Meleager of Skopas

It is judged to have been a late work in the sculptor's career,[3] but it is known only through a number of copies that vary in quality and in fidelity to the original,[4] which show it to have been one of the famous sculptures of antiquity: "the popularity of the Meleager during Roman times was certainly great," notes Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway,[5] who reports Andrew F. Stewart's count of 13 statues, 4 torsos, 19 heads (which are similar enough to the Ludovisi Ares to raise confusions) busts and herms, a variant with changed stance and attributes, and 11 versions adapted for a portrait or a deity.

Ms Ridgeway accounts for the sculpture's popularity in part "by the appeal that hunting figures had for the Romans, through their heroizing connotations.

[9] "There are other marble Meleagers," wrote Cornelius Vermeule in 1967,[10] "one or two reaching the level of the Fogg statue[11] but most of them documents of stonecutting devoid of the restless inner life that must have been imparted by the master to the original."

The original remained with Fusconi's eventual Pighini heirs until early in 1770, when it was purchased by Pope Clement XIV as one of the founding pieces for his new museum in the Vatican.

[17] Ms Ridgeway remarks critically on the slenderness of the connection with Skopas, which is based on the subject of the east pediment of the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, in which Skopas was the architect, but not, as Ms Ridgeway observes, accounted directly responsible for the pediment sculptures in any classical reference: "from a narrative pedimental composition in Arkadia—related, moreover, to local families and legends—to a single free-standing sculpture, perhaps in Kalydon (a tomb monument to the hero, as suggested by Stewart?)