Torso of a Standing Man
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Torso of a Standing Man” now? Collection: Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge. Not on view at present. Checked September 29, 2026.
Cambridge, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the sculpture
Torso of a Standing Man
The workmanship is crude, the back hardly modeled. The head and neck are broken away, as are the right arm from the area above the elbow and the lower areas of the drapery, as well as the plinth.
The man wears his cloak over the left shoulder; the right hand appears to hold the edge of his cloak as it falls down along his right side. The left leg is preserved almost to the left foot, and it shows the weight was on the right leg. The object held in the left hand, in front of the folds of the cloak, may be a bird, in which case this could be a small statue of Asklepios or a person making an offering to the god of medicine. Perhaps this is a statue of Hippocrates.
Read on
The bird ought to be a cock or rooster, since pet birds are generally held by children in Attic funerary sculpture (as in the stele of Melisto, about 340 B.C., no. 24, above), but the surfaces are too worn to say with confidence here. When Asklepios himself is accompanied by a cock, the bird is usually being offered to him by an attendant (or Gallus, making a sacrifice), as in the Juturna precinct near the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Roman Forum (Boni, 1901, pp. 114-117, fig. 75). These representations are usually connected with statues in which Asklepios holds a rotulus or scroll in one hand, which could conceivably be the case here if the god rather than Hippocrates or a votary were represented.
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
Harvard Art Museums
Details
- Accession number
- 1919.507
In the catalog
Sources
- Harvard Art Museums
- Image: Harvard Art Museums — © President and Fellows of Harvard College
