The Victorious Youth, Getty Bronze, also known as ''Atleta di Fano'', or ''Lisippo di Fano'' is a Greek bronze sculpture, made between 300 and 100 BC, in the collections of the

J. Paul Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and fea ...

Pacific Palisades, California Pacific Palisades is a neighborhood in the Westside region of Los Angeles, California, situated about west of Downtown Los Angeles. Pacific Palisades was formally founded in 1921 by a Methodist organization, and in the years that followed be ...

. Many underwater bronzes have been discovered along the Aegean and Mediterrean coast; in 1900 sponge divers found the '' Antikythera Youth'' and the portrait head of a Stoic, at Antikythera, the standing Poseidon of Cape Artemision in 1926, the

Croatian Apoxyomenos The ''Croatian Apoxyomenos'' ( hr, Hrvatski Apoksiomen) is an Ancient Greek statue cast in bronze in the 2nd or 1st century BC; it was discovered in 1996 on the bottom of the sea near the Croatian islet of Vele Orjule, southeast of the island of ...

in 1996 and various bronzes until 1999. The ''Victorious Youth'' was found in the summer of 1964 in the sea off

Fano Fano is a town and '' comune'' of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort southeast of Pesaro, located where the '' Via Flaminia'' reaches the Adriatic Sea. It is the third city in the region by ...

on the

Adriatic coast The Adriatic Sea () is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Sea) to the ...

of Italy, snagged in the nets of an Italian fishing trawler. In the summer of 1977, The J. Paul Getty Museum purchased the bronze statue and it remains in the Getty Villa in Malibu, California.

Bernard Ashmole Bernard Ashmole, CBE, MC (22 June 1894 – 25 February 1988) was a British archaeologist and art historian, who specialized in ancient Greek sculpture. He held a number of professorships during his lifetime; Yates Professor of Classical Art a ...

, an archaeologist and art historian, was asked to inspect the sculpture by a Munich art dealer Heinz Herzer; he and other scholars attributed it to

Lysippos Lysippos (; grc-gre, Λύσιππος) was a Greek sculptor of the 4th century BC. Together with Scopas and Praxiteles, he is considered one of the three greatest sculptors of the Classical Greek era, bringing transition into the Hellenistic p ...

, a prolific sculptor of Classical Greek art. The research and conservation of the Victorious Youth dates from the 1980s to the 1990s, and is based on studies in classical bronzes, and ancient Mediterranean specialists collaboration with the Getty Museum. The entire sculpture was cast in one piece; this casting technique is called the “lost wax” method; the sculpture was first created in clay with support to allow hot air to melt the wax creating a mold for molten bronze to be poured into, making a large bronze Victorious Youth. More recently, scholars have been more concerned with the original social context, such as where the sculpture was made, for what context and who he might be. Multiple interpretations of where the Youth was made and who the Youth is, are expressed in scholarly books by Jiri Frel, Paul Getty Museum curator, from 1973 to 1986, and

Carol Mattusch Carol C. Mattusch is the Mathay Professor of Art History at George Mason University. She is a specialist in Greek, Roman and 18th century art. Education Mattusch studied at Bryn Mawr College, graduating in 1969. She received her PhD from the ...

, Professor of Art History at

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...

specializing in Greek and Roman art with a focus in classical bronzes.

Description

The sculpture may have been part of the crowd of sculptures of victorious athletes at Panhellenic Greek sanctuaries like

Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), in ancient times was a sacred precinct that served as the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. The orac ...

and Olympia. Other research has developed an argument that the ''Bronze'' represents a victorious athlete and a young prince whose lineage relates to

Alexander the Great Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to ...

. Therefore, this Olympic statue might have been dedicated anywhere within the ancient Greek world rather than Delphi or Olympia. A possible reconstruction to the ''Getty Bronze'' is that the statue could have held a palm frond as these were gifts given to the victors. His right hand reaches to touch the winner's olive wreath on his head. The powerful head has led the ''Getty Bronze'' conservators to see it as a portrait; from the X-radiographs it has been concluded that the head was cast separately. With this technique the artist is able to focus on the head as an individual project to the full composition of the lithe body. The athlete's eyes were once inlaid, probably with bone, and his nipples are in contrasting copper. When examining the ''Bronze'' one must ask questions to understand its subject matter further, the wreath gives clues but what about the statue's build, this individual is a slender young man with a confident gaze. However, nothing about him refers to strength; his body is not particularly muscular or powerful in his stance.

