This head is rare, as far as Greek statuary is concerned, in being an original rather than a Roman copy. Such is its quality that it has been associated with the best-known sculptors of the fourth century BCE, Praxiteles and Skopas. There is no evidence for this, though its style does point to a date between 325 and 280 BCE.
It is the head of a young, idealised male. Holes in the head show that it would have originally worn a wreath — perhaps indicating an athlete. It gets its name from having once belonged to George Hamilton Gordon, fourth Earl of Aberdeen
London, British Museum 1600
Purchased in 1922 from the British Museum
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 242 (n.2)
Smith: Catalogue of British Museum Sculpture III (1904), 39, pl. III
Buschor: Das Hellenistische Bildnis (1949), 9, fig.12
Burn: Greek and Roman Art (1991), 72
Said to have been taken from Greece about 1803 by the fourth Earl of Aberdeen
