Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos (c. 1510–15): Art, History and Details

Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos (c. 1510–15) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giovanni Maria Mosca (Italian, 1495/99–1574).

The work and its context

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

A snake bit the Greek warrior Philoctetes en route to the Trojan War. The stench of the infected wound led the ship’s crew to abandon him on the island of Lemnos, where he fans the agonizing injury with a bird’s wing. The warrior’s noble suffering in the face of tremendous pain would have been a classical model of stoic composure, highly valued in Renaissance court culture.

Object facts

• Title: Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos
• Date: c. 1510–15
• Creator attribution: Giovanni Maria Mosca (Italian, 1495/99–1574)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: marble
• Dimensions: Overall: 29 x 23 x 8.5 cm (11 7/16 x 9 1/16 x 3 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Sculpture
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1973.168

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “The Year in Review for 1973.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 2 (February 1974): 31–78.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

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.