This relief of a pacing horse with a nude rider is a tour de force of almost excessively sensitive surface texture and exaggerated anatomical detail. Decorative showiness takes precedence over organic unity, in a style often found in classicizing works of the first century B.C. The piece may copy one that was well-known in antiquity, for two others are preserved that show an almost identical horseman followed by another rider on a horse with the same pacing gait.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Marble relief of a horseman
Period:Late Hellenistic
Date:1st century BCE
Culture:Greek
Medium:Marble, Parian ?
Dimensions:H. 18 in. (45.7 cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1907
Object Number:07.286.111
Robinson, Edward. 1908. "New Accessions in the Classical Department: I. Marbles." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3(1): pp. 1, 6, fig. 1.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1908. "Notes: The 'Young Horseman' Relief." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 3(3): p. 61.
Howe, Winifred E. 1916. "An Athenian Horseman." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 11(10): pp. 222–24.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1917. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 233, fig. 142, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 273–74, fig. 193, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 273–74, fig. 193, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1933. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 5th ed. pp. 107, 110, fig. 131, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1936[1934]. A Guide to the Collections, Part 1: Ancient and Oriental Art, 2nd edn. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1941. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 6th ed. pp. 107, 110, fig. 131, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1950. The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, 3rd edn. pp. 112, 462, fig. 353, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 120, 257, pl. 97, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1954. Catalogue of Greek Sculptures. no. 142, pp. 79–80, pl. 79, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1970. Masterpieces of Fifty Centuries. New York: Dutton.
Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1980. The Horses of San Marco: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 1-June 1, 1980, New York. no. 3, p. 3, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hemingway, Seán A. 2006. "Horse and Man in Greek Art." Sculpture Review, 55(2): p. 12.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 252, pp. 216, 454, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
