rocktupac wrote:Not to stir the pot or anything, but personally, I don't find his thighs to be that shockingly huge. As it was mentioned and alluded to before, Alexander would probably have built up his thighs a number of different ways: riding horse, marching/drilling, physical exercises etc. That being said, I would expect his thighs to be this 'big'. On a side note, my thighs are pretty muscular and fairly comparable to the size of Alexander's in the bronze, relatively speaking. They are larger than normal (occasionally making it difficult to find pants that don't hug my thighs) but I wouldn't describe them as anything out of the ordinary.
It's not that I find the thighs to be
shockingly huge, more that, along with the thighs, it's uncommon to see such a general broadness of torso in a portrait/sculpture of Alexander. Most portrayals seem to show him as muscular but slimmer, such as that lovely little statue of Alexander as Pan which was found in Pella. And muscular but slim gives an effect of increased height which I suspect is what Alexander would have prefered. This particular statue, because of the muscular girth, is closer to a Herculean portrait than anything else, and here Alexander definitely looks short, IMO. It's the proposed connection with Lysippus that I find most interesting (and questionable) because Lysippus was famous for making his models look taller.
Pliny, Natural History, Volume IX, Book XXXIV. 61 – 65 (Quote is from somewhere in the middle) Lysippus is said to have contributed greatly to the art of bronze statuary by representing the details of the hair and by making his heads smaller than the old sculptors used to do, and his bodies more slender and firm, to give his statues the appearance of greater height.
If this statue should be proven to be made by Lysippus - and it was that statement that brought me to post in the first place - then he didn't do a very good job on the "greater height" or "slender" aspects, so it will take some strong evidence to convince me.
Lysippus aside, I did wonder if it is meant to be a portrait of Alexander as Herakles, but, as Andrew noted, it does appear that he was originally holding a lance. It could be that he was also leaning on a club, something we see in many sculptures of Herakles, but I don't know of any iconic portrayals that also show Herakles with a lance.
Best regards,
This is so funny...LOL! To me, just cleaning up brass is a pain, but o.k., I admit that those small ivory heads would have been very difficult to make, and perhaps having a piece of bronze this size would have been much easier...I am not an artisit obviously, so in the right hands, anything is possible...but I have a huge brass bucket that is problem enough for me just to keep clean....and Rocktupac's comments about his pants being a bit snug is quite astounding as today all I see are these darn pants that keep falling down around the waist to show off the young kid's underwear...I just don't believe that Alexander posed for all these busts and statuettes so that the sculptors had to use a lot of imagination at times...did Lysippus travel with Alexander? anyone know? I don't recall reading that...when did all these images take place anyway? any historical data on that?