The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Greek (Classical) · Statue A and Statue B · two nude standing male warriors in cast bronze, in the round, each about two metres high · Greek, of the middle and second half of the fifth century BC on the consensus of scholarship, A usually set about 460 to 450 BC and B somewhat later · found in August 1972 in shallow water off Riace Marina on the Ionian coast of Calabria, and in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia, Reggio Calabria, since 1981 · scored as one work, the two figures as they stand after recovery and restoration, without the shields, spears and helmets they once carried
Mode
The Classical standing figure in bronze at heroic scale: the weight thrown to one leg, the axis of the body broken and answered, the arms free of the body as only hollow-cast bronze allows
Mythos
The hero as citizen-warrior: nudity as the heroic state, stillness as readiness; the particular heroes the figures once named are lost with their monument
Phase
Made in the middle and second half of the fifth century BC on the consensus of scholarship; recovered in 1972, restored in Florence and shown there and in Rome in 1980 and 1981; in Reggio Calabria since 1981, restored again from 2009 to 2013
Presentation
Two bronzes in the round, over life size, standing in one room of a museum, to be walked round; without their shields, spears and helmets
Register
Grandeur with an edge of danger: menace held in check in the first figure, gravity in the second, at one pitch
Scale
Two bodies, one stance, two ages
Governing Proposition
Two naked men, a head taller than a tall man, stand with their weight on the right leg and the left knee released, the hips tilted against the shoulders and the head turned hard to one side, as if toward something the viewer cannot see. One is a man in his force, lips parted, chest high; the other is the same discipline in an older body. They carried shields, spears and helmets, and they were almost certainly named heroes in a dedication; the arms, the names and the monument are gone. The wager of the pair as it stands is that courage can be shown as a posture of the whole body at rest, held in reserve, and that this posture can carry its meaning without the weapons, the myth or the place it was made for.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
On 16 August 1972 a diver, Stefano Mariottini, found two bronze figures lying in shallow water off Riace Marina, on the Ionian coast of Calabria, and within days they were lifted. They were two naked standing men, each about two metres high, cast hollow in bronze. Their shields, spears and helmets were gone. How they came to be on the seabed, by wreck or by jettison, and how long they had lain there, are not known; on the usual estimate it was something like two thousand years.
They were cleaned and restored in Florence in the later 1970s and shown at the archaeological museum there from December 1980. The crowds were very large, in Florence and then in Rome, where the figures were shown at the Quirinale in 1981. Later that year they were installed in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria, where they stand now. They were restored again from 2009 to 2013, while the museum was rebuilt, and they have been the emblem of Calabria and of Magna Graecia for most of the half-century since they were found.
The work scored here is the two figures as one: Statue A and Statue B, as they stand today after recovery and restoration, without their arms and armour. That unit is the room’s, not certainly the makers’. Whether the two were made as a pair is not known; they may stand a generation apart, and they share a room because they shared a seabed. The page says where that matters, and it matters on more than one axis.
Movement II
Both men stand the same way. The weight is on the right leg, the left knee released and the foot set free; the hips tilt one way and the shoulders the other; the head is turned hard to the figure’s right. One arm hangs low, the hand closed as if on a spear; the other is bent at the elbow, the forearm raised as if under a shield. The whole body is one decision carried through: take away the turn of the head and what remains is a stance, not an act of attention. Within each figure there is almost nothing that could be taken out, and every muscle answers the distribution of the weight.
The stance has a history. The archaic kouros stood frontal and symmetrical, the weight shared between the feet, the advanced left foot a convention rather than a shift of mass. The Classical turn threw the weight to one leg, broke the axis of the body and answered it, and turned the head. The Kritios Boy and the bronzes of the Severe Style make that turn first. These figures carry it through at heroic scale in bronze, with the arms held free of the body as only a hollow cast allows, and on the usual dating B stands nearer the canon of Polykleitos than ahead of it.
They are among the finest surviving statements of that turn, and not, on the evidence, its origin. What they risked was technical: casting a figure this size and this twisted. The law they obey is the law of their period, and if the two were made at two dates by two hands, both honoured it. It holds from tension to repose and from the younger body to the older, and it holds within a narrow range: two standing men in one stance.
Movement III
The first figure is a man in his force. The chest is high, the gaze hard, the lips parted, so that he seems about to speak or to shout. A fillet binds the deep curls of his hair, and the curls of hair and beard are worked separately, each holding light. Walk round him and the twist of the torso turns repose into threat. The scale sets the viewer below the face, and the sheen of the bronze over the chest and the tension running from the planted foot to the turned neck read as menace held in check.
