Relief of Striding Warriors (300–200 BCE): Art, History and Details

Relief of Striding Warriors (300–200 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This carved limestone relief depicts two warriors striding to the right, one wearing a broad traveler's hat called a petasos and the other a Corinthian helmet. Each wears a short cloak called a chlamys over his left arm (now missing on the righthand warrior). The left warrior looks back, perhaps toward a horseman, since a small fragment of a horse’s foreleg remains behind his knee. The strong diagonals of the warriors contrasted with the flowing drapery of their cloaks demonstrates a dynamism characteristic of Hellenistic relief sculpture.

Object facts

• Title: Relief of Striding Warriors
• Date: 300–200 BCE
• Culture: Greek/South Italian, Taranto (ancient Taras)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: limestone
• Dimensions: Overall: 32.7 cm (12 7/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1927.436

A detail from the museum

This relief was likely part of a larger frieze that decorated a naiskos, or small temple, above a grave.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Howard, Rossiter. "Orestes Sarcophagus and Greek Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 15, no. 4 (1928): 90-87.
• Klumbach, Hans. Tarentiner Grabkunst. Reutlingen: Gryphius-Verlag, 1937.
• Wuilleumier, Pierre. Tarente, des origines à la conquête romaine. Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, fasc. CXLVIII, Paris,1939.

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.