Techniques

The Lost-Wax Process

Like many other Greek artworks, the bronze statue was made through the lost-wax method. Initially, the artist created an armature or support made with a thick wooden stick, iron bars or wires, and ancient reed sticks to support appendages from the torso. Surrounding the armature was a mixture of loam, sand, pebbles, pistachio nuts, fragments of clay and ivory, and glue. This combination kept the structure stable through multiple layers of application. After the final layer of clay was applied, wax sheets covered the statue's surface. During this process wax plates supported the figure from multiple points holding the statue vertically. Nails pierced into the wax to the inner core and protruded outwards to keep the statue positioned with the external mold. Slow heating allowed the wax to melt and fired the center and mold into a stable position. As the wax melted, an air space formed, creating a mold of the Victorious Youth, which became filled with molten bronze. The entire sculpture was cast in one piece; this casting technique is called the “lost wax” method.

Polychromy

Evidence of

polychrome Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery or sculpture in multiple colors. Ancient Egypt Colossal statu ...

survives; the nipples and lips are copper. This color choice may have interacted with the golden yellow of the bronze surface. There is a possibility of silver on the olive crown and more color to enhance the cheeks. The inserted eyes would have given the bronze statue a naturalistic look. During the casting process of the Youth, these eye sockets would have been left empty and after the casting process both eyes would be inserted. The iris and pupil would be made of stone or glass, the white parts of the eyes would be ivory, bone or glass. To hold the eye in place a reddish sheet of copper would have been cut to fit the eye socket and then be curled into lashes. In addition to the application of bone, copper, glass, ivory, the bronze would be painted pale and gleaming like flesh to its viewers of the ancient world.

Attribution

In the late 1980s antiquity scholars, and Getty Museum curator, Frel, used radiocarbon dating and stylistic analysis to attribute Lysippos as the creator of the ''Youth''. Using Polykleitos's statues as a comparison, scholars seen a change in ''Polykleitan Kanon;'' the proportions become more subtle and richer in detail. There was a shift from the squareness in the face and innovative applications of elongation in the details of face and body. Lysippos was praised for his ability to evoke the soul from his statues through fleeting expressions. Establishing an exact artist for the work is challenging due to the lack of original Greek bronzes to use for comparison. Ancient literature gives testimony of the classical sculptors; however, the artist did not sign the statues. There is no physical evidence to support the conclusion that Lysippos was the sculptor, but Frel, Mattusch, and ancient literary source Pliny, theorizes that Lysippos or his student was the ''Youth's'' creator. In Pliny's ''Natural History'', he includes information about Greek sculptors extracted from earlier texts that are lost to us. During the fourth century B.C., Lysippos produced a multitude of sculptures; he alone probably sculpted fifteen hundred statues. He came from a family of bronze workers who developed a new method of increasing production, and the statues of athletes were a specialty.

Dating

4th/5th Century

In 1974, Jerry Podany, Antiquities Conservator at the Getty Museum, and Marie Svoboda, a post-graduate intern in Antiquities Conservation at the Museum, conducted radiocarbon dating from a piece of wood that came from the statue's core, establishing the bronze as an ancient piece of work. Over one month, Stapp removed the core of the bronze to eliminate issues related to humidity. During the removal, thermoluminescence dating and carbon 14 methods of examination confirmed the dating of the Victorious Youth to pre-Roman time. The rectangular plate on the statue's back of neck functioned as support for the ''Bronze's'' vertical position, a technique shared by two other fourth-century bronzes; the ''

Marathon Boy The Marathon Boy or Ephebe of Marathon is a Greek bronze sculpture found in the Aegean Sea in the bay of Marathon in 1925. The sculpture is conserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens where it is dated to around 340–330 BC. The ...

'' and the '' Antikythera Youth''. The curved body raised hip, smooth, and youthful anatomy are characteristics of a universal style—the fifth century B.C. developed these frameworks as a canonical expression of classical values. This form of expression went on through two and a half millennia, making dating and attribution challenging to determine with confidence. Despite slightly different interpretations, a collective agreement states that production can be dated to between the late fourth century and middle of the third century B.C.

