Statuette of a Youth (c. 520–500 BCE): Art, History and Details

Statuette of a Youth (c. 520–500 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Cast in one piece with its hollow base (perhaps designed to crown a candelabrum), this small bronze portrays a young man wearing a semicircular cloak adorned with punched circles along its edges. This likely represents an embroidered tebenna, an Etruscan forerunner to the Roman toga praetexta. He appears to stride forward, his right leg trailing behind and right hand extended, perhaps once holding an object.

Object facts

• Title: Statuette of a Youth
• Date: c. 520–500 BCE
• Culture: Italy, Etruscan, Archaic Period
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 10.5 cm (4 1/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Etruscan
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1929.441

A detail from the museum

Unusually, this figure places his hand on hip with thumb in front, fingers in back.

Collection credit

The Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Richardson, Emeline Hill. “The Etruscan Origins of Early Roman Sculpture.” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 21 (1953): 75–124.
• Cooney, John D. “A Miscellany of Ancient Bronzes.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 58, no. 7 (1971): 210–18.

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.