Carved from a single block of marble, this sphinx and capital once crowned a tall grave marker. An inscription on the plinth identifies the deceased as a youth or man named Philinos or Thalinos. Incised details and traces of red and black paint accentuate the feathers of the breast and wings. The variable shape of the feathers is characteristic of the earliest stone sphinxes produced in Attica during the sixth century b.c., while the simple concave form of the capital imitates the cavetto molding often found in Egyptian architecture.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Marble sphinx on a cavetto capital
Period:Archaic
Date:ca. 580–575 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Marble
Dimensions:H. with akroterion 28 3/8 in. (72 cm)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:Fletcher Fund, 1924
Accession Number:24.97.87
Inscription: On the plinth: "I am the monument of [...]linos"
[Until 1924, with Theodore Zoumpoulakis, Athens]; acquired in 1924, purchased from T. Zoumpoulakis.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1926. "The Classical Collection: Rearrangement and Important Accessions." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 21(4), part 2: p. 10.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1926. "Greek Sculpture: Recent Accessions." Bulletin of the Metropolian Museum of Art, 21(5): pp. 126–27, fig. 4.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 237–38, fig. 163, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1930. Handbook of the Classical Collection. pp. 237–38, fig. 163, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 48, 195, pl. 35a, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1961. The Archaic Gravestones of Attica. no. 1, p. 10, figs. 1–7, 191, London: Phaidon Press.
Billot, Marie-Françoise. 1977. "Recherches sur le sphinx du Louvre CA 637." Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 101(1): pp. 399 n. 27, 400 n. 31.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1978. Antichnoe iskusstvo iz muzeia Metropoliten, Soedinennye Shtaty Ameriki: Katalog vystavki. no. 26, Moscow: Sovetskii Khudozhnik.
Croissant, Francis. 1988. "Tradition et innovation dans les ateliers corinthiens archaïques: Matériaux pour l'histoire d'un style." Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 112(1): pp. 132, 134.
Holtzmann, Bernard. 1991. "Une sphinge archaïque de Thasos." Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 115(1): p. 138 n. 42.
Bodel, John P. and Stephen Tracy. 1997. Greek and Latin Inscriptions in the USA : A Checklist. p. 184, Rome: American Academy in Rome.
Brinkmann, Vinzenz. 1998. Frisuren in Stein: Arbeitsweisen frühgriechischer Bildhauer. no. A15, pp. 22, 24, fig. 14.1, tab. 3, 27, 52, München: Biering und Brinkmann.
Lazzarini, Lorenzo and Dr. Clemente Marconi. 2014. "A New Analysis of Major Greek Sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum: Petrological and Stylistic." Metropolitan Museum Journal, 49: pp. 125–26, fig. 25.
Zanker, Paul. 2022. Afterlives : Ancient Greek Funerary Monuments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 2, pp. 29–30, New York: Scala Publishers.
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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.