The making bears the weight of that effect. The body was built in sections and joined, and the joins do not show as joins. The anatomy is given as tension, not as catalogue: the crest of the pelvis over the hip that carries the weight, the swelling of the calf on the released leg, the veins over the backs of the hands and the tendons of the feet. The faces, by the published accounts, were finished in materials other than the bronze, and the effect is colour and wet light where the marble copies of the period give a blank. A is alive because of how he was cast and finished.
Change the medium and much of this is lost. In marble the arm held out from the body needs a strut, the head needs support, and the pose closes. In bronze the stance stays open and the whole weight rests on one foot of metal. Reduce the figure to a drawing or a copy and it becomes a type; at this size and in this metal it becomes a person. That is the form’s whole knowledge, and it is a great deal: the instrument of presence, made as well as it has been made.
Movement IV
The second figure is the same discipline in an older body. The flesh is softer at the waist, the stance more settled, the face quieter. His head, by most accounts, was shaped to carry a helmet pushed back on it, and the helmet is gone, so that the older man is defined in part by an absence. Where A threatens, B weighs. His elevation is a gravity rather than a menace, and on the usual dating he was made somewhat later, perhaps by another hand of comparable command, perhaps by the same hand older. Parts of his finish are more schematic than A’s.
Set side by side, as the room sets them, the two state something that holds outside the century that made them: that courage is a posture of the whole body at rest, readiness held in reserve, and that it ages. This is the pair’s disclosure, and it is a meaning, not a mood. It is also, in part, the room’s. The two ages of the warrior are legible because two figures found together are shown together, and the makers may never have intended the comparison. The pairing gives the work its clearest meaning and is its least necessary element.
What each man carries is a burden of the hero. The over-life scale, the nudity that in Greek sculpture marks the heroic and not the undressed, the stillness of a man who need not move: the archetype is built into the bodies. But the figures were almost certainly named heroes in a dedication, and the names went into the sea with the shields. Heroes of the Seven against Thebes, the eponymous heroes of Athens and others have been proposed. What stands is the hero in general, built, and the hero in particular, erased.
Movement V
The open questions are many and none is settled. The maker or makers: Phidias, Myron, Pythagoras of Rhegion, Ageladas and Alkamenes have all been proposed. The monument: Delphi, Olympia, Argos and Athens have been argued. The identity of the men, and the circumstances that put them in the sea. In fifty-four years the figures have sustained continuous examination of all of these and of how and where they were cast, and the form keeps yielding on its own account: every walk round shows a new relation of turned head to planted foot. But much of the well is provenance rather than meaning, and the span of the evidence is decades, not centuries.
The same anonymity limits what can be shown of their force on their field. No ancient text names them securely and no copy is identified with them with certainty, so whatever they did to Greek sculpture cannot be told apart from what their period did. Their reach is modern: they changed what the field knows of original Greek bronze, they drew crowds in 1980 and 1981, and they became an emblem. That is presence more than pressure. The bodies and heads survive whole after some 2,450 years; the arms and armour that completed the silhouettes and named the men are lost, and the figures were absent from attention for something like two millennia before 1972.
The desk sets the pair level with the Terracotta Army at 8.7 on survival, the closest case, and a step below it overall at 8.4, held back by the swerve and the reach that the army’s turn to likeness claims and these figures cannot show; a tenth under the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Bust of Nefertiti at 8.3, with whom they share the making at 9.3; under the Laocoön at 8.6, whose myth and influence survive; and above the Venus de Milo at 7.9. Sophocles’ Ajax, of the same decades and the same hoplite hero, stands at 8.8 with its meaning whole. The two men stand in their room with their arms raised to carry nothing, ready, turned toward something gone, and they keep that readiness after the weapons, the names and the monument have been lost.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged figure by figure, then as a pair. Within each body the subtractive test finds almost nothing to remove. The weight on the right leg, the left knee released, the hips tilted against the shoulders and the head turned hard aside are one decision carried through the whole: take away the turn of the head and the body is a stance, not an act of attention. The veins over the hands and feet, the deep curls of A’s hair and beard, the parted lips are required by the claim that this bronze is alive. What yields is the pair. The two may not have been made together and may stand a generation apart; they share a room because they shared a seabed. The pairing gives the work its most legible meaning and is also its least necessary element.
Score: 8.4 / 10
What is brought into the open is a condition, not a mood: the citizen-warrior at rest, a body whose readiness is held in reserve, the weapon arm low and the other raised, the face turned toward something outside the figure. A is the man in his force; B is the same discipline in an older body, softer at the waist, more settled in the stance. Together they state something that holds outside fifth-century Greece: that courage is a posture of the whole body at rest, and that it ages. The disclosure is made through the image alone and is credited in full as image. It is held below the gate because much of the statement is assembled by the modern pairing and by what the lost weapons leave to inference, and because the meaning the figures carried, who they were and what they commemorated, is gone.
