Man holding Discus relief
Grave stele fragment.
This shallow slab was found built into the Themistoclean Wall in Athens. The wall was constructed hastily around 470 BCE, and the memorial slabs from the nearby Dipylon Cemetery made ideal ready-made building materials.
The relief itself dates from about a century earlier. It commemorates a sportsman, here shown with his profile framed by his discus, which was originally painted gold. It has been suggested that it may be by the same sculptor as the maker of the Rampin Horseman. Like most funerary reliefs, the dead man faces right, the direction of good luck
Athens, National Museum 38
Almost certainly bought from Martinelli
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 83 (n.10)
Johansen: the Attic Grave Reliefs of the Classical Period (1951), 92-
Karo: Personality in Greek Archaic Art, 258
Richter: Archaic Attic Gravestones (1934), 41
Papaspiridi: Guide du Musée Nationale d’Athènes (1927), 35-
Martinelli: Catalogue of Casts in Gypsum, no.130a and title page
Stewart: Greek Sculpture, 120, pl. 130
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 18, no.50
Found in Athens built into the Themistoclean Wall near the Dipylon Gate