Contrapposto

It is used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot, so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs in the axial plane.

The style was further developed and popularized by sculptors in the Hellenistic and Imperial Roman periods, fell out of use in the Middle Ages, and was later revived during the Renaissance.

Contrapposto was historically an important sculptural development, for its appearance marks the first time in Western art that the human body is used to express a more relaxed psychological disposition.

According to the canon of the Classical Greek sculptor Polykleitos in the 4th century BCE, it is one of the most important characteristics of his figurative works and those of his successors, Lysippos, Skopas, etc.

The Polykletian statues (Discophoros ("discus-bearer") and Doryphoros ("spear-bearer"), for example) are idealized athletic young men with the divine sense, and captured in contrapposto.

In these works, the pelvis is no longer axial with the vertical statue as in the archaic style of earlier Greek sculpture before Kritios Boy.

A marble copy of Polykleitos ' Doryphoros , an early example of classical contrapposto .
S-curve (art)
Kritios Boy . c. 480 BCE, was the first known Greek statue to use contrapposto .