The Find from the Sea off Artemision

Abstract

It is a well-known fact, of which proof in recent years has not seldom been forthcoming, that the sea, on the rare occasions on which it has revealed to us its archaeological secrets, has nearly always given us beautiful works, for the most part in bronze, far better preserved than the discoveries on dry land. That, however, it should one day have presented us with what is certainly one of the most perfect works of just the most obscure period of Greek art in the fifth century B.C., belonging to those years of the Pentekontaetia from which we should have so much desired to have an original statue, was beyond even the most optimistic of hopes. Such is the principal find made in the sea off Artemision in Euboea in October 1928 (Pl. VII).There is no doubt that we have before us the figure of a god. That is shown not merely by its height (ca. 2·10 m.), but also by the character and spirit incorporated in it. Its stance, the manner of its movement (a movement which has also at the same time an inner balance and poise), various details of the body and the hair—all show that it is a work belonging to about 460 B.C. It is easy for us to distinguish figures spiritually and stylistically analogous on other monuments of this period (cf. e.g. a Poseidon on an amphora at Würzburg: Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, xi. 1).