Amazon statue types

[3]This anecdote encouraged the much-discussed identifications of four known types of Roman marble copies of the wounded Amazon with sculptors of lost originals that may be dated to 430 BC on stylistic grounds.

Dietrich von Bothmer dismissed the Plinian anecdote as an etiological embroidery[4] invented to account for the five statues of wounded Amazons of varying styles.

Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway presented her doubts ("it is difficult to see why all five Amazons were set up if only one 'won' and became the object of the dedication"), noting Pliny's awareness of the discrepancies in age of the sculptors;[5] she presented an alternative, cumulative origin, building on fifth century prototypes, added to by Phradmon, whom she identifies as a fourth-century sculptor, and supplemented by later classicizing models.

All five types show a standing female with a similar head and face, and (as with the Venus Genetrix) are clothed in a peplos that has fallen from one or both shoulders to leave her bare-breasted.

It was found in Rome in 1868 in the Gardens of Sallust, and is now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen,[12] The figure is resting her left arm on a column and her right hand behind her head, with her face leaning to one side.

This type is known principally from the 2.02 m high 2nd century AD marble copy (signed by Sosicles), deriving from Polyclitus's or Kresilas's original.

[3] It was (before and after Sosicles's time) copied as a complete statue, as a bust or as a herm, both in stone in the same size as the original and in miniature in bronze.