Head of Menelaos

This is the head of a larger group (known as the Pasquino group, so named after the provenance of one of the other fragments, a shoemaker's shop in Rome) showing Menelaos dragging the corpse of Patroklos from the battlefields of Troy. There was a vogue around this time for large group sculptures, in this case a pyramidal composition with this head at its top. The helmet is decorated with battle scenes of Herakles fighting centaurs. Group compositions provided more scope for the telling of a story, here a scene from Homer’s Iliad.

Roman copy of a Pergamene original. The flamboyant hair and massive muscles are features of a ‘baroque’ East Greek style, also seen in the Laocoon and the Great Altar of Pergamon

Number

369

Material

Marble

Location of Original

Rome, Vatican, Sala dei Busti 311

Size

0.86m

References

Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 362 (n.17), pl. 122.2 (reconstruction)
Amelung: Catalogue of the Vatican Museum II (1908), 311, pls. 68 & 73
Brunn-Bruckmann: Denkmäler Griechischer und Römischer Skulptur, pl. 237
Dickins: Hellenistic Sculpture (1920), pl. 36 (for original group)
Pollitt: Art in the Hellenistic Age, 118, pl. 119

Date

Roman. Original: 240-230 BCE

Provenance

Said to have been found in the Villa of Hadrian at Tivoli

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