This statuette is remarkable for its synthesis of Hellenistic immediacy and Classical composure. The figure can be identified as an artisan by his dress and muscular build. Particularly telling is the pair of wax tablets tucked in his belt—the equivalent of a note pad—on which he would have written or drawn with a pointed stylus. The portrait is imbued with great psychological power and may represent a famous, even mythological, figure. For example, he may portray the Homeric hero Epeios, who with Athena's help carved the Trojan horse. It has also been proposed that he is the legendary master craftsman Daidalos, who built the labyrinth at Knossos, or even the famous fifth century B.C. Athenian sculptor Phidias, creator of the chryselephantine cult statue of Zeus at Olympia and master craftsman of the sculptures of the Parthenon on the Athenian Akropolis.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Bronze statuette of an artisan with silver eyes
Period:Late Hellenistic
Date:ca. mid-1st century BCE
Culture:Greek
Medium:Bronze, silver
Dimensions:15 7/8 × 5 1/8 × 4 1/4 in., 15 lb. (40.3 × 13 × 10.8 cm, 6.8 kg)
Classification:Bronzes
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1972
Object Number:1972.11.1
Said to be from North Africa (Boucher-Colozier 1965, p. 25)
Before 1953, said to have been found in the sea off the North African coast, probably at Cherchell, Algeria; said to have been given as a present to J. Bousquet, Rodez (Aveyron), France; 1953, given as a present to Louis Édouard Balsan, Rodez (Aveyron), France; 1953-72, collection of Louis E. Balsan, Rodez (Aveyron), France; acquired in 1972, purchased from Louis E. Balsan.
Boucher-Colozier, Stéphanie. 1965. "Un bronze d’époque Alexandrine: Réalisme et Caricature." Fondation Eugène Piot, Monuments at Mémoires, 54: pp. 25–38.
von Bothmer, Dietrich. 1975. "Greek and Roman Art." Notable Acquisitions (Metropolitan Museum of Art), No. 1965/1975: p. 117.
Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1981. "Realistic Art in Alexandria." Proceedings of the British Academy, 67: p. 205.
Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1983. Alexandria und der Realismus in der griechischen Kunst. pp. 76–85, pls. 56–58, Tübingen: E. Wasmuth.
Mertens, Joan R. 1985. "Greek Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 43(2): no. 41, pp. 11, 60–61.
Kozloff, Arielle and David Gordon Mitten. 1988. The Gods Delight : The Human Figure in Classical Bronze no. 22, pp. 137–40, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 244, pp. 210, 452, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Daehner, Jens M. and Kenneth Lapatin. 2015. Potere e Pathos: Bronzi del Mondo Ellenistico no. 36, pp. 262–63, Firenze: Giunti.
Daehner, Jens M. and Kenneth Lapatin. 2015. Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World no. 36, pp. 262–63, Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum.
McGowan, Elizabeth. 2015. "The Poet as Artisan : A Hellenistic Bronze Statuette in the Metropolitian Museum of Art." Artistry in Bronze : The Greeks and Their Legacy : XIXth International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Jens M. Daehner, Kenneth Lapatin, and Ambra Spinelli, eds. pp. 123–30, figs. 15.1–.3, Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute.
Picón, Carlos A. and Seán Hemingway. 2016. Pergamon and the Hellenistic Kingdoms of the Ancient World no. 71, pp. 161–62, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Boudalis, Georgios. 2017. The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity. pp. 36–37, fig. 19, New York: Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture.
Zanker, Paul, Seán Hemingway, Christopher S. Lightfoot, and Joan R. Mertens. 2019. Roman Art : A Guide through the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Collection. no. 18, pp. 68–69, New York: Scala Publishers.
Hemingway, Seán. 2021. How to Read Greek Sculpture. no. 38, pp. 38, 158–59, 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.
