Bronze Hand of a Boxer in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 2010

Bronze Hand of a Boxer
Roman, 1st-2nd century AD

Accession # 2001.219

The hand is clad in a caestus (boxing glove), comprising a semicylindical strip and a projecting spike, tied with cords running from the wrist. Although Roman boxers were represented in statues, mosaics, terracotta plaques, and lamps, bronze figurines, few objects show the actual boxing glove with such clarity of detail as the present piece. The hand is probably not a fragment of a larger composition; it was, perhaps, a votive, dedicated by a boxer on his retirement.

Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.