Kouros

Writing in the mid-500s B.C., the Greek poet Theognis summed this idea up as "What is beautiful is loved, and what is not is unloved." In a society that emphasized youth and male beauty, the artistic manifestation of this worldview was the kouros. Indeed, when the poet Simonides wrote about *arete* in the late 500s, he used a metaphor seemingly drawn from the kouros: "In hand and foot and mind alike foursquare / fashioned without flaw." Neither art historians nor scientists have been able to completely resolve the issue of the Getty Museum kouros's authenticity. Certain elements of the statue have led to this questioning, especially a mixture of earlier and later stylistic traits and the use of marble from the island of Thasos at a date when its use is unexpected. Yet the anomalies of the Getty kouros may be due more to our limited knowledge of Greek sculpture in this period rather than to mistakes on the part of a forger.