The Bronze Athlete from Ephesos: Archaeological Background and Aspects of Conservation
The Athlete from Ephesos, a Roman imperial copy of a Greek statuary type from the 4th century B.C., was found at the very end of the 19th century, in the first years of the Austrian excavation in Ephesos, when research was concentrated on the major imperial monuments. In the palaestra of the Harbor...
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| Pubblicato in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/techne, |
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| Autore principale: | |
| Natura: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lingua: | Anglais |
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Technè
2019
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| Accesso online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Riassunto: | The Athlete from Ephesos, a Roman imperial copy of a Greek statuary type from the 4th century B.C., was found at the very end of the 19th century, in the first years of the Austrian excavation in Ephesos, when research was concentrated on the major imperial monuments. In the palaestra of the Harbor Baths, the statue was set up in an aedicula and was destroyed when an earthquake caused the collapse of the hall roof.Due to an agreement between the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I, the fragments could be taken to Vienna as a gift to the emperor’s collections. In Vienna, Wilhelm Sturm was commissioned with the restoration and conservation of the statue in 1897. The recomposition of the athlete took as a model the marble athlete kept at the Uffizi, in Florence, once the similarity of the statuary type of the Apoxyomenos had been recognized.The individual fragments were treated physically and chemically and were fixed on brass strings. Then groups of fragments were mounted onto iron bars in order to build the “back bone”. The entire statue was filled with cement in order to stabilize the structure and to close the gaps in the surface.A reevaluation of the condition of the Ephesian statue in cooperation with the Conservation Science Department of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and the Antiquities Conservation Department of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California has shown the surprisingly good condition of the more than 100 year-old reconstruction. |
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