Male Torso (Mercury?) in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, October 2009

Male torso (Mercury?)

Roman, Imperial Period, 1st half of the 1st century A.D.

Dimensions: Overall: 120 x 58 x 30 cm (47 1/4 x 22 13/16 x 11 13/16 in.)

Medium or Technique: Marble from Mount Pentelikon near Athens

Classification: Sculpture

Catalogue Raisonné: Sculpture in Stone (MFA), no. 142; Sculpture in Stone and Bronze (MFA), p. 111 (additional published references); Highlights: Classical Art (MFA), p. 164-165.

Accession Number: 01.8190

The large-scale male torso bears the weight of the body on the left leg; the right hip swings outwards. As a result of this contrapposto stance, the left hip, left buttock and right shoulder are slightly lowered and the spinal column curves in an S-shape to the right.

Condition: Breaks along the bottom of the neck, right upper arm, left arm above the elbow, genitalia, and left knee and right thigh. Remnant of a strut visible on the back of the right thigh. Veins and inclusions in the marble. Surface mottled with pale brown stains and gashes throughout.

Male torso (Mercury?)

Roman, Imperial period

Early or mid-1st century A.D.

Marble

Henry Lillie Pierce Fund, 1901 01.8190

This torso was heavily influenced by one of the most famous ancient sculptures, the Doryphoros (“Spear bearer”) of Polykleitos, a leading Greek artist of the fifth century B.C. Polykleitos may have created the Doryphoros to exemplify the ideal proportions of the human body, about which he also wrote a treatise. The Polykleitan body type is characterized by a pronounced swing of the hips counterbalanced by an opposing slope of the shoulders, as well as clear definition of each muscle. Statues emulating Polykleitos’s ideal were extremely popular in the early Roman imperial period. This version may represent Mercury (the Greek Hermes), the messenger god, and would have held a herald’s staff instead of a spear.

Text from: www.mfa.org/collections/object/male-torso-mercury-151145