This kouros pre-dates most of the discoveries of similar Archaic figures made in Athens and other sites. Without a clear understanding of who or what these early Greek young male sculptures represented, art historians at the time generally named them all Apollo.
Kouroi found in temple sanctuaries may represent a god, or could symbolise the act of dedication to the gods, or may even depict the person making the offering. Others, found in burial grounds like this one, must surely represent not a god but the deceased person.
The Tenea kouros unusually is made from marble at a time when most Greek stone sculpture was in limestone
Munich Glyptothek 168
Purchased 9 Oct 1880 by the Fitzwilliam Museum, then transferred to the Museum in 1884
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 27 (no.12), pl. 5.2
Buschor, E: Frühgriechische Jünglinge, 49
Karo: Personality in Greek Archaic Art, 128-9
Richter: Kouroi, no.58
Reporter: 19 June 1885, 891, no.11
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 9, no.15
Discovered in 1846 at Tenea near Corinth
