Diadumenos

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Head of the Diadumenos type, National Archaeological Museum of Athens

The Diadumenos ("diadem-bearer"), together with the Doryphoros and Discophoros, are the three most famous figural types of Polyclitus, forming three basic patterns of Ancient Greek sculpture that all present strictly idealised representations of young men in a convincingly naturalistic manner.

The Diadumenos is the winner of an athletic contest at a games. In the type, which was established by Polyclitus about 420 BCE, the figure lifts the arms to knot the diadem, a ribbon-band that identifies the winner. Pliny's Natural History described Roman marble copies from the Greek originals in bronze, but it was not recognized until 1878^[1] that the Roman marble copy from Vaison-la-Romaine (Roman Vasio) in the British Museum recreates the lost Polyclitan bronze original^[2]. The successors of Polyclitus, Lysippos and Scopas, created figures of this kind too.

The nude Diadumenos of Polyclitus stands in contrapposto with his weight on his right foot, his left knee slightly bent. He raises his arms to tie the diadem, which in the bronze original would have been represented by a ribbon of bronze, and inclines his head slightly to the right, self-contained, seeming to be lost in thought.

The marble Diadumenos from Delos at the National Museum, Athens (detail, upper right) has the winner's cloak and his quiver laid upon the tree stump, hinting that he is the victor in an archery match, with perhaps an implied reference to Apollo, who was conceived, too, as an idealised youth.

Roman marble copies must have abounded, to judge from the number of recognizable fragments. A mark of the continuing artistic value placed on the Diadumenos type, once it had been reconnected with Polyclitus, may be drawn from the fact that a copy was among the sculptures ranged on the roof of the National Museum, Athens, when it was completed in 1889^[3]

In Hellenistic times the diadem became a symbol of royalty; in the Polyclitan Diadumenos, however, the action is still a simple tying-on of the winner's headband.

[edit] Notes

^ Adolf Michaelis, 1878. "Tre statue Policlitee", Annali dell'Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica pp 5-30, noted in Haskell and Penny 1981:118, note 11.
^ The hands have been lost
^ Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (Yale University Press), p. 107.

[edit] References

Herbert Beck, Peter C. Bol, Maraike Bückling (Hrsg.): Polyklet. Der Bildhauer der griechischen Klassik. Ausstellung im Liebieghaus-Museum Alter Plastik Frankfurt am Main. Von Zabern, Mainz 1990 ISBN 3-8053-1175-3
Detlev Kreikenbom: Bildwerke nach Polyklet. Kopienkritische Untersuchungen zu den männlichen statuarischen Typen nach polykletischen Vorbildern. "Diskophoros", Hermes, Doryphoros, Herakles, Diadumenos. Mann, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-7861-1623-7