Apoxyomenos
Apoxyomenos
3D
Published 2023-06-02T07:44:32+00:00
A figure of a young man scraping himself with a strigil, a curved metal instrument used to remove the excess oil that wrestlers and other athletes used to cover themselves in after their training.
The bronze original of this sculpture was by Lysippos and, according to Pliny, it was one of his most famous works. Pliny also wrote that whilst other sculptors made men as they are, Lysippos claimed to carve men as they appear, hence the longer limbs. The Roman emperor Tiberius liked the Apoxyomenos so much that he is supposed to have taken it from the Baths of Agrippa to his bedroom.
This Roman copy is remarkably well preserved; only the nose and the fingers, along with the inaccurate die in the right hand, are restorations
| Date published | 02/06/2023 |
| Title | Apoxyomenos |
| Date | c.340-310 BC |
| Dimension | Height, 2.05 metres |
| Accession | 259 |
| Medium | Plaster |
| Credit | Purchased from Malpieri of Rome in 1884 |
| Record | https://museum.classics.cam.ac.uk/collections/casts/apoxyomenos |
| Artist | Roman copy after an original by Lysippos |
| Place | Faculty of Classics, Cambridge University |