Funerary Lion
Unknown · c. 350 BC
A marble lion, more than a metre and a half long, half reclines on a rock and turns its head as if disturbed. The mane falls in thick locks around a face with a heavy, open muzzle. Only the front of the animal is fully ancient: the hind legs, part of the forelegs, the tail and the rock were remade in an early restoration, and the museum notes that the restorer got the pose slightly wrong, so the lion sits a little awkwardly. Look for the joins between the old marble and the new.
Lions like this stood as guardians on the great grave enclosures of Attica in the fourth century BC, facing the road as travellers passed the cemetery. This one was carved around three hundred and fifty BC and found at Glyphada, south of Athens, the ancient deme of Aixone, where wealthy families built family tombs. It came to the Louvre in 1824 as a gift and is one of the earliest Greek sculptures from Attica to enter the museum. Its companions in this room, the stelae of the same period, show the private grief that such lions publicly protected.
Did You Know? The lion's awkward crouch is not the sculptor's fault: an early restorer rebuilt the hindquarters and got the pose wrong.
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