Statue of Meleager

1st-2nd century

Roman

The statue depicts the legendary Greek hunter Meleager, who earned his fame by killing a ferocious boar that terrorized the people of Calydon. About forty Roman sculptural representations of Meleager survive, leading scholars to conclude that there was likely an earlier Greek statue on which they are based, presumably by the architect and sculptor Skopas of Paros, who incorporated a marble relief depicting the Calydonian boar hunt on one of his buildings. However, none of the ancient authors who wrote about Greek sculpture mention that Skopas created a large-scale, three-dimensional statue of Meleager, so the attribution to him is uncertain.

Status: On View, Gallery 154
Department: Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium

Culture: Ancient Roman
Title: Statue of Meleager
Place: Roman Empire (Object made in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1 CE–199 CE
Medium: Marble
Dimensions: 173 × 73.7 × 55.2 cm (68 5/16 × 29 × 21 3/4 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eugene A. Davidson
Reference Number: 1972.935
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/40593/manifest.json

Art Institute of Chicago, “Acquisitions,” Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report 1972–73 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1973), p. 27.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Report of the President,” Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report 1972–73 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1973), p. 7 (ill.).
Steven Lattimore, “Meleager: New Replicas, Old Problems,” Opuscula Romana 9, 18 (1973), pp. 158, 166.
Art Institute of Chicago, “Recent Acquisition: The Hero Meleager,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 67, 2 (March–April 1973), cover (ill.), pp. 2–3 (ill.).
Philip Oliver-Smith, “The Houston Bronze Spearbearer,” Antike Plastik 15, 1–9 (1975), pp. 103–04, figs. 21–23.
Andrew F. Stewart, Skopas of Paros (Noyes, 1977), p. 143, F6; p. 170, n. 5.
Cornelius C. Vermeule III, Greek and Roman Sculpture in America: Masterpieces in Public Collections in the United States and Canada (Berkely: University of California Press, 1981), p. 21.
Cornelius C. Vermeule III, “Roman Art,” in “Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” special issue, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 20, 1 (1994), pp. 62 (ill.); 66–67, cat. 41 (ill.).
Karen B. Alexander, “From Plaster to Stone: Ancient Art at the Art Institute of Chicago,” in Karen Manchester, Recasting the Past: Collecting and Presenting Antiquities at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 32.
Johannes Siapkas and Lena Sjögren, Displaying the Ideals of Antiquity: The Petrified Gaze (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), p. 165.
Katharine A. Raff, “Cat. 4 Statue of Meleager: Curatorial Entry,” in Roman Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 2016).
Rachel C. Sabino, with contributions by Lorenzo Lazzarini, “Cat. 4 Statue of Meleager: Technical Report,” in Roman Art at the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 2016).

Art Institute of Chicago, Classical Art from the Permanent Collection, February 1989–February 17, 1990, no cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, Of Gods and Glamour: The Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art, Gallery 152, November 11, 2012 - present.

Antiken Heinz Herzer & Co., Munich; sold to Mr. and Mrs. Eugene A Davidson, 1972; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1972.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

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