Moschophoros
A man carrying a calf for sacrifice.
Early Greece was largely an agricultural economy, and this sculpture reminds us that to give up a calf to the gods was a sacrifice indeed. Hence the sculpture was set up on the Acropolis, the holy citadel of Athens.
The sculpture looks remarkably modern; the calf’s face is positioned to echo the man’s, and the whole group is united with a clever X-shaped composition of human arms and calf legs
Athens, Acropolis Museum 624
Purchased 1884
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 37 (n.2), pl. 10.3
Karo: Personality in Greek Archaic Art, 254
Schrader: Archaischen Marmorbildwerke des Akropolis (1939), 278-, pls. 153-4
Payne & Young: Archaic Marble Sculpture from the Acropolis, pls. 2-4
Dickins: Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum I, 156-
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 18, no.49
Stewart: Greek Sculpture, 120, pls. 123 & 126
Hurwit: The Athenian Acropolis (1999), 102
Excavated on the Acropolis, Athens in 1864