Polykleitos: Diadoumenos, Doryphoros and Hermes

Abstract

Important recent acquisitions of the Walters Art Gallery are two Polykleitan fragments, a head and a torso, which, while not quite unknown, have received scant notice and no modern study. When first published in 1895 they were united and belonged to Bardini of Florence, who announced their source to be the Villa Borghese in Rome. In 1898 this combined statue was discovered by Bienkowski, published with photographs in which it stood on an Ionic capital, described in detail, and acclaimed as a unique replica of a Polykleitan original. Immediately thereafter Studniczka republished it, using the same photographs cropped closer, chiding Bienkowski for failing to realize that the torso was a copy of the Diadoumenos, the head of the Doryphoros. In 1918 under pressure of war Bardini sold the torso with head at auction in New York; his catalogue reproduced the same frontal illustration revealing the capital complete. Meanwhile Reinach and Mahler, and subsequently Anti, followed the line taken by Studniczka. Late in 1967 this same statue, with the head now separated from the torso, came upon the market; the torso was bought by the Walters Art Gallery, the head generously given by Mr. and Mrs. James E. LePere.'