Collectors in Antiquity

Many statues from Greek cities and sanctuaries moved into Roman possession by the second century B.C. Vast collections of the antique style flourished, various statuary were looted and repurposed for Roman decoration. Like many other bronzes, the Victorious Youth traveled across the ocean on its way to Italy for reinstallation, possibly in public areas or in private homes.

Interpretation

According to Jiri Frel, the stance and proportion of the Getty Bronze are similar to Lysippos's portrait of

Demetrios Poliorketes Demetrius I (; grc, Δημήτριος; 337–283 BC), also called Poliorcetes (; el, Πολιορκητής, "The Besieger"), was a Macedonian nobleman, military leader, and king of Macedon (294–288 BC). He belonged to the Antigonid dynasty ...

(336-283 B.C.). The least controversial theory is that the strong calves emphasize his athletic abilities, making him an Olympic runner who held a victor's palm branch in his left arm. Claims state there are actual traces of palm after studying the statue. Interpreting the anatomy is important in identifying the statue, from the detail in the joints, delicate attention to the wrists and ends of fingers there is a youthful representation. Greek games functioned as a major aspect in Greek culture and art. During the second century A.D., athletic contests were consistent events in various cities throughout Greece. At Olympia, these games were categorized for men, youth and boys. The

Panhellenic Games Panhellenic Games is the collective term for four separate sports festivals held in ancient Greece. The four Games were: Description The Olympiad was one of the ways the Greeks measured time. The Olympic Games were used as a starting point, yea ...

occurred at religious sanctuaries in honor of the gods;

hosted Pythian games as gifts for Apollo and athletic events at Olympia for Zeus. These games included footraces, combat sports, pentathlon, horse racing, and chariot racing. Delphi involved singing and playing of instruments to these Panhellenic Games. The victors received wreaths of different leaves depending on the site location; laurel at Delphi, olive at Olympia, pine at Isthmia, and wild celery at Nemea. By understanding the specific wreaths worn by the winners, one could hypothesize which temple the statue would have housed. Jiri Frel in 1982 examines the statue associated with Alexander the Great, based on reviewing the whole figure the stance to features doesn't represent a well bred citizen but higher in class. The artist's ability to capture not only beauty but produce a work of art that emphasizes the classical structures of Greek art during the Hellenistic period suggests the Youth as a descendant of one of the royal families from Alexander. However, this theory did not survive the criticism of other scholars. Not until the 1990s was the next attempt to identify the sculpture and the Getty Museum didn't approve the name. Now much debate and research is specific to anatomy, its date and authorship; but with the uncertainties of stylistic assessments its difficult to reach a consensus. Surviving Greek Bronze

Discovery

Many underwater bronzes have been discovered along the Aegean and Mediterrean coast; in 1900 sponge divers found the '' Antikythera Youth'' and the portrait head of a Stoic, at Antikythera, the standing Poseidon of Cape Artemision in 1926, and various bronzes until 1999. The sculpture was found in the summer of 1964 in the sea off

on the

of Italy, snagged in the nets of an Italian fishing trawler, the ''Ferri Ferruccio''.Other well-known underwater bronze finds have been retrieved, generally from

shipwreck A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. Angela Croome reported in January 1999 that there were approximately ...

sites, in the Aegean and Mediterranean: the

Antikythera mechanism The Antikythera mechanism ( ) is an Ancient Greek hand-powered orrery, described as the oldest example of an analogue computer used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance. It could also be used to track the four-y ...

, the ''

Antikythera Ephebe The Antikythera Ephebe, registered as: ''Bronze statue of a youth'' in the museum collections, is a bronze statue of a young man of languorous grace that was found in 1900 by sponge-divers in the area of the ancient Antikythera shipwreck off t ...

