Victorious Boy

From 632 BC the Olympic Games held contests for boys as well as men, a foot race and wrestling at first, and later boxing too. A boy who won could have a bronze statue of himself set up in the sanctuary at Olympia, usually paid for by his family or his city. When the travel writer Pausanias walked through the sanctuary in the 2nd century AD, he still listed several boy victors whose statues had been made by Polykleitos of Argos, one of the most admired sculptors of the 5th century BC.

This marble is a Roman copy of a statue of that kind, a victorious boy by a sculptor from the circle of Polykleitos, made around 410 BC. The bronze original is lost. Both arms and the lower legs are lost on the copy as well, and the left arm is thought to have once rested on a pillar.