Diadumenos

The Diadumenos ("diadem-bearer"), together with the Doryphoros (spear bearer), are two of the most famous figural types of the sculptor Polyclitus, forming a basic pattern of Ancient Greek sculpture that all present strictly idealized representations of young male athletes in a convincingly naturalistic manner.

Phidias was credited with a statue of a victor at Olympia in the act of tying the fillet around his head; besides Polyclitus, his successors Lysippos and Scopas also created figures of this kind.

[4] Pliny recorded that the Polyclitan original fetched at auction the extraordinary price of a hundred talents, an enormous sum in Antiquity, as Adolf Furtwängler pointed out.

Freer versions were executed in reduced scale as bronze statuettes,[6] and the head of Diadumenos-type appears on numerous Roman engraved gems.

[7] The marble Diadumenos from Delos at the National Museum, Athens (right) has the winner's cloak and his quiver laid upon the tree stump, hinting that he is the victor in an archery match, with perhaps an implied reference to Apollo, who was conceived, too, as an idealized youth.