Roman copy of one of the Ephesian Amazons. According to a passage in Pliny’s Natural History four sculptors, Pheidias, Polykleitos, Kresilas and Phradmon, competed for the job of making a statue of an Amazon for the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The sculptors themselves were to choose the best and, after each voting for themselves, Polykleitos came out the winner.
How seriously we should take this story is doubtful as even Pliny believed it to be improbable. Nevertheless, scholars have long argued over which sculptor made which of this group of four Amazons.
This copy, also known as the Sciarra Amazon, shown the female warrior in defeat. With a wound in her right side, she has lost her horse and is improvising a belt out of a broken rein. The right arm is a restoration
Berlin K176
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 172 (n.2), pl. 61.3
Richter: Sculpture & Sculptors of the Greeks (1950), fig.655
Lawrence: Classical Sculpture (1928), 209-, pl. 64b
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 60, no.270
Blümel: Römische Kopien Griechische Skulpturen des V Jahrhunderts (1931), 38-
Picard: Archéologie Grècque; Sculpture II (1939), 300- (for attribution of types to different sculptors)
Furtwängler: Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, 128
Pliny: Natural History XXXIV.19
Found in Rome in 1868
