The renowned Greek sculptor Polykleitos designed a sculptural work as a demonstration of his written treatise, entitled the Κανών (or 'Canon'), translated as "measure" or "rule"), exemplifying what he considered to be the perfectly harmonious and balanced proportions of the human body in the sculpted form.

"Scholars agree that Polykleitos based his calculations on a single module, perhaps the terminal section of the little finger, to determine the corresponding measurements of each body part" (MIA Doryphoros Plaque).

[3] In the surviving Roman marble copies, a large sculpted tree stump is added behind one leg of the statue in order to support the weight of the stone; this would not have been present in the original bronze (the tensile strength of the metal would have made this unnecessary).

[5] The marble sculpture and a bronze head that had been retrieved at Herculaneum were published in Le Antichità di Ercolano, (1767)[6] but were not identified as representing Polykleitos' Doryphorus until 1863.

[7] For modern eyes, a fragmentary Doryphoros torso in basalt in the Medici collection at the Uffizi "conveys the effect of bronze, and is executed with unusual care", as Kenneth Clark noted, illustrating it in The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form:[8] "It preserves some of the urgency and concentration of the original" lost in the full-size "blockish" marble copies.

Held in the same museum is a bronze herma of Apollonios [height 0.54 m, Naples, Museo Nazionale 4885], considered by many scholars to be an almost flawless replica of the original Doryphoros head.

A well-preserved, Roman period copy of the statue in Pentelic marble, purchased in 1986 by the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA), has received some attention in recent years.

[10] The sculpture was supposedly found in Italian waters during the 1930s and spent several decades in private collections before being loaned to the Munich Glyptothek in the late 1970s, and bought by the MIA in 1986.

[10] The Italian government asserts that the statue was illegally excavated between 1975 and 1976 from the Verano hill at Castellammare di Stabia, near Naples, and has issued an international warrant for confiscation and return of the work.