Torso of a Youth

The exceptional workmanship suggests that this sculpture was carved by a Greek sculptor. Its incomplete state of preservation makes precise identification difficult, but it was most likely an Apollo or Dionysos, modeled in the soft, somewhat effeminate style of Praxiteles. The museum’s Apollo Sauroktonos is a useful parallel. The two drill holes in the upper chest are ancient and were possibly used to support separate long tresses of hair. The sculpture may well be a copy of a fourth-century original.