofmost
Harmo ha
his workshop. Thethe statue
Kritios could
Boy, inwell
oth
really be Kritian after all. Many others
shop.92
tionship
And this is all that between
Furtwangler, who t
suggested its connection
without with the Har
necessarily t
nally claimed for lem
the of
statue: "Die ausse
attribution.93
Simplicitat und Gebundenheit
cal, denying the der B
anat
Stellung der Tyrannenmorter, die des
attributing them no
works by such artists
artistasor
Myron]
school noch
but t
gelt, lasst entire
wol [sic] era. Thus,
schliessen, dass Rid
der
den ruhig stehenden Korper
tion, in assignin
that of verwan
handelt haben wfirde wie
siotes] es Kritian
the der unser
Bo
it except
Ein Schulzusammenhang the
ware genera
also mbg
nun vollkommen sicher, dass wir in je
from bronze.""9
der TyrannenmorderThe von Kritios
Kritios un
Boy wo
01. 75, 4 besassen, so without
does kinnte the
man in
exa
Statue ein
spdtres matter
[sic] Werk
how derselben
importa
muthen."''89 in our histories
Furtwangler of cla
made this Gr
article in which hekeepargued that
in mind the Acr
pos
longed to the Kritios
tentBoy
an torso (fig.
imitative wor8)
able, if not strange, that he could
completely at onc
derivative
a join and make suchposeanituncanny attri
exemplifies w
not stone-that,
it. At all events, when the true head in ca
ot
case was considerably strengthened,
statues bu
like it, in bro
to ascribe the statue only to Kritios
its sculptor had mad or
fifth century alone: statistically, "1 Dickins 265; Lippold (supra the odds
n. 32) 106-107; of
J. Char-
nal by one of the masters canonized
bonneaux et al., Classical Greek Art (New Yorkin the
1972) 101;
are just not very great. F. Chamoux, L'Aurige (FdD IV.5, Paris 1955) 78-80.
88The basic work on Kritios and Nesiotes remains Chamoux's attribution is criticized by Ridgway 1970, 33.
S. Brunnsiker, The Tyrant-Slayers of Kritios and Nesiotes 92 Homann-Wedeking 203 and 212, n. 2.
(Stockholm 1971), who is not optimistic that the various Ro-
93 See, e.g., Schuchhardt, AMA 194-95, and Brunnsdker
man copies are accurate reflections of their style (81-82).
(supra n. 88) 142. Payne 44 notes only "the resemblance of
See also Ridgway 1970, 79-83; Raubitschek 513-17; and
the style of head and body to that of the Tyrant-Slayers."
now W.-H. Schuchhardt and C. Landwehr, "Statuenkopien 94 See A. Della Seta, Il nudo nell'arte I (Rome 1930)
der Tyrannenm6rder-Gruppe," JdI 101 (1986) 85-126. 148-49.
89 Furtwangler 34. 95 Ridgway 1970, 80. Also see Robertson 176, who, while
90 Furtwangler (supra n. 43) 132, 150. The similarities
noting anatomical similarities, concludes that the "resem-
between the new head and the head of the copy of Harmo-
blance of the Kritian boy to the Tyrannicide-copies is hardly
dios in Naples had, in fact, already been noted by T. So-
such as to justify its attribution to Kritios or the shadowy
Nesiotes, but it cannot be far removed from them in date."
phoules, "Mvrn/AE^a EK ri~ 'AKpour&dAEos.," ArchEph 1888,
85-87.
are still traces

bronze, before, and when assessing the originality of of a bronze rod that may ha
ported
the Kritios Boy it is important to realize that a meniskos,
there is a fig. 28)99 and looking as if t
difference between a sculptor who worked onlyor
engraved inchased as much as carved (fig. 15)
marble imitating other sculptors' bronzes its
and a sculp-
contrastingly thick locks rolled over the circl
tor who worked in both media applying they the lessons
had been molded separately, and with its
relief
and transferring the virtues of the one to the curls and fine wisps of hair clinging to the
other.
it is universally
In any case, most of the features that demonstrate at assumed to be something that
least a dependence on bronze prototypes, and
sculptorpossibly
of bronzes or a marble sculptor trying t
authorship by an artist more used to that creatingother in medium would have naturally style
bronze, are well known. The scale of the statue--
fig. 30).100
roughly two-thirds or three-quarters life-size, de- of the Kritios Boy was no mere
Still, the sculptor
hack translator
pending on one's conception of life-size for an early of bronze to marble, and he was sensi-
fifth-century youth-was a popular one for tive to detail:
late Ar- each strand of hair has its own volume
chaic and Early Classical bronzes: the Livadhostro
(most are individually ridged) and the tops of the boy's
Poseidon (dated as early as ca. 500 or as late as ca.
ears are pushed460 down and out by the thickness of the
B.C.) is about the same height, the bronze Zeus
rolls from
of hair (figs. 10-11). To say that the Kritios Boy
Olympia (ca. 500 B.C.) would have been was only a little
in many ways dependent upon bronze precedents
shorter.96 The originally glossy, polished or surface of techniques does not necessarily di-
imitates bronze
the Kritios Boy (figs. 2, 20), and the relatively soft
minish the or
skills or the originality of its sculptor, nor,
fluid rendering of the musculature, which contrasts
of course, does it mean that he was dependent specifi-
with the sharp linearity typical of the surfaces
cally uponofthe ear-
bronze statuary of Kritios and Nesiotes
lier marble youths, almost certainly imitate theworkshop.
or their gleam But the old attribution should not
and light-diffusing power of bronze.97 The eyes, out
be dismissed of of hand as some 19th-century shot in
course, were inserted in another material,the asdark.
wasItnor-may be that the anatomical similarities
mal for large-scale bronzes.98 Finally, the elaborate
between the torso of the Kritios Boy and that of the
coiffure: with its strands of hair sinuouslyNaplesradiating
Harmodios (fig. 3) are only of a general sort,
from the top of the crown (where, incidentally,
and are notthere
striking enough to support the attribution
96 The Poseidon stands 1.18 m tall, as opposed to the Kri- looked like when they were fully painted), the Greek eye
tios Boy's original height of about 1.24 or 1.25 m; for the Li- may have been so used to meniskoi that, in fact, they went
vadhostro bronze, see Finn and Houser (supra n. 30) 45-49. more or less unnoticed. On the other hand, no meniskoi sur-
Boardman, Classical 53 and fig. 36, dates the Poseidon to vive, which is a little troubling, and it is just as possible that
around 460. The head of the Olympia Zeus as preserved is the Kritios Boy and many other youths simply sported shar-
0.17 m, suggesting an original height for the entire figure of a pened spikes on their heads to keep the birds away. In a
little more than a meter; see P.C. Bol, Grossplastik aus paper entitled "The Role of Metal in Stone Sculpture," de-
Bronze in Olympia (OlForsch IX, Berlin 1978) 10-12, pls. livered at a symposium on marble held at the J. Paul Getty
3-5 (no. 3), and Finn and Houser (supra n. 30) 34. Museum on 29 April 1988, B. Ridgway questioned the real-
97 See Ridgway 1958, 318. Also, R.R. Holloway, Influ- ity of meniskoi, suggesting that many bronze rods supported
ences and Styles in the Late Archaic and Early Classical ornaments or attributes instead of umbrellas or crescents
Greek Sculptures of Sicily and Magna Graecia (Louvain ("little moons").
1975) 28. It is worth noting that a similar sheen or gloss is oo00 The wavy hair above the circlet is sometimes said to be
present on a few late Archaic statues: the neck, arm, and feet very similar to the hair of the Nike of Kallimachos (Acr.
of the Euthydikos kore (Acr. 686), e.g., are well polished, 690), dated just after Marathon; see Robertson 176. In fact,
though her face is not. the Nike's hair is wavier still and is combed in sections of
98 The Kritios Boy was not, of course, the earliest Acropo- four or five strands, very like the groups of folds over her
lis marble to have its eyes inlaid: the Antenor kore right shoulder and arm. More like the Kritios Boy's wavy
(Acr. 681) had eyes of rock-crystal, and crystal or glass filled hair is that of the fine bronze athlete (a jumper) from the
the pupils of the Moschophoros as well. Bronze statues may Acropolis in the National Museum (N.M. 6445); see Rich-
certainly have inspired the inlaid eyes of the kore, but in the ter, 138, no. 162, and figs. 474-77, and R. Thomas, Athle-
case of the much earlier Calf-Bearer I wonder whether imi-
tenstatuetten der Spiitarchaik und des Strengen Stils (Rome
tation of another medium was really the major factor. 1981) 130 and pl. 81.
99 The rod was 1 cm in diameter. For meniskoi, see The channels between the rolls of hair over the circlet are
J. Maxmin, "Meniskoi and the Birds," JHS 95 (1975) deeply drill-cut; see S. Adam, The Technique of Greek
175-80, and R.M. Cook, "A Supplementary Note on Me- Sculpture in the Archaic and Classical Periods (BSA Suppl.
niskoi," JHS 96 (1976) 153-54. While it is difficult for us to 3, Oxford 1966) 46. This was done, it seems, to approximate
imagine Greek statues actually sporting such parasol-like the effects of certain bronze hairstyles in which individual
contraptions on their heads (it is the same kind of difficulty locks were cast separately.
we have imagining what our white marble sculptures really
in and of themselves.10' of the two heads-the low crown of the skull,