Score: 8.1 / 10
Elevation is high and recurs from every station round the figures. The scale, a head taller than a tall man, sets the viewer below the faces. A’s parted lips make him about to speak or to shout, and the stare of the face is a living one that the marble copies of the period do not give. The sheen of the bronze over the chest, and the tension that runs from the planted foot to the turned neck, read as menace held in check; walk round A and the twist of the torso turns repose into threat. B’s elevation is quieter, a gravity rather than a threat. The register is single, grandeur with an edge of danger, and the work rises in it again and again. Held below the top by that single register: the figures astonish, and the astonishment is of one kind.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The archetype of the hero is built into the body, not alluded to: the over-life scale, the nudity that in Greek sculpture marks the heroic rather than the undressed, the stillness of a man who need not move. That structure bears load; it is what the figures are. The particular has stayed particular: two different men, one with a fillet in his curls and a fierce mouth, one older and quieter. What holds the axis below the gate is that the myth the figures were made to carry is lost with their names. They were almost certainly named heroes in a dedication, and which heroes cannot be read now. What stands is the hero in general, built, and the hero in particular, erased. The general archetype is strong; the built mythic particular is not available to the work as it stands.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The inheritance is the archaic kouros: frontal, symmetrical, the weight shared, the advanced left foot a convention rather than a shift of mass. The departure is the Classical one: the weight thrown to one leg, the axis of the body broken and answered, the head turned. In these figures that departure is carried through at full heroic scale in bronze, with the freely extended arms that a hollow cast allows and marble does not. But the swerve belongs to the period, and these figures do not demonstrably make it. The Kritios Boy and the bronzes of the Severe Style come first, and B’s pose, if later, stands nearer the canon of Polykleitos than ahead of it. What the figures risk is technical rather than a wager against their field: among the finest surviving statements of the turn, not, on the evidence, its origin.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Change the form and much of what the figures know is lost. In marble the extended arms would need struts and the head support, and the pose would have to close. The bronze allows the open stance, the arms free of the body, the whole weight resting on a single foot of metal. The faces, finished in materials other than the bronze by the published accounts, take colour and wet light, and with them the sense of a man looking. The scale puts the viewer under the gaze. Reduce the figures to a drawing or a copy and they become types; at this size, in this metal, they become persons. Held a step below the top because the form carries no further layer of knowledge beyond the living body: it is the instrument of presence, superbly, and of little else. The lost arms and armour are not charged here.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Evidence over promise, and the evidence is fifty-four years long. In that time the figures have sustained continuous re-examination: of their date, whether one campaign of making or two; of their maker or makers, their workshop, their monument and their identity; of how they were cast and where; and of the route that brought them to the sea. Formally they keep yielding: each walk round shows a different relation of torso to leg, of turned head to planted foot, and the difference between the two figures widens rather than settles the longer one looks. Held well below the top because the span of the evidence is short, and because much of the debate is about provenance and attribution, what the figures were, rather than what they mean as they stand. Decades of return are demonstrated; centuries are not.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The field is Greek sculpture of the fifth century BC. Intrinsic force is high: as made, the figures are a full realisation of the Classical reorganisation of the standing body, in bronze at heroic scale, and they would rank among the strongest works of that field if their place in it were known. But no ancient text names them securely, no copy is identified with them with certainty, and whatever they did to Greek sculpture cannot be told apart from what their period did. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: in their own tradition and decades, none that can be shown; since 1972, a change in what the modern field knows of original Greek bronze, alongside a very few other large originals; crowds in Florence and Rome in 1980 and 1981; and an emblem of Calabria. Reach into scholarship and attention is credited and discounted; it is not reach into the making of sculpture.
Score: 7.7 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric. Form: the bodies and heads survive whole, and the defining form, the standing warrior turned in attention, is fully legible after some 2,450 years. The shields, spears and helmets are gone; they completed the silhouettes and carried the figures’ identity, and their loss is charged in proportion: not the meaning of the body, but a real part of the meaning of the work. Presence: the figures were absent from attention for an unknown span under the sea, on the usual estimate some two thousand years, and have been present only since 1972; continuous presence is the weakest part of the case. Fabric: the bronze outlasted immersion, corrosion and incrustation, and has been cleaned and stabilised in successive campaigns. Millennia of endurance with loss and a broken presence: the lowest mark that millennia with loss can earn.
