Riace Warriors: Greek Sculptures of Ideal Beauty
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Riace Warriors
Historical Context
These sculptures are in the free style of the Classical Greek period. During this time, artists were greatly concerned with playing with the balanced proportions of human anatomy, attempting to achieve the ideal model of human beauty. To accomplish this, the muscles are rounded and represent more natural positions, as opposed to the Praxitelean curve. The stiffness and frontality were lost, and the mathematical proportion between head and body was achieved. One piece of the Riace Warriors could be the work of Alcamenes, a disciple of Polykleitos and Phidias. The old saying was that this sculptor was the inventor of the chiastic composition and the first to accurately represent the veins and tendons in sculptures.
Formal Analysis
The two sculptures represent two naked men in a frontal position and tension. Some small details were added to make the sculptures more realistic, such as copper tabs, silver teeth, or ivory eyes. The spear or sword and shield that were part of each sculpture have not been found. The artist manages to break the hieratic nature of the sculpture with a slight contrapposto, a contrast between a tense part and another relaxed one derived from a slight elevation of the hips and the resulting contrary flexion of the legs. The hair still has some way of outlining geometry, but as the hair falls, the sculpture is made with more natural judgment. The modeling of the two bodies presents a high degree of knowledge of human anatomy and realism in the muscles, tendons, and veins.
Content and Meaning
The two sculptures were found in 1972, seven meters deep, among the remains of a shipwreck near the village of Riace. Their particular location is related to the sinking of a ship whose fate must have been Magna Graecia. Recently, each sculpture has been identified with two warriors in the Trojan War. Statue A has been considered an image of Ajax the Lesser, son of Oileus, who was a soldier. Statue B can represent Ajax the Great, son of Telamon, a great Achaean warrior who fought with Achilles in the Trojan War. Other versions say that the warriors represent Tydeus and Amphiaraus, related to the war of Thebes.