It was found in October 1979 in the ancient city of Motya (Italian: Mozia), originally a Phoenician settlement which occupied the island of San Pantaleo off the coast of Sicily.

The marble statue depicts a young male figure in a swinging contraposto pose, with his right foot forward, his left hand resting on his hip, and his right arm raised.

The figure's musculature, genitals, and posterior are clearly visible; the sculptor managed to create the illusion that they are seen through the sheer fabric of the chiton.

This early date is suggested by the depiction of the hair with rows of snail curls, which is typical of Archaic Greek sculpture, as well as the bulging veins.

Moreover, the facial features are similar to those of the figures in the pedimental sculpture of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which dates to the 460s BC.

Scholars such as R. R. R. Smith, who emphasise the Greek artistic context, interpret the sculpture as a depiction of a charioteer celebrating a victory in one of the Panhellenic Games.

Smith proposes that the Motya sculpture depicts an owner-charioteer of this type, arguing that "the swaggering whole embodied agonistic arete as conceived in the early fifth century BC.

"[3] Scholars who favour this latter interpretation have tended to explain the charioteer's presence in the Punic settlement of Motya by regarding it as war booty seized from one of the Sicilian Greek centres destroyed in the Carthaginian invasion of Sicily in 410–404 BC.

The area was filled with rubble and dirt that may have once formed barricades erected during Dionysius I of Syracuse's siege of Motya in 397 BC.