1. The weight rests on one leg
Start from the feet. An Archaic kouros stands with the left foot slightly forward, weight shared, like a soldier at attention. A Classical figure lets one leg carry the load and relaxes the other, bent at the knee. The earliest clear case is the Kritios Boy from the Acropolis, made after 480 BCE. If one knee is soft and one leg is straight, you are probably looking at a Classical work or a later one.
2. Chest and pelvis tilt the opposite way
Now look at the torso. When the weight moves to one leg, the body answers: in the Diadoumenos of Polykleitos the chest and the pelvis tilt in opposite directions, and the contrast gives the torso a feeling of life. This calculated pose, the contrapposto, appears in almost all works attributed to Polykleitos and became a standard formula. Draw two imaginary lines, one through the shoulders and one through the hips: in a Classical statue they are not parallel.
3. The proportions are measured
Classical statues follow measured proportions. Polykleitos of Argos was famous for a system of proportions that others could reproduce, set out in a treatise called the Canon. In the fourth century Lysippos changed the recipe, with smaller heads and slimmer bodies, so a figure that looks unusually tall and slender is likely to be later than the Parthenon.
4. The drapery shows the body
If the figure is clothed, look at the folds. Classical sculptors carved cloth that follows and reveals the body beneath. On a grave stele in the Metropolitan Museum, made around 450-440 BCE, a little girl’s unbelted peplos falls open at the side, and the folds make it clear how she stands. In a Classical figure, the folds tell you where the weight is.
5. Bronze, paint and metal
Classical statues were not meant to be bare white stone. Bronze was the favourite material for freestanding statues, valued for its strength and its lustre, and marble figures were painted and fitted with metal: the fifty statues of the Parthenon’s pediments had colourful paint and metal accessories. Small holes and traces of colour are clues to the original appearance, not damage.
6. A tree trunk by the leg: probably a Roman copy
Very few Classical bronzes survive, so many “Greek statues” in museums are Roman marble copies. A heavy marble figure on two slender ankles needs support, and copyists added it: on the marble copy of the Diadoumenos found on Delos, a tree trunk beside the leg was added by the copyist, because marble cannot stand where bronze could. A trunk or a similar support is a strong sign that you are looking at Roman copies of lost bronze originals.
Putting the clues together
No single clue proves a date, but together they work well. A figure with one relaxed leg, tilted hips, measured proportions and revealing drapery is Classical in style; if it also has a support trunk and is carved in marble, it is probably a Roman copy of a Classical bronze. Practise in front of the Kritios Boy and a kouros side by side, and the six clues soon become a habit.
Where to see them
In Athens, the Acropolis Museum has the Kritios Boy and the Parthenon sculptures, and the National Archaeological Museum the Diadoumenos of Delos and the great bronzes. The Metropolitan Museum in New York has the grave stele of the little girl and Roman copies of Polykleitos. Check opening times before you go.
Sources
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection records 25.78.56 and 27.45; “The Art of Classical Greece (ca. 480-323 B.C.)” (2008).
- National Archaeological Museum, Athens, “Sculpture Collection”; Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, Odysseus: Diadoumenos of Delos (1826).
- Acropolis Museum, Athens: Kritios Boy (Acr. 698); “The pediments”.
- Pliny the Elder, Natural History 34.65 (Bostock 34.19), Perseus Digital Library.
