Notes de sculpture et d'épigraphie en Béotie, I. La stèle de Mnasithéios, œuvre de Philourgos : étude stylistique

Abstract

The anthemion grave stele of Mnasitheos (Thebes Museum inv. no. 28200) was discovered in 1992 in an extensive cemetery of ancient Akraiphnia in Boeotia. A masterpiece of Greek Archaic art of the years 520-510, it is intact and is the only one so far in which the relief representation is preserved along with a elegiac couplet and the sculptor's signature : ΦΙΛΟΥΡΓΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΕΣΕΝ. I have already devoted two studies to this monument. In the first I analysed the epigram and the iconographic and decorative elements, as well as the social and political factors emerging from them; in the second, I tried to assign the piece to a specific Athenian workshop, that of Endoios and Philergos-Philourgos. In the present, final, study, I present all the photographs of the relief for the first time and offer a stylistic analysis of the modelling, in the form of a commentary on these images.