Score: 8.7 / 10
Command of large hollow-cast bronze, judged to the same anchors as every medium, and it is of the highest order. The making bears load: the figures are alive because of how they are cast and finished. The bodies were built in sections and joined, and the joins do not show as joins. Anatomy is given as tension, not catalogue: the crest of the pelvis over the weight-bearing hip, the swelling of the calf on the released leg, the veins over the backs of the hands, the tendons of the feet. A’s hair and beard are worked in deep separate curls that hold light, and the features are set with a precision that keeps mouth and eyes from reading as applied. B shows a second hand of comparable command, or the same hand later. Held below the top for the more schematic finish in parts of B.
Score: 9.3 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: A’s turned head with its parted mouth, and B’s lowered, quieter head; the young man in force and the older man at rest. They obey one law: the body balanced on one leg and turned toward an event outside the figure, with the same side carrying the weight and the same direction of gaze. The range runs from tension to repose and from youth to maturity, and the law holds across it. Within each figure the physics is entirely consistent: every muscle answers the distribution of weight. Held below the top on two counts. Narrowness: two standing men in one stance is a narrow range, and narrowness is not coherence. And the law that unites the pair is the law of a period, possibly honoured by two hands at two dates, rather than a law the work set for itself.
Score: 8.4 / 10
A short form holds few orders, and the figure says so; it is the lowest of the twelve. Held: the body and its life; age, in the difference between the two figures; the polis, in the discipline of the citizen-hoplite; war, in the readiness held in reserve; the heroic and the sacred, in figures made for a dedication. These are integrated in the bodies, not listed. Absent: the family, labour, the natural order, history as event, since the occasion the monument commemorated is lost, and consciousness beyond the single act of attention. Two figures cannot hold a world, and the loss of their setting removes the orders a monument would have placed them in. The mark describes the form. Level with the Bust of Nefertiti and The Thinker at 6.6, above the Winged Victory of Samothrace at 6.4.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.2 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Made at 9.3, then The Imperishable at 8.7, then The Sublime and The Living Form at 8.6. Large hollow-cast bronze of the highest command, the joins invisible and the anatomy given as tension; two bodies whole after some 2,450 years, though lost to attention for most of them; an elevation of grandeur and held menace that recurs from every station round the figures; and a form that turns a type into a person, the open stance and the arms held free possible only in bronze at this scale.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 6.6: two figures hold the body, age, the polis, war and the heroic, and the loss of their setting takes the rest. Below the rest of the twelve, Pressure on Tradition at 7.7 and The Swerve at 7.8: the figures carry the Classical turn superbly and cannot be shown to have made it or to have moved their field. Then The Archetypal Deep at 8.0 and The Unconcealment at 8.1: the myth went into the sea with the names, and the meaning of the pair is partly the room’s. The four are one fact: the bodies survive and almost everything that placed them in a world is lost.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.4 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 8.6, The Made at 9.3, The Inner Law at 8.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable at 8.7 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Unconcealment at 8.1, The Archetypal Deep at 8.0, The Swerve at 7.8 and Pressure on Tradition at 7.7 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is met: no axis it governs falls below Pressure on Tradition at 7.7, against 7.5. The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.6. Four of the five summit conditions are met. The twelve sum to 98.4, an average of 8.20 that displays 8.2, in Tier IV, two tenths above the 8.0 at which it begins and short of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the figures as forms, from published photographs and from museum and scholarly accounts, and of the facts of their discovery and display; the technical literature was not handled in detail. The work scored is the two bronze warriors from the sea off Riace, Statue A and Statue B, in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia, Reggio Calabria, taken as one work: the pair as they stand today after recovery in 1972 and restoration, without the shields, spears and helmets they once carried. The pairing is the museum’s display; whether the figures were made as a pair is not known, and the charge falls on The Inevitable and The Inner Law. Their date, about 460 to 420 BC across the two, is a consensus range of scholarship, not a document. What now stands is the two bodies and heads as cast, whole; the lost arms and armour, the restorations in Florence in the later 1970s and in Reggio from 2009 to 2013, and the modern bases are weighed only on The Imperishable, and the museum room is context. The maker or makers, the monument, the identity of the figures and the circumstances of their loss are open questions, and the proposals are given as proposals. No inscription survives on the figures, and nothing is quoted. Facts that could not be verified are not given, or are given as reported, among them the exact heights of the two figures; the date of the lifting and the depth of the water; the materials of the inlays of lips, teeth, nipples and eyes; the shaping of B’s head for a helmet, given as most accounts read it; the fittings for shields on the forearms; whether B’s right arm and left forearm are ancient replacements; the casting method; the restoration of the 1990s and the removal of the casting cores; and the date and manner of the return to the museum in 2013.