Certainly the rela-
Lucian
have had a statue like tively flat
the back ofKritios
the head, the U-shaped
Boy face, the
in m
he described the works of Kritios and Nesiotes as smooth full cheeks, the strong rounded chin, the low
"compact and sinewy and hard and precisely dividedforehead and sharp boundary with the cap of hair
above, the ridged arcs of the eyebrows, and so on-
into parts by lines."'102 Still, one can rather easily ac-
count for the differences (the greater tautness andseem to me too close to be dismissed merely as the re-
power of Harmodios's musculature, for example, or sult of contemporaneity or some pervasive Early Clas-
its sharper definition) by citingithe different ages and sical style (the Kritios Boy and the Blond Boy, after
all, were probably created within just a few years of
actions of the two subjects: one a softer boy of, say, 15,
standing at rest, thinking thoughts to himself, theeach other, and no one would attribute them to the
other a mature youth (he has looked to some to be same hand), and the case is strengthened still more if
about 20 years old) striding mightily to kill-and this one imagines Harmodios's eyes as hollow and as dark
is to say nothing of the fact that we are in one caseas the Kritios Boy's. All this, of course, is subjective,
dealing with a Roman copy and in another with but a the attribution of the Kritios Boy to the same
fifth-century original.103 That Kritios and Nesiotesschool that produced the original head of Harmodios
is at least defensible, and those who object to it must
were noted for their action figures'14 is also no reason
to discount a link with the quiet Kritios Boy: at leastadmit that attributions have been made and widely ac-
one of their six signed bases on the Acropolis sup-
cepted on weaker grounds than these.
ported a figure (possibly an Athena) standing at Even if a close relationship between Acropolis 698
and the Tyrannicides were to be accepted by all, how-
rest.105 And while Kritios and Nesiotes are not known
ever, the problem of date would still remain: the mar-
to have worked in marble, it is not impossible that they
did: Antenor, the maker of the first Tyrannicides
ble and the original bronzes were created within too
monument, worked in both media, and marble figures
short a time for us to determine priority on the basis of
might have stood on two Acropolis bases signed by style.'09 A similarity to Harmodios, in other words,
Kritios and Nesiotes (they are too fragmentary to tell does not prove a date for the Kritios Boy around or
what stood upon them).106 after 477/6. Although no work by Kritios and Nesio-
But the best argument for characterizing the Kritios tes can be securely dated before 480,110 Athens was not
Boy as Kritian is the head of Harmodios in New Yorklikely to have awarded the important new Tyranni-
(fig. 24), sadly damaged but nonetheless a more sensi- cides commission to two novices: the partnership had
tive, less austere rendering of the young lover than thesurely made a name for itself before 480. The creation
copy in Naples.'07 Set side by side and viewed from in marble of a work in their style a few years before its
the same angle, the New York head and the somewhat monumentalization and, apparently, its culmination
smaller head of the Kritios Boy (fig. 25) bear an ex-in the Tyrannicides-even before the Persian destruc-
tremely strong family resemblance.'08 The structures tion of the Acropolis-remain, then, theoretically pos-
'01 In the summer of 1985 the Naples Tyrannicides were on Raubitschek 515.
display in the National Museum in Athens, so that, if the 105 Raubitschek 178 and 516, no. 160 (dated shortly after
Kritios Boy and the Harmodios could still not be compared 480). This base, until recently located west of the Agrippa
side by side, they could at least be seen the same afternoon.Monument, has now been moved inside the Acropolis Mu-
Though there are differences in anatomical detail (in the seum and placed next to the Kritios Boy.
rendering of the nipples, for example), I was indeed struck106 Raubitschek 516, nos. 122 and 161.
by general similarities in structure and style. 107 See BrunnsXker (supra n. 88) 69-71.
102 Rhetor. Praecept. 9 (trans. J.J. Pollitt). 108 See also Homann-Wedeking pl. 81.
103 As BrunnAsker (supra n. 88) 65, points out, Harmo-109 Of those who believe in or at least do not object to the
association between the Kritios Boy and the Tyrannicides,
dios's musculature is still not as developed or as hard as that
of the older Aristogeiton. Whatever their relationship, thesePayne 44 n. 3, and Schuchhardt, AMA 279, believe the boy
three statues together rather nicely represent three distinctis stylistically earlier than the assassins. Payne is positive
stages of life: boyhood, youth, middle-age. The pubes ofthat Harmodios and Aristogeiton are "more advanced in
Harmodios are, as Brunnsaker notes, fully developed,
style, a fact which supports the pre-Persian date (sometimes
whereas the Kritios Boy lacks pubic hair, suggesting, per- doubted) of the Acropolis statue." Homann-Wedeking 203,
haps, adolescence. But pubes are also absent on earlier, cer-
on the other hand, dates the Kritios Boy a little later than the
tainly more mature youths (the Anavyssos kouros, for exam- Tyrannicides (after 477/6), as does Furtwangler 34.
ple), so their presence or absence may not be an entirely reli-
110 Raubitschek 516 admits the possibility that his nos. 122
able indication of age. Perhaps pubes were painted as well and 161 could date before the Persian destruction, since they
as carved. were apparently found in Perserschutt. See also BrunnsAker
104 Kritios's statue of Epicharinos, seen by Pausanias (supra n. 88) 136.
(1.23.9), was apparently also an active or violent one; see
Fig. 24. Head of Harmodios, Roman copy. (Courtesy Fig.

Met-25. Head of Kritios Boy. (Photo: J. Hurwit)
ropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1926 [26.60.1])
sible, though it is perhaps easier to imagine theheadpro-

to the right and its gentle tilt downward, the con
duction of "Kritian" works like Acropolis 698 vexin chest
the seemingly filled with deeply inhaled air, th
aftermath of the great dedication of 477/6. Butnatural
conclu-response of musculature to shifts in position
sive evidence is lacking, and the attribution of the Kri- features combine on a statue that for us, at
all these
tios Boy to the school or tradition of Kritios and Nesio-
least, represents the complete rejection of the schemat
tes-no matter how plausible it might be-is, like so
ic, foursquare kouros as the proper vehicle for display-
much else, only an equivocal criterion for date.
ing the standing male nude. It is possible that the Kr
tios Boy, with its incipient contrapposto, represents an
Style: Stance and the Leagros Base evolutionary rather than a revolutionary change, and
The pose of the Kritios Boy is unquestionably
few the
of its innovations had been seen individually be
most important thing about it. The advanced fore:
and re-
a number of earlier statues (including some kou
laxed right leg (the right kneecap is about 10 cm
roi inkorai) had stood with their right foot forwar
and
front of the left), the straight (but not perfectly verti-of their left;"'1 others, such as Acropolis 692
instead
cal) weight-bearing left leg, the hips slanting (fig.
marked-
6), had bent their knees and even slightly turne
ly downward to the figure's right, the gentle their
curve heads.
of There is a kind of torsion in a number
the upper body back again to the left, the turn of of the whose heads, shoulders, and trunks rotat
kouroi
I ' See W. Deonna, "Un 'kouros' archaique au Musee

