Statuette of a Young Spearman (late 500s BCE): Art, History and Details

Statuette of a Young Spearman (late 500s BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This small bronze statuette depicts a male figure in the act of throwing. Solid cast, he strides forward with his left foot while holding his left arm to the front and raising his right arm beside his head. The pierced right hand once held a separately made projectile, either an athlete’s javelin or a warrior’s spear (perhaps with a shield held on the left). The nude figure, with its well-defined musculature and finely modeled face and hair, exhibits a developed understanding of the human form.

Object facts

• Title: Statuette of a Young Spearman
• Date: late 500s BCE
• Culture: Etruscan, Archaic Period
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Bronze
• Dimensions: height: 10.8 cm (4 1/4 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 2022.43

A detail from the museum

This figure probably once held a spear or javelin in his raised, pierced right hand.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Christie, Manson & Woods. Antiquities from the Northwick Park Collection. 1965.
• Sotheby's (Firm). Antiquities and Islamic Art. 1996.
• Sotheby's (Firm). Egyptian, Classical & Western Asiatic Antiquities. 2013.

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.