Funerary Stele of Sosinos of Gortyn
Unknown · c. 410-400 BC
A bearded man sits on a chair, wrapped in a himation with laced boots on his feet, holding a tool. Beside him stands an upright bellows, its pleated body carefully rendered with a pointed chisel, and another bellows lies on the ground. He is Sosinos, a bronze worker, and the sculptor has given him the equipment of his trade rather than the pose of a hero. The three lines carved on the architrave read: Sosinos of Gortyn, bronze smith. The children of Sosinos, who has died, set up this monument, a memorial of his justice, his wisdom and his virtue.
Sosinos came from Gortyn in Crete but lived and worked in Athens, one of the many foreign craftsmen the city attracted, and his children commissioned a stele in Pentelic marble around four hundred and ten to four hundred BC. Found in Attica, it was bought by the Louvre in 1817. The stone is intact apart from chips on the architrave and lower right corner. Compare it with the stele of Philis beside it: the same seated calm, applied to a craftsman rather than a lady.
Did You Know? The two bellows beside the seated man are the earliest sculpted portrait of a bronze founder's workshop equipment to survive from Greece.
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