forwardde stance. See also Ridgway (supra n. 48) 6-7.
Geneve," BCH 75 (1951) 38-54, pls. 1-5, and Richter
A heavy-set youth from Samos (Vathy Museum 77) als
no. 90, figs. 288-90 (Geneva, inv. 19175). Onehad
case
itsinright leg placed slightly before the left (it seem
bronze is the Piraeus Apollo; see Richter no. 159bis, fig.
almost relaxed as well), but the date assigned to this torso
478. Another (if it truly dates before the Kritios Boy) is the seems based on the assumption of a pre-Persia
(490-480)
Livadhostro Poseidon; see Finn and Houser (supra daten. 30)the Kritios Boy; see B. Freyer-Schauenberg, Samo
for
45-49, Boardman, Classical, fig. 36, and Robertson 180.
XI: Bildwerke der archaischen Zeit und des Strengen Stil
Acropolis kore 672 also stands with her right foot (Bonn
advanced;
1974) 207-10, no. 139, and pls. 86-87. The Samia
see AMA 90-91, no. 42 and pl. 59. Perhaps, asyouth Deonna might instead be, as Robertson 180 has suggested
argues, such "deviants" were all originally part of groups,
"the effort of a conventional kouros-carver to catch up wit
and mirrored or balanced figures with the normal,the
leftnew ideas."
foot
around the
axis, vertical
and
the angles of the right leg some
and left arm; thekouroi
outward e
a sharp upon curve of the chest rectangular
angle
their and stomach is echoed in the curve ofbases
the left thigh; the angle of
not all as purely foursquare as the bent
they right knee may
is re- se
peated in the
no earlier extant statue angle of the smalllike
stands of the back.theThe play Krit
of curve, countercurve, and angleso
no earlier sculptor understood itself lends
well the con- how
tour of theplay
pose should affect the statue an unprecedented energy and live-
of musculatur
example, the buttock of the weight-bearing
taut and higher, and that of the relaxed le
lower (fig. 23).113 Thus some scholars spe
Greek sculpture is "unfrozen" with the Kr
how it is "like a sigh of relief for the history
artists, statues, and art historians alike
somehow, relax.114
The KritiosBoy does not present the ultim
sical solution to the problem of the weigh
figure: most (though not all) Classical youth
their head toward the straight, weight-
(left or right), not toward the bent, relaxed
the kind of response between the Kritios B
less straight right arm and straight left
tween the bent left arm and bent right le
kind of balance that will be struck later in the chiastic
or fully contrapposto stance of statues like the Dory-
phoros of Polykleitos.116 But it is clear that the in-
ward-looking Kritios Boy also looks (figuratively) for-
ward rather than back, that it has more in common
formally and spiritually with High Classical statues
created decades later than with kouroi carved just a
few years before. One of those things is its propor-
tions, another the shape of its torso, which in cross-
section is closer to that of the Doryphoros than, say, to
that of Acropolis 692 (fig. 26).117 Yet another is its
potential or imminent motion. The Kritios Boy is, in a
way, a deceptive work. From the front (fig. 1), it ap-
pears completely at rest, space-shy, its upper body, at
least, immobile; it is quiet in its asymmetry, its turned
head focussing our attention on the looseness of its
right side and away from the tension of its left. It is
only in profile view-above all, left profile (fig. 27)-
that the statue reveals a rather powerful forward lean,
a surprising spatial depth, and an elegantly conceived Fig. 26. Cross-sections of chests of (from top) Acropolis 692,
rhythm. The bold semicircle of the torso and the Kritios Boy, and Doryphoros compared. (Drawing by Jan
greater arc that runs from the thrown-back shoulders Reed, after Hiller, Formgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur
down the torso to the lost left foot were buttressed by griechischen Statuen, figs. 70, 71, 75)
112 See I. Kleemann, Friihe Bewegung: Untersuchungen buttock lower than the left; see Payne, pl. 108.3.
zur archaischen Form bis zum Aufkommen der Ponderation 114 Boardman, Archaic 85.
in der griechischen Kunst (Mainz 1984). The deflection 115 Robertson 329. One Classical youth who does not is the
from the vertical axis is most clear from above, which is, of Polykleitan Westmacott athlete; see Boardman, Classical,
course, not the usual viewpoint. The great kouros from Sou- fig. 187.
nion (N.M. 2720) is just one example of a statue that was 116 See Ridgway 1981, 202-204 and fig. 128.
intentionally set obliquely upon its base. 117 See F. Hiller, Formgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur
113 The Kritios Boy's right buttock descends 3 cm below his griechischen Statuen (Mainz 1971) 41-42, figs. 70, 71, and
left. The sculptor of Acr. 692 wrongly positioned the right 75.
still close to the body, from the remains of ov

on the thighs (the struts would have joined the
the wrists)."11 The precise positions of th
themselves are, of course, unknown, but th
must have hung loose and the left may h
clenched (one would like to know whether it
something). The position of the feet-specific
right foot-is slightly more problematic. The
much space between the legs of the Kritios B
seen from the front (fig. 1), and his right
turned inward in a way that suggests the low
leg was splayed gently outward. As a result,
tually certain that the feet of the statue were
an angle, rather than parallel. And though t
knee is considerably advanced, the right foot
have been placed more than a few centimeter
the left. It is, moreover, generally and rightly
that both feet were flat on the ground: the be
knee (the angle is about 300) is not so great a
mand that the right heel be raised."19 A hum
can, in fact, comfortably approximate the po
Kritios Boy while resting the right foot on its
he can do so with both soles flat. But whether a human
being can mimic the Kritios Boy is beside the point
because the Kritios Boy need not mimic human
beings: the Kritios Boy is not a boy but a statue, and
could stand any way his sculptor liked.120 Moreover,
the raised heel is an innovation that seems to have
come in only with the rise of the Polykleitan style

around 450 or 440: as far as I know, no non- narrative
or Deutsches
Fig. 27. Kritios Boy, left profile. (Courtesy non-action Late
Ar-Archaic or Early Classical marble
chdiologisches Institut, Athens) or bronze figure, standing at rest without external
support, stands without the soles of both feet firmly on
liness. The Kritios Boy is, perhaps, notthe
caught in the
ground.121 The position of the legs and feet of the
act of walking the way the Doryphoros is, Boy,
Kritios but in heshort,
is may have closely resembled that
of many
heading in the same direction, as it were. youths seen
Standing at on late Archaic and Early Classi-
cal vases (such
rest, he has a greater potential for movement as the victor, wrapped with fillets, on a
than
kouroi shown taking powerful strides. small neck-amphora by Douris in the Hermitage), or
We can guess how the lost arms were
(inpositioned,
reverse) that of Early Classical bronzes like the so-
118 For the dimensions of the struts, see Appendix. the ground (and, incidentally, with traces of burning)-
119 See AMA 191 ("beide Fiisse standen ohne Fragen mit
really belongs to him; see AMA 198-99, fig. 188. The foot is
voller Sohle auf") and Ridgway 1970, 31. Carpenter (supra
assigned to the boy because of a similarity in scale and mar-
ble, but with so little between the head and toes surviving
n. 1) 104, believes that the Kritios Boy raised his right foot
(there are powerful, slanting hips [Acr. 6478] that might be-
on its toes, though he is virtually alone in that opinion. The
long, too, though the scale does not seem to me quite right),
300 angle is the angle of the presumed line of the right shin
away from the pure vertical. there can be no great confidence in the connection, and the
120 I am reminded of Matisse's famous reply when told by foot
a could just as well have belonged to a late Archaic action
figure. The Blond Boy himself may not have been the same
visitor to his studio that the arm of a woman he was painting
was much too long: "You are mistaken: this is not a woman, kind of figure as the Kritios Boy, in any case. Payne 46 sug-
this is a picture." See H. Matisse, "Notes d'un peintre sur gests the Blond Boy's "right shoulder was raised, possibly
son dessin," Le Point 4:21 (1939) 14 (quoted in E. Gom- that the arm was outstretched." Could he have been holding
brich, Art and Illusion [Princeton 1961] 115). something aloft, like the bronze statuette of a diskophoros in
121 An exception may have been the Blond Boy, if New York (Robertson, fig. 68d)?
Acr. 424a-a fragmentary right foot with its heel raised off
Fig. 28. Reconstruction of Kritios B
called Adrano Youth,at an