'' and the portrait head of a Stoic discovered by sponge-divers at Antikythera in 1900, the

Mahdia shipwreck The shipwreck of Mahdia was found by Greek sponge fishermen off the coast of Tunisia in June 1907. The shipwreck near the modern town of Mahdia is dated about the 80s BC, or even later. In a series of underwater campaigns numerous items were rec ...

off the coast of Tunisia, 1907; the ''

'' off the coast of Marathon, 1925; the standing '' Poseidon of Cape Artemision'' found off Cape Artemision in northern Euboea, 1926; the ''horse'' and ''Rider'' found off Cape Artemision, 1928 and 1937; the

Riace bronzes The ''Riace bronzes'' (Italian: ''Bronzi di Riace'', ), also called the Riace Warriors, are two full-size Greek bronzes of naked bearded warriors, cast about 460–450 BC that were found in the sea in 1972 near Riace, Calabria, in southern ...

, found in 1972; the Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo, near Brindisi, 1992; and the ''

Apoxyomenos Apoxyomenos (plural apoxyomenoi: the "Scraper") is one of the conventional subjects of ancient Greek votive sculpture; it represents an athlete, caught in the familiar act of scraping sweat and dust from his body with the small curved instrument ...

'' recovered from the sea off the Croatian island of Lošinj in 1999. Italian art dealers paid the fishermen $5,600 USD for it. The Getty Museum bought it from German art dealer Herman Heinz Herzer for almost $4M USD in 1977.Though the Greek sculpture is unlikely ever to have touched Italian soil before its modern recovery, Italian authorities have pressed for its return, as part of Italy's patrimony. In fact, the statue was found by an Italian fishing trawler in international water: the owner of the ship was Italian and the statue was under Italian legislation. But the Italian laws state that every archeological good in Italy belongs to the People and cannot be sold. The unearthing of classical Greek and Roman sculptures are discovered all around the Mediterranean Sea; both empires reached far to the Iberian Peninsula, areas on Africa's northern coast, Asia Minor, the Middle East, and modern-day Europe. In further analyzing the ''Getty Bronze'' before conservation, a thick layer of incrustation covers the statue suggesting its location predates medieval or late Venetian ships transporting the object as spoils of war or recycling it for scrap metal. The precise location of the shipwreck, which preserved this object from being melted down like all but a tiny fraction of Greek bronzes, has not been established; it seems most likely that a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

ship carrying looted objects was on its way to

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

when it foundered. The statue has been roughly broken off its former base, breaking away at the ankles. The clay core inside might give further detail to where and when it was made.

Restoration

In 1972 Heinz Herzer and Volker Kinnius, Munich gallery owner, wrote a report on the conservation project of Rudolph Stapp. Rudolph Stapp was the main conservationist working with the Victorious Youth, who was known for his specialty in ancient bronzes. Past efforts to remove encrustation from the ''Bronze'' left various scratches in the metal. The ''Victorious Youth'' took three months to clean. First, the statue went into an artificial humidity chamber, exposing bronze disease. The disease occurs when chlorides and salts in the bronze react with moisture producing discolored spots. If left untreated, the copper part of bronze can easily fall off, leaving a disfigured image. Specialists neutralize the active corrosion by submerging it in a heated solution of sodium sesquicarbonate. The ''Victorious Youth'' is placed in a vacuum with the solution to penetrate interior layers without washing anything out. This process repeats itself twice and is finalized with one last artificial humidity test to check if the bronze disease resurfaces. A humid environment under 35% is necessary to keep the statue from deteriorating.

Provenance

The Bronze was originally owned in 1971, by the Artemis Consortium, an association of several international art dealers, and then stored with a Munich art dealer, Heinz Herzer. The

Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is located in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and ...

is involved in a controversy regarding proper title to some of the artwork in its collection. The Museum's previous curator of

antiquities Antiquities are objects from antiquity, especially the civilizations of the Mediterranean: the Classical antiquity of Greece and Rome, Ancient Egypt and the other Ancient Near Eastern cultures. Artifacts from earlier periods such as the Meso ...

Marion True Marion True (born November 5, 1948) was the former curator of antiquities for the Getty Center, J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. True was indicted on April 1, 2005 by an Italian court, on criminal charges accusing her of participat ...

