The Wounded Amazon ("Mattèi type”)

The figure stands contrapposto with her proper right arm raised above her head, fragments of a bow in hand (missing in the original), with her loosely tied chiton falling off her left shoulder, revealing the breast, a closed quiver under her left arm, and helmet lying on the ground, the supporting tree stump a nod to the marble original.

Since the Renaissance, multiple similar Roman marble sculptures have been excavated revealing a woman in a pose similar to that represented here, and assumed to be derived from Greek bronze originals. They have long been associated with a passage in Pliny’s Natural History, describing different sculptures of a wounded Amazon at the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus by Polycleitus, Phidias, Cresilas, Cydon, and Phradmon.

In the modern period, the different Amazons unearthed have been attributed to three different archetypes: the Lansdown type, attributed to Polycleitus; the Mattèi type, attributed to Phidias; and the Capitoline type, attributed to Cresilas. The most commonly reproduced is the Mattèi type, based on an original attributed to the great 5th century BC sculptor Phidias, sculptor of the Parthenon marbles, amongst many others.

The Mattèi Amazon was discovered in 1770 and is in the Vatican Museum. Casts proliferated across Europe, and fine bronze reproductions became a staple of the Grand Tour. The present copy is almost surely attributable to the Barbedienne foundry — it bears the Achille Collas réduction mécanique seal, and is otherwise identical in detail to Barbedienne castings that bear the foundry’s mark.

A fine and somewhat rare 19th century after the Antique, often misidentified as Artemis.