My thesis focuses on the marble statue of a naked youth and the Greek artist Kritios who possibly made it. This statue, which is known as “Kritios Boy”, is certainly one of the most famous Greek originals. Since it has been discovered...
moreMy thesis focuses on the marble statue of a naked youth and the Greek artist Kritios who possibly made it. This statue, which is known as “Kritios Boy”, is certainly one of the most famous Greek originals. Since it has been discovered this male statue has been examined by many classical archaeologists, because there are some unresolved issues. This is also the reason why until the present day we know neither the exact place and time of the discovery, nor the circumstances of its “burial”, nor the dating or even the artist’s name. My thesis deals with the issue, whether the famous early classical artist Kritios, who created the second Tyrant-Slayers-group, is also the sculptor of the boy. Since A. Furtwängler has been assigned this statue to Kritios and has it always been compared with the replica of the younger of the Tyrant-Slayers named Harmodios. This is also the reason for calling the statue Kritios Boy. The original of the Tyrant-Slayers is lost, but there exist reproductions on small archaeologically objects. The mentioned representations can indeed give an approximate idea of the group. However, in order to get a clear idea of the way in which the artist has worked, 6 statue bases with signatures, which can be identified as Kritios works, are quite helpful, because they once supported bronze statues. But even using these blocks, a safe attribution of the Kritios Boy to this artist is not possible. Finally, the only remaining comparisons for the boy are the Roman replicas. Even after the comparison, it can still not be proven that the statue was made by Kritios. To leave no stone unturned for an attempt to ascribe it, I compared the statue with objects which are attributed to Kritios himself or to his joint workshop with Nesiotes, but again no clear evidence emerged that would lead to absolute clarity in this matter. This led me to conclude that eventually another name for the Kritios Boy should be found, for the future we should say the so called Kritios Boy.