or, angle. For
especially, a lon
that of
classicizing creations like the
thought Stephanos
to date, prima
Figure 28
offers onethe years reconstructio
possible between 490
footed Kritios
Boy. mous 7rai~ Kahds of th
The late thirties
stance of the Kritios or early
Boy may f
also ha
bled that of the bronze statue
have been that
robbed of its statue once
when Persians visited stood
set against the west the side
Agora and absconded
of the with other bronzes (suchof
Altar as t
Gods in the Athenian Antenor's original Tyrannicides)
Agora, the in 480.123 And
base as
inscr
top with the wordslong "Leagros, sonto of
as the Leagros base was thought Glauk
date to those
cated [this] to the twelve gods"
years, the cuttings on the top were(fig. 29).
used as evidence for C
dowels atop the base the indicate
appearance of the innovative
that free-leg,
the weight-miss
most scholars supposeshiftingitposerepresented
in independent sculpture before a thevict
lete-stood with his Persian
right destruction.
leg Thus, advanced
a lost bronze statue whose and
122 For the Douris vase (Leningrad inv. 5576), see ARV2others, evokes the Severe Style, see P. Zanker, Klassizisti-
446, no. 263, and D. Buitron, Douris (Diss. New York sche Statuen (Mainz 1974) 49-54 and pls. 42.1, 43.1.
Univ. 1976) no. 117 (dated 490-480); a good illustration is 123 See B.D. Meritt, "Greek Inscriptions," Hesperia 5
found in N. Yalouris, The Eternal Olympics: The Art and (1936) 357-59; M. Crosby, The Altar of the Twelve Gods in
History of Sport (New Rochelle, N.Y. 1976) 135, fig. 56. Athens (Hesperia Suppl. 8, 1949) 94-95, 98 (Crosby notes
For the Adrano Youth, see E. Langlotz and M. Hirmer, that the statue seems to have been removed with some care);
The Art of Magna Graecia (London 1965) pls. X, 84-85. H.A. Thompson and R.E. Wycherley, Agora XIV: The
For the Stephanos Athlete, a Roman work that, like many Agora of Athens (Princeton 1972) 132.
only traces are tracks left in stone took the Kritios rion
Boy for a pre-Persian dating of the Kritios Boy, the
with it, back to the last few years of the Archaic peri-
Leagros base can no longer be used as evidence. The
od.124 But epigraphical grounds are often no more pose of the Kritios Boy, in short, is otherwise unat-
precise or objective than stylistic grounds-rather,tested before 480. A question thus begins to loom large
epigraphical grounds are stylistic grounds, the style
foristhose who would argue that the statue is both pre-
just that of letters rather than figures-and it has Persian
re- and stylistically derivative: derivative, pre-
cently been pointed out that the kind of circled theta
cisely, of what?
seen in the inscription is otherwise unknown before
the 470s.125 The pre-Persian date for the base andStyle:
its The Kritian Association
missing statue has lately been effectively challenged
There are a number of fifth-century originals in
on archaeological grounds as well: it is possible, in bronze and marble, and a number of Roman cop-
both
fact, that the Leagros base was not even moved toies,
its reworkings, or pastiches of fifth-century originals,
present location beside the Altar of the Twelve Gods
that are in some ways closely related to the Kritios Boy
until the late fifth century, and there would have been and that form part of its art historical, as opposed to its
little point in moving it at all unless the bronze figurearchaeological, context. The relationship, in each
atop it was still there.126 If it was still there, then, case,
ob- is not necessarily a dependent one: an associated
viously, it could not have been stolen by Persians, work
and from early fifth-century Selinus or even Athens
if it was not stolen by Persians, there is no reasonitself
to is (in the opinion of most scholars) not likely to
date it before 480. One of the principal students ofhave
the copied or been inspired by a marble statue that
Agora, conceding uncertainty, now dates the base only
itself presumably relies on bronze prototypes, and the
to the years between 490-470.127 Once a major crite-
Romans obviously could not have copied a statue that
had lain buried in the soil of the Acropolis for about
300 years before Mummius sacked Corinth. Still,
there is a constellation of works that seem to share
some of the same stylistic features (and perhaps even
the same sources) as the Kritios Boy, an association of
statues for which it provides a kind of focus or center.
Above all, the Kritios Boy attracts a number of extant
works to it by virtue of its hairstyle and its pose.
The hair of the Kritios Boy is cut short-not as
short as it will be later, on such figures as the Dory-
phoros, for example, but shorter than the hair of most
sixth-century kouroi (those overt emblems of aristo-
cracy), and shorter even than the hair of the Blond
Fig. 29. Leagros base, Athenian Agora. (Courtesy American
School of Classical Studies, Agora Excavations) Boy, if its long braids could be undone.128 Grooved
124 See, e.g., Harrison (supra n. 66) 10 n. 61. not certain that the youth is, in fact, a statue; and he stands
125 E.D. Francis and M. Vickers, "Leagros Kalos," PCPS
in any case upon a stepped base-the Leagros base is a sin-
27 (1981) 97-136, dispute the pre-Persian date on epi-
gle block of marble (a rough-finished band at its bottom
graphical and historical grounds, not only raising the prob-
would not have been visible above ground level). M. Guar-
lem with the kind of theta inscribed on the Leagros baseducci,
but "Note di epigrafia attica arcaica 4, Leagros," ASAtene
also arguing, unconvincingly in my opinion, that the chro-
3-5 (1941-1943) 128-33, argues the similarities between
nology of Leagros and thus of Attic vase-painting should be scene on the cup and the Leagros base are adventitious,
the
revised radically downward. They believe Leagros was as I believe they are. R. T6lle-Kastenbein, "Bemerkungen
KaXoe around 480, not around 510 or 505, which is zur theabsoluten Chronologie spitarchaischer und friihklassi-
usual view. Their particular epigraphical arguments can be Denkmiler Athens," AA 1983, 573-84, takes a middle
scher
accepted, however, without accepting their general art path
his- and suggests a date of around 495-485 for Leagros's
torical conclusions, which depend on an unnecessary con-
kalos-period.
nection between Leagros, his base, and a cup, by the Kiss
126 L.M. Gadbery has recently reexamined the stratigraphy
Painter, inscribed AEAFPOl KAAOI and usually dated
and pottery from the excavation of the Altar, and has con-
about 510-500 (their pl. 1; a good illustration is found in
cluded that its peribolos (against which the Leagros base
Yalouris [supra n. 122] 138, fig. 57). The cup, they argue,
was set) was constructed only in the late fifth century; see
shows Leagros as a boy victor, standing on a base like"Moving
the the Leagros Base," AJA 90 (1986) 194.
lost bronze youth, and was inspired by and thus should date
127 J.M. Camp, The Athenian Agora (London 1986) 40.
after the Leagros dedication. The connection has little128
to For ancient male hairstyles in general, see RE VII
recommend it except its ingenuity. There is no reason to (1912)
as- 2112-24.
sume the KaXdO-inscription refers to the depicted youth; it is
into the dome, yet with

