- Museum number
- 1805,0703.7
- Description
-
Part of a marble group of two boys quarrelling over a game of knucklebones. It represents a boy biting the limb of his opponent (now missing). Most of the base and the limbs are restored.
Known as the 'cannibal'.
- Production date
- 1stC (?)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 68.58 centimetres
-
Height: 700 millimetres
-
Width: 900 millimetres
-
Depth: 580 millimetres
- Curator's comments
-
Roman version of a work of the 2nd or 1st century BC.
-
Cook 2013, nr. 49:
Townley's description; ‘A figure of a youth, partly sitting on the ground, and biting an arm; a vest, seemingly of leather, covers part of the body; it is the remains of a group of two youths, who had quarelled at the game of ye Tali, one of which remains in the hand, belonging to the figure, that is wanting. It was found, during the Pontificate of Urban the Eight, in the Baths of Titus, where a similar group by Policletes, is said by Pliny to have stood in his time. Cardinal Francesco Barbarini, nephew to that Pope, placed it in his magnificent Palace, where it remained until it was conveyed to England 1768’ (TY 12/3, park drawing room 1).
The figure was previously known as ‘The Cannibal’ until the subject was recognised by Winckelmann after cleaning of the hand revealed the knucklebone (Bodleian Ms Add D 71 {fo. 353 ff.}).
Bought from Jenkins in 1768 for £400 (TY 10/2; TY 10/3, fo. 15; TY 10/5-7; TY 12/1; 'Union Catalogue', fo. 12v; Bodleian Ms Add D 71, fo. 55). The sculpture is not listed in the first Italian transcript (TY 10/1), and is therefore conjectured to have been bought towards the end of Townley’s stay in Rome. Townley put it at the head of his list of purchases from Jenkins in TY 10/3.
Drawings:
* Townley drawing 2010,5006.73.
* Zoffany: B. F. Cook, `The Townley Marbles in Westminster and Bloomsbury', The British Museum Yearbook, 2 (1977), 36-37, figs. 19-20, no. 7.
* Pompeo Battoni (Eton College), Grand Tour 264-5, no. 219.
* Attributed to Friedrich Anders, Grand Tour 265-6, no. 220.
Date:
Imperial copy, prob. after bronze of late II or early I BC. H. 0.73 (Robertson); 240-200 BC (Lippold); Neronian/Flavian copy or late Hellenistic (end ii-mid i BC) original (Hermann); Hellenistic low-life version of group by Polykleitos (R. R. R. Smith). On findspot see Neudecker (Fittschen).
Bibliography:
- Winckelmann, Déscription des pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch (1760), xv; id., Gesch. d. Kunst (1763-8), IX Kap. 2.24.
- Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum (1808) III.31.
- Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, II, pl. 31.
- A Guide to the Graeco-Roman Sculptures in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum) (2 vols., London 1874 [2nd ed. 1879] and 1876), I, no. 186.
- 1738 inventory of Pal. Barberini: Documenti inediti per servire alla Storia dei Musei d’Italia (1878), IV, 42.
- A. H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Vol. III (London 1904), 110-1, no. 1756.
- A. W. Lawrence, Later Greek Sculpture and its Influence (London 1927), 120.
- G. Lippold, Die griechische Plastik (Handbuch der Archäologie III.1, Munich 1950), 346, note 14.
- Martin Robertson, A History of Greek Art (Cambridge 1975), 559, fig. 177a.
- Ariel Hermann, ‘The Biter: a later Hellenistic Astragal Player’, Studies in Classical Art and Archaeology. A Tribute to Peter Heinrich von Blanckenhagen, ed. Günter Kopke and Mary B. Moore (1979), 163-73, pls. 46.1-2 and 47.1-3.
- B. F. Cook, The Townley Marbles (London 1985), 10-11, fig. 2.
- R. Neudecker, Die Skulpturenausstattung römischer Villen in Italien (Mainz am Rhein 1990), 160, no. 19.2.
- Klaus Fittschen, et al., Verzeichnis der Gipsabgüsse des Archäologischen Instituts der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Göttingen 1990), 112 A 461.
- R. R. R. Smith, Hellenistic Sculpture (London 1991), 136, and fig. 173.
- Andrew Wilton and Ilaria Bignamini, eds., Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (Exhibition Catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1996), 264-5, no. 218.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
Exhibited:
2009, 2 Apr-13 Oct, Alicante, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art and Thought
2010, 30 Apr-30 Aug, Seoul, National Museum of Korea, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art and Thought
2010-2011, 15 Oct-07 Feb, Taipei, The National Palace Museum, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art and Thought
2010-2011, 11 Mar-12 Jun, Kobe City Museum, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art and Thought
2011, 4 Jul-25 Sep, Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art and Thought
2011 - 2012, 25 Oct-12 Feb, Mexico City, National Anthropological Museum, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art and Thought
2021-2022 15 Oct - 20 Mar Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden, Netherlands, Emperor Domitian. God on Earth
2012-2013 6 Oct-6 Jan, Portland Art Museum, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art and Thought
2013, 6 May–6 Oct, Dallas Museum of Art, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art and Thought
2014, 21 Feb-9 Jun, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greek Art and Thought
2014, 2 Aug–9 Nov, Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria, Australia, The Body Beautiful in Greek Art and Thought
2015, 26 Mar-5 Jul, The British Museum, Defining Beauty:the body in ancient Greek art.
- Acquisition date
- 1805
- Department
- Greek and Roman
- Registration number
- 1805,0703.7