Funerary Stele of a Youth with a Dog and a Hare
Unknown · c. 360 BC
A youth stands under a small pediment, his cloak wrapped around his hips and one shoulder bare. In his hands he holds a hare and a bird, while his dog springs up at his side, eager for the game. Hunting was the pastime of well born young men, and the animals here serve as emblems of a life cut short. The relief is shallow and the figure fills the whole width of the slab, with the pediment and acroteria carved in one piece with it. Faint traces of red paint survive on the left hand and on the dog, a reminder that these monuments were once brightly coloured.
The museum dates it around three hundred and sixty BC and suggests it may come from Rhodes rather than Athens, though the style follows the Attic tradition on show in this room. The back has been sawn flat, probably to reuse the slab or to mount it on a wall. It reached the Louvre in 1855, recorded as a gift, although the museum notes some doubt about that. Compare the hare with the dog: the animals were the sculptor's way of saying what the boy loved, without an epitaph.
Did You Know? Look at the dog and the boy's left hand: they still carry faint traces of the red paint that once covered the whole stele.
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