Apoxyomenos

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	Lysippos, Apoxyomenos (Scraper), c. 330 B.C.E., (4:15), Smarthistory

Apoxyomenos (Greek: Αποξυόμενος, plural apoxyomenoi:^[1] the "Scraper") is one of the conventional subjects of ancient Greek votive sculpture; it represents an athlete, caught in the familiar act of scraping sweat and dust from his body with the small curved instrument that the Greeks called a stlengis and the Romans a strigil.

The most renowned Apoxyomenos in Classical Antiquity was that of Lysippos of Sikyon, the court sculptor of Alexander the Great, made ca 330 BCE. The bronze original is lost, but it is known from its description in Pliny the Elder's Natural History, which relates that the Roman general Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa installed Lysippos's masterpiece in the Baths of Agrippa that he erected in Rome, around 20 BCE. Later, the emperor Tiberius became so enamored of the figure that he had it removed to his bedroom.^[2] However, an uproar in the theatre, "Give us back our Apoxyomenos", shamed the emperor into replacing it.

The sculpture is commonly represented by the Pentelic marble copy in the Museo Pio-Clementino in Rome, discovered in 1849 when it was excavated in Trastevere (illustration, right). Plaster casts of it soon found their way into national academy collections, and it is the standard version in textbooks. The sculpture, slightly larger than lifesize, is characteristic of the new canon of proportion pioneered by Lysippos, with a slightly smaller head (1:8 of the total height, rather than the 1:7 of Polykleitos) and longer and thinner limbs. Pliny notes a remark that Lysippos "used commonly to say" that while other artists "made men as they really were, he made them as they appeared to be." Lysippus poses his subject in a true contrapposto, with an arm outstretched to create a sense of movement and interest from a range of viewing angles.

Pliny also mentioned treatments of this motif by Polykleitos and by his pupil or follower, Daidalos of Sicyon, who seems to have produced two variants on the theme.^[3] A fragmentary^[4] bronze statue of the Polycleitan/Sikyonian type,^[5] who holds his hands low to clean the sweat and dust from his left hand,^[6] was excavated in 1896 at the site of Ephesus in Turkey; it is conserved in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Its quality is so fine that scholars have debated whether it is a fourth-century original, in the sense that workshop repetitions are all "originals" or a later copy made during the Hellenistic period.^[7] A classicising version in the neo-Attic style in the Medici collections at the Uffizi had led earlier scholars to posit a classical fifth-century original, before the bronze was unearthed at Ephesus.^[8]

^ "An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language, Volume I, page 268".
^ So Pliny reports. Compare the myth of Pygmalion and the anecdote that was circulating in Rome about an admirer of Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Knidos. Tiberius at least removed the statue to his private palace.
^ Pliny: pueros duos destringentes se (Natural History 34.76); Daippos, Lysippos' son, was also credited with an apoxyomenos.
^ It was reassembled from 234 fragments, originally cast in seven sections, according to Steven Lattimore, "The Bronze Apoxyomenos from Ephesos" American Journal of Archaeology 76.1 (January 1972:13-16) p. 13.
^ The discovery of Daidalos' signature on a socle at Ephesus encouraged speculation that this apoxyomenos was his (Lattimore 1972:14 note 21 gives bibliography).
^ The first restoration made at the Kunstgewerbe Museum was adjusted in 1953; a small Roman marble copy in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (acc. no. 00.304) retains the strigil and shows the positions of the hands (Cornelius C. Vermeule, "Greek Sculpture and Roman Taste", Boston Museum Bulletin 65 No. 342 (1967:175-192, illus. p. 178); a suggestion, before the discovery of the Zagreb Apoxyomenos, that he was actually cleaning the strigil with the thumb and fingers of his left hand was made by Lattimore 1972.
^ A bibliography of the debate is in Lattimore 1972:13 note 7.
^ L. Bloch, "Eine Athletenstatue der Uffiziengallerie" Römische Mitteilungen 7 (1892:81-105) and Uffizi guidebooks, noted by Lattimore 1972:13 note 5.

[1] "An Encyclopedic Lexicon of the English Language, Volume I, page 268".

[2] So Pliny reports. Compare the myth of Pygmalion and the anecdote that was circulating in Rome about an admirer of Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Knidos. Tiberius at least removed the statue to his private palace.

[3] Pliny: pueros duos destringentes se (Natural History 34.76); Daippos, Lysippos' son, was also credited with an apoxyomenos.

[4] It was reassembled from 234 fragments, originally cast in seven sections, according to Steven Lattimore, "The Bronze Apoxyomenos from Ephesos" American Journal of Archaeology 76.1 (January 1972:13-16) p. 13.

[5] The discovery of Daidalos' signature on a socle at Ephesus encouraged speculation that this apoxyomenos was his (Lattimore 1972:14 note 21 gives bibliography).

[6] The first restoration made at the Kunstgewerbe Museum was adjusted in 1953; a small Roman marble copy in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (acc. no. 00.304) retains the strigil and shows the positions of the hands (Cornelius C. Vermeule, "Greek Sculpture and Roman Taste", Boston Museum Bulletin 65 No. 342 (1967:175-192, illus. p. 178); a suggestion, before the discovery of the Zagreb Apoxyomenos, that he was actually cleaning the strigil with the thumb and fingers of his left hand was made by Lattimore 1972.

[7] A bibliography of the debate is in Lattimore 1972:13 note 7.

[8] L. Bloch, "Eine Athletenstatue der Uffiziengallerie" Römische Mitteilungen 7 (1892:81-105) and Uffizi guidebooks, noted by Lattimore 1972:13 note 5.

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