Temple of Athena Aphaia.
The figures depicted are all soldiers, plus the fighting goddess Athena, standing upright with her spear; the scenes depicted are battles from the Trojan Wars.
At the time these sculptures were discovered and shipped back to northern Europe, in 1811 and 1812, it was the fashion to repair any damage. The Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen was employed as restorer, and he did his job very thoroughly. This explains why these sculptures look unusually fresh and new. Soon after, it became normal for the sake of authenticity to leave antiquities as found, unrestored. The picture shows a wounded soldier from the east pediment
Munich Glyptothek
Purchased in 1884 from the Berlin Museum and the Technische Hochschule, Munich, except the wounded soldier with shield which was purchased from Munich in 1933, after the original cast had been damaged by a thunderstorm in 1932
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 99, pls. 30.1-2, 31
Richter: Sculpture & Sculptors of the Greeks (1950), 67, 388-9
Karo: Personality in Greek Archaic Art, 177-9
Furtwängler: Catalogue of the Munich Museum, 95, 99, 120, 115
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 12, nos.30-34
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 891, nos.22-26
Excavated on site at the Temple
