Youth with Jumping Weights (c. 40–70 CE): Art, History and Details

Youth with Jumping Weights (c. 40–70 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The hourglass-shaped jumping weights slung over his shoulder, together with the animal-skin punching bag on which he leans, characterize this youth as an athlete. The distinctive haircut, short with one long tress in back, may indicate a childhood vow, perhaps to be trimmed in a future ceremony. Several very similar sculptures exist in other collections, suggesting the existence of a single prototype, now lost.

Object facts

• Title: Youth with Jumping Weights
• Date: c. 40–70 CE
• Culture: Italy, Rome
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: marble
• Dimensions: Overall: 84.5 x 39.1 cm (33 1/4 x 15 3/8 in.)
• Collection: GR - Roman
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1985.79

A detail from the museum

The lower right leg and foot of this sculpture do not survive, and have been reconstructed.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, and Anonymous Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1985.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (February 1986): 26–71.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1991.
• Herrmann, Ariel. "The Boy with the Jumping Weights." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 7 (1993): 298-323.

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.