Boy with the Goose

Around 182 AD the emperor Commodus had two brothers of the Quintilius family put to death, both of them former consuls, and their great villa on the Via Appia, south of Rome, passed to the emperor. This marble comes from that villa. It is a Roman copy of the 2nd century AD, after a Greek bronze made around 220 BC.

A small boy, about three years old by the museum's reckoning, has wrapped both arms around the neck of a goose. To bring his weight to bear he leans back and plants his feet wide apart, and the goose spreads its feet just as wide and pulls the other way. The museum doubts that a toddler could really hold a full-grown goose like this, or that he would enjoy it for long once the bird twisted free and went for him with its beak. Hellenistic sculptors liked exactly this play between real life and invention. The boy's pose recalls Heracles wrestling the Nemean lion, while his cheerful face tells you not to take the fight too seriously.

In bronze the group stood without help. The stone strut between boy and bird had to be added when it was copied in marble.