Statuette of a Running Silenus
Unknown · Archaic period, c. 550 BC
A bearded silenus, one of the horse-eared companions of Dionysos, runs with long hair streaming and every part of his body in motion. He is shown ithyphallic, as these creatures always are, and the sculptor incised the moustache, the beard and the hair after casting to sharpen the small figure. Only nine centimetres high, he is solid cast bronze, missing the fingers of one hand, the other hand, one foot and the lower part of the right leg. The dark, even surface is a modern patina. The bent knees and swinging arms give a lively sense of speed within a strictly symmetrical Archaic style.
The figure was made in Corinth around five hundred and fifty BC, probably as the decoration of a bronze vessel or piece of furniture, the kind of object that Corinthian workshops exported across the Mediterranean. It was found far to the west, at Llano de la Consolación in the region of Albacete in Spain, in eighteen seventy, a witness to trade between the Greek world and the Iberian peninsula. The Louvre bought it in May eighteen ninety eight.
Did You Know? A bronze made in Corinth was found in south-eastern Spain, evidence of how far Greek luxury goods travelled in the sixth century BC.
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