EUROPA 2012 - VISIT CROATIA - APOKSIOMEN

CROATIAN APOXYOMEN (BRONZE STATUE OF THE ATHLET WITH STRIGILIS – STRIGILIS CLEANER) In the underwater of Vela Orjula an islet near Lošinj, a Belgian sports diver and amateur photographer René Wauters found a bronze statue stuck between two cliffs. In April 1999 under the auspices of the Ministry of culture oft he Republic of Croatia the extracting oft he sculpture – a monumental bronze statue o fan athlete in supernatural size – it is 192 cm tall – the only bronze sculpture of such features discovered in the East-Adriatic underwater and one among the rare bronze statues in general discovered in Adriatic underwater. The discovery of the statue initiated further investigations that resulted in a rare finding of a fragment oft he bronze base oft he statue and other archaeological findings from one of the shipwrecks from ancient time. The statue of the young athlete is characterised by exceptionally high artistic quality and unique, unusual beauty. It depicts the erect figure of a naked young man of balanced body constitution, elegancy and above all very strong musculature, evenly distributed over front and back side of the body. Due to prolonged stay on the sea bottom, the layers of incrustations sedimented on the statue, especially on its front side while on the back side are much more prominent corrosive processes due to the sandy sea bed. Even before it was pooled out of the sea it was obvious that the statue was very well preserved. Apart from the object in his hand, which is supposed to be a strigilis – an instrument used as aid to scrape off dirt and oil from the sweaty body - and smaller sporadic surface damages and perforations on back side of the right leg, missing from the statue are also a small finger on the left hand and eyes of glass paste that were imbedded in eye cavities. Immediately upon pulling out from the sea the sculpture underwent the necessary process of desalination and then, at the end of year 2000 an exceptionally demanding preservation and restoration process was begun at Croatian Restoration Institute in Zagreb. A great part of research and analytical work i.e. determining the level of preservation of the statue, investigation of the material, i.e. analysis of the bronze composition and of techniques used in making the statue etc. was entrusted to the experts of the Scientific Lab of the Institute for Research and Restoration Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence and other relevant institutions from Padua and Coma and from Miami, Florida. The analyses confirmed that in the process of statue casting a technique of “lost wax” - a typical antique method was used and that the statue was composed of seven separate parts put together by using different techniques. It is also interesting that the thickness of the bronze wall varies from 3 to 5 millimetres, while on the head it is thicker because of thick, curly hair and other details. On the statue also a number of patches can be noticed which still in antique times were used to remove faults that occurred during casting. Attention draws also the composition of the alloy used for making statue, soldering and making patches: although the results oscillate depending on the parts of the sculpture, it can still be concluded that the percentage of lead in relation to copper and tin is more appropriate to standards of Greek than of Roman bronze. Some parts of the statue, e.g. the half-opened mouth and the nipples were made of reddish copper sheet in order to achieve polychromy. The results of the conducted analyses offer indicia according to which this precious cargo could have been loaded in one of Greek harbours on Small Asian coast. The analysis of carbon isotope (C 14) determined the possible dating range of the statue (the datings of analysed materials vary in the range from 20 to 110 B.C.) which can serve as terminus ante quem for dating of the statue that accordingly could be concluded to originate from earlier period. About the statue from the Lošinj underwater much has been written and the opinions expressed are not fully congruent. Differences are e.g. present in the name of the statue which some experts call Apoxyomen (Scraper) with regard to the famous masterpiece by Lysippus from Vatican Museums which depicts an athlete in the moment of scraping layers of sweat and dirt from the forearm of his straight outstretched arm. Other experts, and it seems with reason, draw the attention to the fact that the athlete from Orjula Bay, Island Lošinj, is not performing the same activity and that for that reason the names for the two sculptures can not be identical. The person from the Lošinj underwater is actually not busy scrapping dirt from his body but cleaning dirt from the strigilis. Also the answers were sought to following questions: is the statue a copy or original, what could be the age of the athlete - some think he might be about eighteen while others think him to be in his mature years. There were also dilemmas concerning the sports discipline he was practising: it seems that more convincing are arguments suggesting that he was a boxer but also other hypothesis that he was performing in some other sports discipline can not be ignored. Interesting is also the presumption that the person presented is a concrete individual - possibly winner of a sports competition, - when we consider physiognomic details that are close to portrait art. There are indeed a lot of uncertainties that will surely be further discussed. However, there is one fact all agree about: the athlete of Lošinj is an exceptional quality example of antique figurative bronze sculpture. The opinion is prevailing that it is a copy of the Greek archetype created after the artistic heritage of the period after Polyclitus with aesthetic elements of more recent stylistic expression. The archetype of the depicted character should hence originate from the late classical or early Hellenistic period and probably dates from about the middle of the 4th century B.C. or slightly earlier. Athlete with strigilis from the Lošinj underwater is a copy from the late Hellenistic period, from 2nd or 1st century B.C. It seems to be the closest and certainly the best quality from the eight known replicas of the Greek original. Still, three replicas among them are most prominent and similar: a famous bronze statue from Ephesus –today exposed in Vienna, bronze head recently bought out for the Kimbel Art Museum in Fort Worthu, Texas and the newest example – the statue from Lošinj underwater. It is certainly unusual that in spite of the very favoured, described type (called Ephesus- Lošinj) preserved also in other materials and smaller dimensions, antique literary sources - here we especially have in mind Pliny the Elder - do not mention its existence, but mention that all major Greek sculptors from Polycleitus and Lysippus to Daedalus and Daip had attempted to make athletes with strigilis scrapping off dirt (apoxyomen). Although the athlete with strigilis (the athlete of the type Efez-Lošinj Apoxyomen) was exhibited in Zagreb also earlier, upon finished restoration and conservation works a completed presentation followed – exhibition in the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb opened in May 2006. From September 2006 to January 2007 the same setup was also exposed in the famous Florentine palace Medici- Riccardi and thereafter also in some other towns in Croatia, as well as at the expo „Greeks in Croatia“ in Klovićevi dvori in Zagreb and in the end also in Ljubljana, in the city museum ( Mestni muzej). Presently, however only temporary, the statue is exhibited in the Museum Mimara in Zagreb and should soon be exposed in Louvre in Paris. At the initiative of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles there is a proposal to show the sculpture in USA, at the representative exposition dedicated to monumental bronze Hellenistic sculpture. According to earlier decision by competent bodies, final destination of this precious but exceptionally fragile and sensitive object should be Mali Lošinj, where a building will to be restored and adapted for the purpose. Ante Rendić-Miočević