and remains fashionableeachthroughoutstrandthe Early Classi- g
volume, the
hair suddenly
cal period. becomes thick
enough to be loopedHairstyles
in exactly
sections over
like the Kritios Boy's are, how- and
ring or circlet: the ever,
22 bundles
remarkably hard to find. A relatedof hair,
but not iden- eac
of six to eight tical treatmentresemble
strands, appears, for example, on thelittle
head of tire
It is a less than flattering coiffure,
the bronze youth (N.M. 6590) found during the same and
vorce the dome from the
excavations that face-the
yielded the torso of the Kritios Boy in two p
head do not have much to do with each other. Below 1865-1866 (fig. 30). The work has been dated as early
the ring the hair once again becomes flat, adhering to
as the 480s, but, like the Kritios Boy, it did not come
the temples and nape in 10 low-relief wisps and sixout of any clear deposit of Persian debris, and has re-
tight curls, arranged not quite symmetrically over the
cently been dated on stylistic grounds as late as 460.132
Here the hair, radiating down from the crown in
nape (fig. 12). It should be stressed that the hair orna-
ment is, in fact, a ring (round in section, varying in
groups of two or three wavy strands, is combed for-
diameter from about 0.8-1.1 cm) and not, as it is ward, parted over the forehead, and then swept back
sometimes said to be, a fillet (i.e., a flat ribbon tiedobliquely over the ring in two wide streams. This is
round the head) like those worn by many Archaic
quite different from the hairstyle of the Kritios Boy,
kouroi, by such roughly contemporary victors as the
where locks are wrapped individually (and vertically)
Delphic Charioteer, and, later, by works like Acro-over the ring and are spaced rather evenly all around.
Moreover, the hair of the bronze youth is not rolled
polis 699 (fig. 7). Since there is no evidence of a knot,
completely around the ring as on the Kritios Boy (the
the ring is presumably meant to be of metal, and not to
be a cord or rope. roll stops just behind the ears and the hair is tucked up
Such rings are not common in sculpture before
in a Kpwo/3UXos, or bun, behind his neck), and the locks
480,129 and when they occur they are often found on are articulated by shallow grooves rather than by the
the heads of gods or heroes. The bronze Poseidon from
deeply drilled troughs of the marble youth.133 The
Livadhostro and the bronze Zeus from Olympia, forhair roll of the bronze youth is, then, so different in
example, wear such rings (though their hair is not
conception from and so much less plastic than that of
rolled over them), and it has been suggested that these
the Kritios Boy that the sculptor of the marble youth
"tubular diadems" may signify divine sovereignty.130
could not possibly have been trying to imitate a bronze
coiffure like that one. Hair rolls became popular
Another tubular circlet appears on the head that now
sits atop the shoulders of Theseus in the Minotaur around or after 480, but there were clearly many dif-
metope from the Athenian Treasury at Delphi, dat-ferent types. The post-Archaic marble kouros from
able to around 490.131 But the Kritios Boy's kind of
Agrigento, for example, has his hair rolled over a ring,
coiffure-the ring continuously looped with hair-
too, but only at the back behind the ears (a practice
that has Archaic precedents), and the locks are not
comes into vogue, it appears, only around or after 480,
129 Richter 149, who is not alone in mistaking the ornament (supra n. 125) 577 (Table 1). A pre-Salamis date for the
on the head of the Kritios Boy for a fillet (cf. Boardman, Kritios Boy might, in that case, pose some difficulties for
Classical 26), catalogues only a few examples of kouroi with scholars (art historical Darwinists?) who imagine a constant
such rings: no. 140 (Acr. 653, a marble head with what evolution or progression of style through time: could, e.g.,
Richter calls "a rounded fillet"); no. 157 (a long-haired Athenian artists have created both the stylistically heteroge-
bronze statuette, with a "thick, notched fillet," from the neous (and sometimes old-fashioned) Treasury sculptures
Ptoan sanctuary and possibly representing Apollo); and and the Kritios Boy within so few years of each other? The
no. 175 (another long-haired bronze statuette dedicated to problem is not insuperable: there is always the ready answer
Apollo). Youths on contemporary vases too numerous to of "the problem of generations," and it is possible that the
mention also wear something circular on their heads, but it course of stylistic development was punctuated, in a non-
is often hard to tell whether a cord, ring, or fillet is meant. Darwinian fashion, by great leaps forward. But those who
130 See Bol (supra n. 96) pls. 3-5, and Houser and Finn date the Treasury after 490 may instinctively wish to date
(supra n. 30) 34, 45. For more on diadems and fillets, see the Kritios Boy after 480 nonetheless, and that is precisely
A. Krug, Binden in der griechischen Kunst (Diss. Mainz what T6lle-Kastenbein's table, which generally lowers late
1967). Archaic absolute chronology by 10 to 15 years, does.
131 See P. de la Coste-Messeliere, FdD IV.4: Sculptures du 132 Supra n. 30.
Tresor des Atheniens (Paris 1957) 196-201, pls. 75-76, 133 A similar coiffure is found on the head of a terracotta
no. 33. Scholars are increasingly ready to accept Pausanias's goddess from Tarentum, dated to the second half of the fifth
statement (10.11.5) that the Athenian Treasury was built century; see C.C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman
after Marathon, in the 480s; see, e.g., T6lle-Kastenbein Art (Boston 1963) 122 and fig. 114.
of the marble youth's bundles of rolled hair.

is ironic that when we find a nearly identical
on the Selinus youth, a roughly contemporar
original, the treatment of the hair is said to re
ble!137 The reason may be that the bronze wor
more derivative than the Kritios Boy is often
to be, and that it is "provincial" and "cr
arms, for example, seem much too puny for
Not many scholars, in any case, would be w
connect the two youths directly or envision
Selinuntine bronze caster visiting the Athen
Fig. 30. Bronze head of youth from Acropolis, Athens Na-

tional Museum inv. 6590. (Courtesy Deutsches Archiolo-
gisches Institut, Athens)
looped in sections.134 Although it apparently wears

another ring with a few strands twisted around it (its
state of preservation makes precise analysis difficult),
the marble head Acropolis 657, dated around 470, is
noteworthy primarily for the 45 bronze curls that
were originally inserted into the holes arranged over
its forehead (bronze still fills one hole).135
More like the Kritios Boy's coiffure is that of the
half life-size, hollow-cast bronze youth from a tomb at
Selinus (ca. 470), who also stands with his right foot
forward and his back arched (fig. 31).136 The Kritios
Boy's hair roll, again, is usually thought to imitate
(unconvincingly) bronze hairstyles in which individ-
ually cast locks were attached to the head:
Fig. that is sup-youth from Selinus. (Courtesy H
31. Bronze
toarchiv,
posed to explain the abrupt and incongruous Munich)
plasticity
134 Richter 145-46, no. 182, figs. 547-49. Ridgway

The Agrigento
1970, 59 n. 2.
136 See Ridgway
youth also stands with his right foot advanced. Langlotz and Hirmer (supra n. 122) 273 an
1970, 60 dates him around 470. E. Langlotz, "Die Ephe-
The youth was stolen from the Castelvetrano tow
benstatue in Agrigento," RM 58 (1943) 204-12,
1962 anddates
washim
returned in 1968. See also Holloway
as late as 460. Archaic kouroi occasionally97)
had 25their hair147-48; Richter 157, no. 192a, fig
and figs.
rolled up around a fillet in back; see, e.g.,
and,Richter
for the134,
technical history of the work, A. M
no. 155, and figs. 455-57 (Ptoan no. 20). "Der Ephebe von Selinunt: Untersuchungen und
ungen
135 For Acr. 657, which has been linked both ansasslich
to the Kritios seiner letzten Restaurierung,"
(1983) 44-60.
Boy and to the workshop of Kritios and Nesiotes, see Dick-
ins 194-95; K. Lange, "Zwei K6pfe von der137Akropolis in 1970, 41. One difference in the
See Ridgway
Athen," AM 7 (1882) 193-210; AMA 246, no. 324;
is that and youth wears a KpofVAXor at the
the Selinus
polis, being amazed only

