The ''Arrotino'' (Italian - the "Blade-Sharpener"), or formerly the ''Scythian'', thought to be a figure from a group representing the '' Flaying of Marsyas'' is a Hellenistic-Roman sculpture ( Pergamene school) of a man crouching to sharpen a knife on a whetstone. The sculpture was excavated in the early sixteenth century, for it is recognizable in an inventory made after the death of Agostino Chigi (1520) of his villa in

Trastevere Trastevere () is the 13th ''rione'' of Rome: it is identified by the initials R. XIII and it is located within Municipio I. Its name comes from Latin ''trans Tiberim'', literally 'beyond the Tiber'. Its coat of arms depicts a golden head of a lio ...

, which would become the Villa Farnesina. Later the sculpture formed part of the garden of sculptures and antiquities that Paolantonio Soderini inherited from his brother, Monsignor Francesco Soderini, who had arranged them in the Mausoleum of Augustus; Paolantonio noted in a letter of 1561 that ''il mio villano''— "my peasant"— had gone away, and it is known that a member of the Mignanelli family sold the ''Arrotino'' to Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici. It was removed to the Villa Medici, where it was displayed until it was removed in the eighteenth century to the Medici collections in Florence. In the Medici collections the ''villano'' was reinterpreted as a Scythian, or divorced of its '' genre'' associations entirely by becoming a royal barber or butler overhearing treasonous plotting against the state, raising it to the level of moralised history, which ranked higher in the contemporary hierarchy of genres. Only since the seventeenth century has it been recognized as having formed one part of a

Hellenistic In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...

group of " Apollo flaying Marsyas" (akin to the better-known multiple figures of '' Laocoön and his Sons'', the Odyssean groups at Sperlonga, or the

Pergamene Pergamon or Pergamum ( or ; grc-gre, Πέργαμον), also referred to by its modern Greek form Pergamos (), was a rich and powerful ancient Greek city in Mysia. It is located from the modern coastline of the Aegean Sea on a promontory on t ...

group of which the ''

Dying Gaul Dying is the final stage of life which will eventually lead to death. Diagnosing dying is a complex process of clinical decision-making, and most practice checklists facilitating this diagnosis are based on cancer diagnoses. Signs of dying ...

'' was once a part). The identification with a Marsyas group was introduced in 1669, in a publication by

Leonardo Agostini Leonardo Agostini (1593–1669) was an Italian antiquary of the 17th century, born in Boccheggiano, near Grosseto. Life Agostino was employed for some time as ''antiquario'' to Cardinal Francesco Barberini to collect works of art for the recen ...

, who recognized the theme in antique engraved hardstones The ''Arrotino'' was also for a long time thought to be an original Greek sculpture, and one of the finest such sculptures to have survived. As such, plaster copies were made for show and for art instruction (one made for the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

is now on view at the

Courtauld Courtauld is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: *Adam Courtauld Butler or Adam Butler (British politician), DL (1931–2008), British Conservative Party politician and MP *Augustine Courtauld (1904–1959), often called August Cour ...

). The original was often displayed beside one of the variants of the other great ancient sculpture of a crouching figure, the '' Crouching Venus'' also in the Uffizi collection.The two sculptures were paired in this fashion in the Parterre du Nord at Versailles, clearly visible in Étienne Allegrain's panoramic ''Promenade of Louis XIV in the Parterre du Nord'' 1688. However, the ''Arrotino'' is now recognised simply as a first-century BC copy from a

original. It is on display in the

Tribuna of the Uffizi The Tribuna of the Uffizi is an octagonal room in the Uffizi gallery, Florence, Italy. Designed by Bernardo Buontalenti for Francesco I de' Medici in 1584, the most important antiquities and High Renaissance and Bolognese paintings from the Medic ...

, alongside Old Master paintings, as it has been since the 18th century.

Notes

{{coord missing, Italy Classical sculptures in the Uffizi 1st-century BC Roman sculptures Pergamene sculpture Roman copies of Greek sculptures