The marble statue of the Diadoumenos depicts an athlete with a victory armband and is a reconstruction of the original based on Roman marble spears. It is made of a medium such as marble and measures 185.4 centimeters (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.). The athlete’s name is Diadumenos; he is nude and depicted as if he is slowly rotating around his axis. According to Jean Sorabella (2008), such nudity symbolized glory, triumph, and moral superiority. The figure of the young man and his face are made in the realistic style that is characteristic of ancient Greek sculptures.
Polykleitos was an ancient Greek sculptor and art theorist, famous for his statues of athletes as well as his teachings on proportions. Along with Phidias, he was one of the two best Greek sculptors of the Classical period. The original bronze most likely had been in a sanctuary, such as at Olympia or Delphi, where the games were organized on a regular basis. According to Colette and Seán Hemingway (2002), winners of the Greek Games were given public honors, and statues were dedicated to them. This explains why the subject of this work of art is the athlete. Polykleitos was an outstanding representative of the Greek sculptural art of the High Classical period, and so in his works, he sought to depict the harmony of the still human body.
It is a late period statue, created by the sculptor already in Athens, under the influence of the Attic school. The function of this sculpture, like many others of that time, was to show the incredible beauty of the human body. As noted earlier, the athlete is depicted in a naturalistic style, that is, without departing from the principles of the larger cultural and artistic trends of the time. Polykleitos’ sculpture is a typical example of the classical period of ancient Greek art. This work manifests a key tenet of the humanism philosophy of those years, namely the celebration of humanity’s potential for achievement or greatness in all things.
References
Hemingway, C., & Hemingway, S. (2002). Athletics in ancient Greece.The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web.
Sorabella, Jean. (2008). The nude in Western art and its beginnings in antiquity.The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (n.d). Fragments of a marble statue of the Diadoumenos (youth tying a fillet around his head). Web.