at the
adopts Kritios
a variant of the Harmodian Boy,
stance in de- an
back home to Sicily to
fense imitate
against in
Artemis's hounds141 bronze
but also wears his w
seen (and perhaps sketched)
hair looped in bundles overon his
a ring in trave
precisely the
were, an Early Classical
same way as bothdating
the Selinus bronzefor the
and the Kritios
would be far more common than it is. But the simi- Boy. Aktaion's hairstyle, it might be thought, may
larities with the Kritios Boy in coiffure and to a degree simply be one instance of a general Early Classical
even in pose suggest that if the sculptor of the Selinusfashion as popular in the west as on the Greek main-
bronze did not know of the Acropolis marble, then atland. But, as we have seen, this is a rare kind of hair
least he knew of a statue very much like it. Despite theroll, and its presence here should alert us to a strong
distance between Athens and western Sicily, it is pos-stylistic association among the Selinus bronze youth,
sible that both the Kritios Boy and the Selinus youththe Temple E metopes, the Tyrannicides, and the
were dependent upon the same, lost statue or upon theKritios Boy.
products of a particular school. The bronze may be the The evidence is fairly clear, then, that the exact
"sort of uncouth, almost barbaric country cousin to kind of hairstyle the Kritios Boy displays, though gen-
[the metropolitan] Kritian Boy" that Robertson has uinely Early Classical, is not very common at all:142 it
called it,'38 but the marble and the bronze are at leastis not nearly so characteristic of the period as, say, the
cousins. And if the Kritios Boy is, like the Selinusplaited coiffure of the Blond Boy, the Artemiseion
bronze, post-Persian, they might be more than that.139bronze god, or, indeed, the Zeus in the 'Epb0 ydpaov
In this regard it is worth remembering that the metope from Temple E at Selinus. Moreover, when
Early Classical sculptors who were at work on hair rolls are imitated or eclectically combined with
Temple E at Selinus not long after the bronze youth other genuine Early Classical coiffures on such classi-
was cast (ca. 460) were very familiar with at least one cistic creations as the Apollo Citarista (or Mantua)
product of Kritios and Nesiotes. On one metope Hera- type or the Pylades type, the hair is swept forward,
kles, fighting an Amazon, wears his hair in the tightlyparted over the forehead, and rolled back in the man-
curled fashion of the Naples Harmodios, his facialner of the Acropolis bronze (fig. 30), not rolled sepa-
structure looks like Harmodios's, he lunges like Aris-rately and regularly all around the circlet as on the
togeiton, and he has draped a lionskin over his out- Kritios Boy.143 And when a specifically "Kritian" coif-
stretched left arm in the same way the older Tyranni-fure reappears on a herm depicted on the Neo-Attic
cide drapes his cloak (fig. 3).140 There can be no doubtLanckoronski relief in Richmond-the herm is possi-
of the Selinuntine sculptor's allusion to a famous bly a reflection of the Hermes Propylaios seen by Pau-
Athenian monument here, and so an allusion or debt sanias 144-it suggests not just that it was "an authen-
to an Athenian work like the Kritios Boy, if not to thetic early classical coiffure" (sculptors in early Roman
Kritios Boy itself, is hardly out of the question for thetimes were much enamored of the Severe Style) but
Selinus bronze youth. On another metope Aktaion notthat it was a special one, reserved for heroes or gods,
138 Robertson 212. For Charbonneaux (supra n. 91) 102,top of the skull like that of the Kritios Boy and N.M. 6590,
on the other hand, the Selinus/Castelvetrano bronze is "abut he wears neither ring nor fillet; see supra n. 100.
touchingly awkward transcription of the Critian Boy." For 143 See Zanker (supra n. 122) 54-58, 60, and pls. 46-49
others (e.g., P. Marconi, L'efebo di Selinunte [Rome 1929])(Pylades type) and 61-64 and pls. 54-55 (Apollo Citarista
it is a self-conscious assertion of anti-Classical sentiment.
type). The combination of hair roll and plait seen on the
139 Ridgway 1970, 57-58, argues that the Blond Boy "must Pylades type (though without a circlet) is also found on a
have been considered a masterpiece in its own time, and fragmentary plaster cast, apparently of a bronze original of
must have greatly influenced the production of different ca. 480-460, discovered at Baiae; see C. Landwehr, Die an-
areas. Several works bear a strong resemblance to the Acro- tiken Gipsabgiisse aus Baiae: Griechische Bronzestatuen in
polis head, another indication that it, or a similar work, Abgiissen rbmischer Zeit (Berlin 1985) 112-14, no. 68, and
must have been accessible for imitation after 480." If that pl. 65a. See also Boardman, Classical 26 and fig. 11. Ridg-
could be true for the marble Blond Boy, I wonder why it way (supra n. 48) 32 and n. 7, however, suggests that the
could not also be true for the Kritios Boy. chronological range of the bronze originals represented by
140 See Langlotz-Hirmer (supra n. 122) 281-82 and pls. the Baiae casts may extend down to around 100 B.C. (contra
100-101; W. Fuchs, "Zu den Metopen des Heraion von Se- Landwehr, who limits that range to the fifth and fourth cen-
linus," RM 63 (1956) 102-21; Holloway (supra n. 97) turies), and I wonder whether the cast with the combination
22-23; and Ridgway (supra n. 48) 7 and pls. 11-12. plait and roll might not, in fact, be of a bronze created long
141 Robertson 213, and pl. 69c. after the Early Classical period.
142 Ridgway 1970, 136, erroneously states that a hair roll 144 For the Lanckoronski relief, see Harrison (supra n. 66)
like the Kritios Boy's is found on the "Acropolis Jumper" 135 and pl. 65c-d, and Ridgway 1970, 110-11.
(N.M. 6445). His carefully incised hair radiates from the
and usually not for athletes, who typically torso)

wear fillets
and the one in Rome (Terme 652) are copi
the Kritios
or wreaths as symbols of their athletic ape-7r.145 Thus, Boy, albeit with the stance reversed
the old and unchallenged identification of left
the Kritios
leg is advanced instead of the right).149 This
Boy as a boy or ephebic victor in the Panathenaia
should not be taken for granted. It should be remem-
bered as well that the traditional identification was
first made (by Furtwingler) when the filleted head
Acropolis 699 (fig. 7) was thought to belong to the
torso (cf. fig. 8).146 The head was soon removed, but
the original designation of the youth as an athlete
stuck tight, and encouraged Raubitschek, for exam-
ple, to speculate that the Kritios Boy originally be-
longed to the fragmentary inscribed base E.M. 6442
commemorating a Panathenaic victory won by the
young Kallias, son of Didymias, in precisely 482
B.C.147 One wonders whether the Kritios Boy's ring
and hairdo could not, in fact, signify something other
than an athletic victory, and whether the statue could
not instead represent a young hero. On the Athenian
Acropolis that would most likely be Theseus.148
There are, finally, three torsos in Berlin, Rome,
and Boston that have been compared to the Kritios
Boy, and that may have some bearing on its date. All
three torsos are undoubtedly of Roman date, and at
least one has been labeled a classicistic creation rather
than a true copy of an Early Classical original. But
taken together, they document the well known Roman
predilection for imitating, enhancing, or evoking the
Severe Style.
One prominent scholar has even gone soFig. far32.
as Torso
to in Boston, MFA 22.593. (Courtesy Mu
claim that the torso in Berlin (the so-called
ofAmelung
Fine Arts, Boston)
145 For the fillet as symbol of victory, see W.W. tion. I Hyde,
note also that in her contribution to the catalog
Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athleticthe Artrecent
(Wash-exhibit The Human Figure in Early Greek
ington, D.C. 1921) 148-50. Hyde 115 suggests (Washington,
the Kritios D.C. 1988) 54, E. Harrison suggests tha
Kritios
Boy represents a palaestra victor. It is worth noting Boy
that on could be Theseus as well. If he is in fact
the well known but problematic stele from Sounion Theseus(Ridg-
and post-Persian, it would be tempting to asso
way 1970, fig. 70), the circlet the youth apparently wears is of the Kritios Boy atop the Acropolis with
the dedication
not a sufficient symbol of victory: a metal wreath was at-
activities of the year 476/5, when Kimon brought back
tached over it. In fact, it is easy to imagine thatseus's
the Sounion
bones from Skyros and buried them in the richly
youth originally wore a coiffure like the Kritios raled
Boy'sTheseion
but below (cf. Plut. Thes. 36.1-4; Cim. 8
unrolled his hair-it hangs down limply-soPaus.
that 1.17.2-6).
the
wreath could be seated securely. 149 M. Bieber, Ancient Copies: Contributions to the Hi
146 See Furtwangler 25-29. of Greek and Roman Art (New York 1977) 27. Later in
147 Supra n. 34. same paragraph Bieber admits the possibility that the
148 J. Neils has also suggested on the basis of hairstyle
ists onlyand
had a statue like the Kritios Boy in mind. Fo
the lack of a strong tradition of generic kouroi Amelung
on the Acro-
torso, see esp. J. D6rig, "La tete Webb," Ant
polis that the Kritios Boy might be Theseus; (1969)
see "Heroes
46-47, who believes it reproduces a Late Ar
and Hairdos: The Quest for Theseus in Classical
statueSculp-
of ca. 490, like Acr. 692 (fig. 6); Zanker (su
ture," AJA 88 (1984) 254 and her forthcoming book
n. 122) on and pl. 50.1, 2, 4, 5, who does not exclud
58-59
Theseus (Rome 1988), which, I regret, was unavailable
possibilityto
that it copies an early fifth-century origin
me before this article went to press. While onebelieves it a classicistic work of the middle of the first
may differ
over certain details (the coiffure is heroic, but heroes other
tury B.C., and D. Willers, Zu den Anfdingen der archa
than Theseus can wear it, and the hairstyle of theschen Plastik in Griechenland (AM-BH 4, Berlin 1
pedimen-
tal Theseus from Eretria is not strictly comparable to that
12-17, who oftreats it as a copy of a "sub-Archaic" work in
our statue), I note her paper with pleasure, and thank the
tradition of the Kritios Boy. For the torso in the T
anonymous reviewer for AJA who brought it to my atten-
(which Willers includes in his sub-Archaic tradition
course, is impossible: the

