Statue of an Athlete (1–100 CE): Art, History and Details

Statue of an Athlete (1–100 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This idealized athlete recalls Greek sculptural types invented and popularized during the 400s BC. Large-scale athletes and other sculptures like this were originally created by famous artists as sanctuary dedications. Centuries later, they were widely copied and adapted by Roman sculptors, whose clients sought their own versions of earlier masterpieces. Working in marble rather than bronze, these sculptors added certain elements for stability, such as the struts and the large tree trunk beside the right leg here. Sculptures like this one are profoundly complex, made by and for Romans but descended from Greek ancestors.

Object facts

• Title: Statue of an Athlete
• Date: 1–100 CE
• Culture: Italy, Roman
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: marble
• Dimensions: Overall: 173.9 cm (68 7/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Roman
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1924.1046

A detail from the museum

For many years, this sculpture stood in the rotunda of the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• R. Howard. "An Athlete Attributed to Myron." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 11, no. 9 (1924): 170-173, 180.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1925.
• Amelung, W. "Der Meister des Apollon auf dem Omphalos und seince Schule," Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts XLI, Heft 3/4 (1926),

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.