Boxer (100–30 BCE): Art, History and Details

Boxer (100–30 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This boxer raises his arms to pull tight the thongs (now lost) that Greek and Roman boxers wound around their hands for protection. The sinuous body curve and long proportions are characteristic of the late Hellenistic period, when artists created more elongated versions of athletes and other classical figures.

Object facts

• Title: Boxer
• Date: 100–30 BCE
• Culture: Greece, Greco-Roman Period, late Ptolemaic Dynasty
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze. solid cast, with copper inlays
• Dimensions: Overall: 21 x 11 cm (8 1/4 x 4 5/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1985.137

A detail from the museum

The long topknot (cirrus) identifies this athlete as a hand-to-hand fighter, most likely a boxer.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hôtel Drouot. Antiquités Égyptiennes Grecques et Romaines Vente à Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Salles Nos 9 et 10 le Lundi 17, Mardi 18 et Mercredi 19 Juin 1912 à Deux Heures Precises. Paris: Hôtel Drouot, 1912.
• Galerie Georges Petit, F. Lair-Dubreuil, Jacob Hirsch, Meyer-Riefstahl, and Jules Féral. Catalogue des objets d'art et de haute curiosité, de l'antiquité, du moyen âge, de la renaissance, et autres, faïences italiennes, terres émaillées des Robbia, porcelaines de Saxe, ivoires, objets variés, bijoux, bois sculptés, marbres, pierres, terres cuites, bronzes italiens, sculptures égyptiennes et grecques en marbre, terres cuites et bronzes grecs et romains, faïences orientales, importante série de Rhagès, manuscrits persans, sculptures et peintures chinoises, bronze de Mossoul, tableaux anciens des écoles primitives, de la renaissance et du XVIIIe siècle, œuvres de H. Met de Bles, Pater, etc., pastels par J.B. Liotard: formant la collection de M. Arthur Sambon. 1914.
• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1985." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (1986): 26-71.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.