ferent ancient histories that canKritios
most plausibly be con- Boy
able to copyists or anyone
structed for the statue (and, in myelse in the
view, no history
B.C., but works like
that has the the Kritios
statue buried immediately or shortly after Boy, p
bronze, must have been.
480/79 The
is plausible). They are: A) The Kritian
Kritios Boy st
versed on the torso was dedicated
inin the late 480s; it was vandalized
Boston (fig. by 32);
or two scholars have the Persians inbelieved it
480/79; and its parts lay entirely or to be
480-460 B.C., comparable in
partly exposed until proper burial early in thequality
third
to the Kritios Boy, quarterit, too,
of the fifth century. B) Theis Kritiosmost
Boy was like
Roman copy (datable ca.
dedicated early in the 50
470s; it was B.C.)
accidentally but se- of a
Classical bronze. 150 verely damaged not long after; and its bodily parts lay
It remains an open question whether-or to what entirely or partly exposed until burial early in the
degree-artists of the Roman period ever copied late third quarter of the fifth century. C) The Kritios Boy
Archaic works or limited their reproductions, recrea- was dedicated early in the 470s; it stood whole until
tions, and variations to originals produced after after the middle of the century, when it was intention-
480.'51 Consequently, the existence of these three ally decapitated, a casualty of the Periclean building
torsos does not necessarily prove a post-Persian date program and relandscaping of the southeast corner of
for their "Kritian" prototypes. It merely suggests that the Acropolis. One or more of its bodily parts may
if the Kritios Boy was dedicated after 480 it probably have been left exposed before burial, but probably for
was not extraordinary, and that early fifth-century no more than a few years.
nude youths very much like it, but in bronze, were still Theory A. A pre-Persian dating might rest upon the
there to be copied or at least to inspire in the first cen- propositions that 1) the Classical style began to
tury B.C. For those who posit a post-Persian date for emerge long before 480 (indeed it did) and Greek
the Kritios Boy itself and see it, too, as heavily depen- artists in general and Athenian artists in particular
dent upon bronze prototypes, this in turn is at least were capable of creating such a statue before the Per-
circumstantial evidence in their favor: the fifth-cen- sians came; 2) the Persian destruction of the Acropolis
tury original and the first-century copies would, after had no significant impact upon the history of style and
a fashion, be cognates. we should therefore not expect the great transforma-
tion of freestanding sculpture to have occurred after
Summary 480 rather than before (the destruction, in other
Nothing proves anything about the date of the Kri- words, did not free the Athenian artists from the bur-
tios Boy, and the date one ultimately prefers will of den of Archaic tradition and so permit freer represen-
course depend upon the evidence one chooses to em- tations of the human form);152 3) the dearth of imme-
phasize. It is perhaps more important to understand diately post-Persian marble dedications on the Acro-
the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three dif- polis makes a pre-Persian date for the Kritios Boy
Enrico Paribeni, Museo Nazionale Romano: Sculture 51' See D6rig (supra n. 149), who argues against the once
greche del V secolo (Rome 1953) 17, no. 10, and most re- accepted view that we have no Roman copies of any Greek
cently Emanuela Paribeni, in A. Giuliano ed., Museo Na- masterpiece before the Tyrannicides of Kritios and Nesio-
zionale Romano: Le sculture 1.1 (Rome 1979) 60-61, who tes; his argument rests in part on the assumption that the
believes it to be a copy of a bronze original that was a little Kritios Boy itself (which the Boston torso approximates) is
more advanced anatomically than the Kritios Boy (which late Archaic and dates to the 480s. See esp. Ridgway 1977,
she assumes is pre-Persian) and so is to be dated after the 314-17, and Landwehr (supra n. 143), who argues the
Persian War.
Baiae cast of Aristogeiton is of Antenor's statue, datable to
150 L.D. Caskey, Catalogue of Greek and Roman Sculpture the decade after Marathon, and not Kritios and Nesiotes'
in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Cambridge, Mass. version of 477/6.
1925) 26-29, no. 14, believes the Boston torso is slightly 152 See Hurwit 336-53, where I argue the Kritios Boy is
more advanced than the Kritios Boy's (it is "less fleshy," pre-Persian. If I here argue against myself concerning the
with less depth in the chest and abdomen) and is an original, date of the statue, I still maintain the position that the Per-
not a copy. Richter 150-51, no. 196, uses the evidence of sian destruction was not an artistically liberating event. If
supports and struts of Roman type to argue that the torso isthe Kritios Boy dates after 480, it is not because of the Per-
a Roman copy, though of the first rank. D6rig (supra sians. Statues like the Kritios Boy would have been carved
n. 149) 46-47, believes the torso derives from an original had the Acropolis never been destroyed, and the destruction
like the Kritios Boy (which he dates to the 480s). See also did not force Athenian artists, much less Greek artists in
M.B. Comstock and C.C. Vermeule, Sculpture in Stone: other parts of Greece that were unaffected by the invasion,
The Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Collections of the Muse- to (borrowing Pound's phrase) "make it new." See also
um of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston 1976) 19, no. 29. A. Snodgrass, Archaic Greece (London 1980) 207-13.
accepted,
(and the Blond Boy, too) inherently likely; the virtual absence of extant p
4) the large
oval splinters possibly overlapping thestylistic
break at the
parallels would make the Kritios Bo
throat and the splintering at the back ofmore extraordinary
the neck (figs. work than it is ordinar
12, 16) indicate that the statue suffered from
be, and deliber-
we would have the right to consider
ately hostile action; and 5) the extensive
torwear on thein bronze as well as marble,
(a worker
neck, nose, and hair roll of the Kritios Boy participant
direct indicates in the revolution that affec
considerable exposure of at least the head of the in
sculpture statue
the first quarter of the fifth cent
to the elements after damage and decapitation.
than a mere follower. The marble Kritios B
Now the first two propositions are, inI think, emi-
that case not simply reflect a sculptural tr
nently sound, but they do not bear specifically on the
tion that took place entirely in another mediu
case of the Kritios Boy. The question isannot
article of the revolution itself.
whether
late Archaic artists were theoretically capable
Theory of B.
cast-
Accident, of course, is not the
ing or carving a freestanding statue like theone
thing Kritios
is eager to offer as an explanatio
Boy. The question is, what evidence dodestruction
we have thatof a post-Persian Kritios Boy (w
they actually did so, and with the downdating
how wantof the
the Kritios Boy to have been done
Leagros base (which has deprived the first
sianstwo propo-
or Athenians but not by outrageous Tv
sitions of their only independent corroboration),
accidents willthehappen, after all, and a serio
answer is, none. The third proposition(generated
sounds logical
by an earthquake or storm, perha
enough, but is, as we have seen, flawed by by
than a circular
the clumsiness of its dedicators)153 in
argument: marbles were dedicated on or theeven
Early Clas-
460s would surely have left enough
sical citadel, and to judge from their archaeological
the head to suffer the damage and wear it d
contexts the Kritios and Blond Boys, along
burial.with the
To accept this argument, one wou
Propylaia kore, could have been among viewthe
theearliest
oval splinters at the throat as accid
post-Persian offerings. The fourth andand not
fifth as the result of intentional blows,
proposi-
tions, however, are in my view powerful ones,But
possible. since
to many the invocation of acc
the damage is consistent with a history that
seem would
special pleading, and so Theory B, whic
have the Kritios Boy dedicated a year the
or two
most before
economical theory of the group, w
the Persians arrived, violently decapitated in 480,
bly also have and
the fewest supporters.
its head (at least) suffer from long exposure until
Finally, a
Theory C. The idea that Athenian
Periclean burial. Still, not even this argument is con-
tionally decapitated a post-Persian Kritios Bo
clusive. There is, after all, simply no way
view,tohas
be only
sure one major weakness, and it
how the splinters at the neck were caused or how
belief that long
the Athenians would have had t
it may have taken to wear down the edges of
scruples the done any such thing. It is
to have
breaks on the head-natural erosion is an unpredict-
amount of wear apparent on the neck of th
able process and a function of circumstances,
cogentlyasexplained
the by at least some exposur
comparatively sharper edges on the Kritios Boy's and
elements, ownany Periclean relandscaping of
torso should suggest. There are such works as Acropo-
del that required the destruction of the Kr
lis 699 (fig. 7) to point to as well, a and
High
itsClassical
use as fill would presumably also hav
work that obviously did not suffer at the
inhands of Per-
a burial too prompt to have allowed the
sians but nonetheless managed to be decapitated, con- and smoothing of the surfa
natural erosion
siderably splintered (even a little worn), and buried,
evident. That, at any rate, is the presumptio
with paint still in its eyes, all within a we
relatively
have noshort
idea how long the exposure had
time. If Acropolis 699 could suffer as itdo didwe
(it even
does not
know for certain that such d
even have a torso), perhaps there is no even
need the
to conjure
pitting on the back of the torso)
up a Persian hatchet-man to explain the roughly
have anal-
been caused naturally underground (by
ogous damage done to the head of the Kritios
colationBoy. But
of water, for example). The evidenc
I would add this: if a pre-Persian date for the statue is
apart, however, the Kritios Boy is in every
Alternatively,
153 Supra n. 67. I find it interesting that Bronze Age Aegean did the wind cease to blow? I w
archaeologists frequently invoke earthquakes and
Acropolis in cata-
early May 1987 when a terrific wind
clysms to explain the destruction of their palaces and civili-
erally blew several tourists off their feet, and
zations, yet Classical archaeologists rarely
help attribute
but wonderthe whether meniskoi would have
damage of their buildings or monumentswind to such likenatural
sails and contributed to the toppling
forces. Did the earth fear to tremble in dedications.
the Golden Age?
80 JEFFREY M. HURWIT
Classical or Severe in style, and had it been found

