Statuette of a Warrior (500–450 BCE): Art, History and Details

Statuette of a Warrior (500–450 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Striding forward with its left foot, this warrior likely once held a shield in the left hand and a spear or sword in the right. The statuette was acquired together with a miniature bronze sword with which it was said to have been found; a photograph taken around 1890 shows the warrior with the sword attached—probably wrongly—to the left hand. He wears an unusual helmet with two raised elements on top, and a simple v-neck cuirass or tunic with a lower border of dots and flaps. Many similarly posed bronze figurines have been found across central Italy, but scholars disagree as to whether they represent divine or mortal warriors.

Object facts

• Title: Statuette of a Warrior
• Date: 500–450 BCE
• Culture: Etruscan
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 28 cm (11 in.)
• Collection: GR - Etruscan
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1967.32

A detail from the museum

The lump of lead beneath its feet probably once secured this figurine to a base.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions of American and Canadian Museums," The Art Quarterly XXX.2 (Summer 1967), pp. 153, 155 (ill.).
• "Year in Review." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 10 (1967): 302-46.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

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.