, was indicted in Italy in 2005 along with Robert E. Hecht on criminal charges relating to trafficking in stolen antiquities. The primary evidence in the case came from the 1995 raid of a

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situa ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

warehouse which had contained a fortune in stolen artifacts. Italian art dealer Giacomo Medici was eventually arrested in 1997; his operation was thought to be "one of the largest and most sophisticated antiquities networks in the world, responsible for illegally digging up and spiriting away thousands of top-drawer pieces and passing them on to the most elite end of the international art market". In a letter to the

J. Paul Getty Trust The J. Paul Getty Trust is the world's wealthiest art institution, with an estimated endowment of US$7.7 billion in 2020. Based in Los Angeles, California, it operates the J. Paul Getty Museum, which has two locations—the Getty Center in the B ...

on December 18, 2006, True stated that she is being made to "carry the burden" for practices that were known, approved, and condoned by the Getty's Board of Directors. True is currently under investigation by Greek authorities over the acquisition of a 2,500-year-old funerary wreath. On November 20, 2006, the Director of the museum, Michael Brand, announced that twenty-six disputed pieces were to be returned to

, but not the ''Victorious Youth'', for which the judicial procedure was still pending at the time. In an interview to the Italian national newspaper ''

Corriere della Sera The ''Corriere della Sera'' (; en, "Evening Courier") is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average daily circulation of 410,242 copies in December 2015. First published on 5 March 1876, ''Corriere della Sera'' is one of I ...

'' on December 20, 2006 the Italian Minister of Cultural Heritage declared that Italy would place the museum under a cultural embargo if all the 52 disputed pieces would not return home overseas. On August 1, 2007 an agreement was announced providing that the museum would return 40 pieces to Italy out of the 52 requested, among which the Venus of Morgantina, which was returned in 2010, but not the Victorious Youth, whose outcome will depend upon the results of the criminal proceedings pending in Italy. On the very same day the public prosecutor of Pesaro formally requested that the statue be confiscated as it was unlawfully exported out of Italy, giving rise to a dispute that came to the Constitutional Court. Giampiero Buonomo
Diritto penale e processo, 2015, n. 9, p. 1173

Gallery

File:Greek Victorious Youth Athlete (5) - Getty Villa Collection.jpg File:Greek Victorious Youth Athlete (2) - Getty Villa Collection.jpg File:Greek Victorious Youth Athlete (3) - Getty Villa Collection.jpg File:Getty Villa - Victorious Youth 03.JPG

Notes

References

General references

* Frel, Jiri, 1978. ''The Getty Bronze'' (Malibu: The J. Paul Getty Museum). *Antonietta Viacava, ''L' atleta di Fano'', edizioni L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1995, . *Mattusch, Carol C. 1997. ''The Victorious Youth'' (Getty Museum Studies on Art; Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum)
Reviewed in Bryn Mawr Classical Review

External links

www.lisippo.org - Website of the cultural organisation who want the statue back
to

, Italy.
www.patrimoniosos.it

(Getty Museum) ''Victorious Youth''

NPR, "Italy, Getty Museum at Odds over Disputed Art"
20 December 2006.

11 May 2006 * ttp://traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/case-studies/fano-bronze (Trafficking Culture Project), Neil Brodie, "The Fano Bronze"

Newspaper articles

Il Getty non restituisce le opere. Rutelli: «Cultural embargoe»
by Pierluigi Panza,

, November 14, 2006
Il Getty Museum non rende le opere richieste
Corriere della Sera, November 23, 2006
Rutelli attacca il Getty. Dubbi su 250 opere
di Paolo Conti, Corriere della Sera, November 24, 2006
Rutelli-Getty, secondo round - “Non esponete opere rubate”

La Stampa ''La Stampa'' (meaning ''The Press'' in English) is an Italian daily newspaper published in Turin, Italy. It is distributed in Italy and other European nations. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Italy. History and profile The paper was fou ...

, November 24, 2006
Il Getty pronto a restituire la «Venere» Ma non restituirà il Lisippo.
Corriere della Sera, November 26, 2006

di Richard Heuzé,

Le Figaro ''Le Figaro'' () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It is headquartered on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. The oldest national newspaper in France, ''Le Figaro'' is one of three French newspapers of r ...

, December 26, 2006
"No Lisippo, no Bernini"

, July 11, 2007 {{Authority control 3rd-century BC Greek sculptures 1964 archaeological discoveries Hellenistic and Roman bronzes Victory Fano Sculptures of the J. Paul Getty Museum Archaeological discoveries in Italy Nude sculptures History of le Marche