Bronze Statuette of an Artisan with Silver Eyes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sept. 2007

Bronze statuette of an artisan with silver eyes
ca. mid-1st century B.C.


Object Details

Period: Late Hellenistic

Date: ca. mid-1st century B.C.

Culture: Greek

Medium: Bronze, silver

Dimensions: 15 7/8 × 5 1/8 × 4 1/4 in., 15 lb. (40.3 × 13 × 10.8 cm, 6.8 kg)

Classification: Bronzes

Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1972

Accession Number: 1972.11.1


This statuette is remarkable for its synthesis of Hellenistic immediacy and Classical composure. The figure can be identified as an artisan by his dress and muscular build. Particularly telling is the pair of wax tablets tucked in his belt—the equivalent of a note pad—on which he would have written or drawn with a pointed stylus. The portrait is imbued with great psychological power and may represent a famous, even mythological, figure. For example, he may portray the Homeric hero Epeios, who with Athena's help carved the Trojan horse. It has also been proposed that he is the legendary master craftsman Daidalos, who built the labyrinth at Knossos, or even the famous fifth century B.C. Athenian sculptor Phidias, creator of the chryselephantine cult statue of Zeus at Olympia and master craftsman of the sculptures of the Parthenon on the Athenian Akropolis.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/255344