where but the Acropolis, ians
and and itstheir
self-control,
with (perhaps "-pp'-a
a sense
exagg o,
ated) reputation for containing
to overstep vast deposits of
boundaries, p
"th
Perserschutt, there would[and] makes be
perhaps him littlea citizen."
hesitat
about dating it after 480. Its OF"archaeological
DEPARTMENTS ART HISTORY AND CLASSICS cont
and even its state of preservation
UNIVERSITY OF OREGONare at least not inc
sistent with a post-Persian date.
EUGENE, OREGON 97403Its pose and hairs
are unattested in sculpture before 480 but are com
in Early Classical originals (such as the Selinus you
Appendix:32), and in Rom
fig. 31), in Roman copies (e.g., fig.
Severizing creations. And its relationship to the st
Measurements (cm)
school, or tradition of Kritios and Nesiotes (a relat
ship I take to be genuine)
Heightmakes
of Kritios Boy,aas date
preserved in
116.7 the early
mid-470s, when the team was at its height and th
Head
influence of their masterpiece strong and fresh, r
Height of head, as preserved 19.5
sonable enough. (The Persian destruction may h
Depth of head, as preserved (excluding hair roll) 15.1
had no effect upon the course of chin
Height of head, Greek art,
to crown 17.0 but Krit
and Nesiotes, at least through
Height of face, their widely
chin to hairline 12.3 imita
and alluded to Tyrannicides,
Hairline to measurably
crown 5.0 di
Hairline to ridge
would add that a post-Persian date of eyebrow
for the 2.0 Kritios
Hairline to
has the advantage of placing iteyes
in(inner corners) 4.0art histo
a fuller
Hairline to mouth (juncture
context but the disadvantage (some of lips) 8.3
would say
Eyes (inner corners) to mouth (juncture of lips) 4.3
making it seem a more "ordinary" work-not o
Mouth (juncture of lips) to chin 4.0
nary in the quality of Width
its carving
of face (across (as anyone
eyes) 9.5 who
held the head of the statue
Width in of eyehis hands
(left, proper) can 2.4 attest),
more easily and fully dependent
Width of eye (right, on other
proper) 2.3 works
Distance between eyes (at inner corners) 2.6
bronze, more of its time.
Width
Equivocal evidence calls foracross eyes (inner) 7.2 and ther
equivocation,
Width across
is intuition to contend with, too. eyes (outer)
But 7.7
when our ch
Length of nose, bridge to nostrils 4.0
is presented in its
simplest terms, it is between the
Width of nose at nostrils 2.4
dence of wear and the evidence of style.
Distance between Since
nose and top the
of mw
will always remain problematical
Width of mouth (and since 3.6 it cou
be explained
TheoryWidth
B as well by
of hair as by A),(front,
roll I find
Diameter of hair
evidence of style marginally ring (variable)There
decisive. 0.8-1.1 is, at
Diameter of rod for meniskos 1.0
rate, nothing-no
archaeological datum, no pa
Surface
lel-that definitely places the ofKritios
break at neck
Boy (front to back)4
before
Surface of break at neck (side to side) 9.2
and the propensity of the evidence as it is suggests t
Diameter of modern dowel hole in head 1.1
the statue, and thus the crucial transformation of fr
Torso
standing statuary to which
earliest extant it is the
Height of torso as preserved (neck break to
ness, should be dated to the years between 479 an
bottom of left leg) 102.0
say, 475. That transformation, it should be stress
Height of torso from neck break to left knee
had nothing specifically to do with destruction of
(before addition of lower leg by Schrade
Acropolis: the Archaic style
Height had been
of lower coming
left leg (added byto an
Schrad
for decades, and the Persians
Width acrosscan take 35.0
shoulders no credit f
that. But the final Width
blow of waist
was (at navel)
dealt only20.5 after t
defeat at Salamis and Distance between
Plataia, nipples 15.5
and after the Atheni
had recovered their Navel
city. The (outer
finalwidth)
blow, 1.4
for us, is
Stump of left (proper) strut 2.8 x 1.3
Kritios Boy, a statue that probably represents Th
Stump of right (proper) strut 2.3 x 1.7
seus but that surely embodies
Surface of break precisely
at neck (front to back)that
9.7 civic
tue that tragedians such as Aeschylus claimed
Surface of break at neck (side to side) 9.9 to
responsible for the Athenian victory
Diameter of modern cutting in over
neck 2.5 the bar
154 See North (supra n. 2) 12, 33-34.

The Kritios Boy - Discovery, Reconstruction, and Date-J.M.hurwitt-1989

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

The Kritios Boy - Discovery, Reconstruction, and Date-J.M.hurwitt-1989

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Kritios Boy - Discovery, Reconstruction, and Date-J.M.hurwitt-1989

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Kritios Boy: Discovery, Reconstruction, and Date

Author(s): Jeffrey M. Hurwit

Archaeological Institute of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

Abstract homogeneous deposit of Perserschutt; indeed, it is likely

* With the dedication I wish to thank, in a AMA E. way,

sculptures (figs. 1-2). Th

2 On owopoorvv7), see H. North, Sophrosyne (Ithaca

Fig. 3. The Tyrannicides of Kritios and Nesiotes (Ro

never been the subject of a comprehensive degree

Fig.4. Plan of southeast Acropoli

of the statue as those decades necessitated the

its walls a rich assortment of ancient statuary.4

4 On Building IV see G. P. Stevens, "The Northeast

er the torso the of Kritios

cial photographer of the Greek ArchaeologicalAndService

spondents as either a O-KvoO7)K7J or an obrwoOi ) and

judge from the nature ofthethe

ground, and the records are less than comple

Fig. 7. Marble head of youth with fillet, Acropolis 699.

an artfully contrived still-life, obeying the conventions

back to pose stiffly for the camera, peering Moschophoros

have certain affinities with the head of the K

Fig. 10. Head of Kritios Boy, right profile. (Photo:

THE DISCOVERY OF THE HEAD

tion (E.M. 6442) from the earlier of two dedications of Kal-

Fig. 12. Head of Fig.

surely unlikely that by "museum" the annex-"to

longed to the torso at

Fig. 17. Kritios Boy, after removal of plaster around neck

ing the testimony of both Wolters and Schuchhardt,

than he should actually

Fig. 19. Torso of Kritios Boy. (Photo: J. Hurwit)

The bronze dowel had been inserted, and the

Fig. 21. Kritios Boy, back left side of neck. (Photo:

all of which have suffered splintering at the neck,but

suade everyone, program

If by Perserschutt one means a homogeneous depos-

numerical decline of marble sculpture, however, already

Kritios Boy to the Since

are still traces

in and of themselves.10' of the two heads-the low crown of the skull,

Fig. 24. Head of Harmodios, Roman copy. (Courtesy Fig.

sible, though it is perhaps easier to imagine theheadpro-

I ' See W. Deonna, "Un 'kouros' archaique au Musee

still close to the body, from the remains of ov

come in only with the rise of the Polykleitan style

Fig. 28. Reconstruction of Kritios B

called Adrano Youth,at an

into the dome, yet with

of the marble youth's bundles of rolled hair.

Fig. 30. Bronze head of youth from Acropolis, Athens Na-

looped in sections.134 Although it apparently wears

134 Richter 145-46, no. 182, figs. 547-49. Ridgway

polis, being amazed only

and usually not for athletes, who typically torso)

course, is impossible: the

Classical or Severe in style, and had it been found