Lemnian Athena

He argued that these Roman heads and bodies all derived from the same Classical Greek sculptural type, and that they were copies of Pheidias's Lemnian Athena on the Athenian Acropolis.

[18] Although only the upper arms of the statue bodies in Dresden survive, Furtwängler cited a depiction on an ancient engraved gem, which appeared to show a head and upper body of the same type, as evidence that the goddess held a helmet in her outstretched right hand and an upright spear in her left hand.

The most forceful criticism of his physical reconstruction of the type was published in 1983 by Kim Hartswick, who argued that the Dresden bodies and the Bologna head are unrelated, and that the gems depicting the statue may be modern rather than ancient.

[19] In 1984, however, a reexamination of the join between the head and the body of Dresden statue A and a technical analysis of the marble confirmed that the two pieces do indeed belong together, as Furtwangler believed.

[22] Other identifications have also been proposed for the Dresden–Bologna type reconstructed by Furtwängler: J. P. Barron thought that it might be derived from the Pheidian victory monument set up at Delphi after the Battle of Marathon,[23][24] and Harrison tentatively suggested an association with Alkamenes, a younger contemporary of Pheidias, rather than Pheidias himself.