CIRCA 1ST CENTURY B.C. - 1ST CENTURY A.D.

The nude youthful male statue type, so masterfully rendered by the Greek sculptors including Polykleitos, Pheidias and Lysippos, was ubiquitous in the Roman world. Such figures were copied and adopted by the Romans for multiple purposes, the identification of the subject depending on the addition of any associated attributes - from athletes to ephebes, and gods to heroes. Besides their popularity as decoration in the homes of the Roman nobiles (aristocracy), theatres, bath complexes and public spaces throughout the Empire were ornamented with niches filled with marble and bronze sculpture.

One possible attribution for the above figure could be Meleager, the legendary hunter and the youngest of the Argonauts, who successfully killed the Calydonian boar that terrorized the local people. Here he is depicted nude but for a chlamys which would have been fastened over his right shoulder with a brooch and draped over his back. Around forty Roman sculptures of the hero have survived and were likely based on a 4th century B.C. original attributed to Skopas of Paros (see the example in the Vatican Museums, no. 3 in S. Woodford, 'Meleagros', LIMC, vol. VI). For a statue of Meleager at the Art Institute of Chicago, similar except of a slightly older age and with different arrangement of drapery, see p. 21 in C.C. Vermeule, Greek and Roman Sculpture in America: Masterpieces in Public Collections in the United States and Canada.