The Borghese Gladiator is a Hellenistic lifesize marble sculpture actually portraying a swordsman, created at Ephesus about 100 BCE. It is signed on the pedestal by Agasias, son of Dositheus, who is otherwise unknown.
It was found before 1611, at Nettuno among the ruins of a seaside palace of Nero on the site of the ancient Antium. From the attitude of the figure it is clear that the statue represents not a gladiator, but a warrior contending wi...
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The Borghese Gladiator is a Hellenistic lifesize marble sculpture actually portraying a swordsman, created at Ephesus about 100 BCE. It is signed on the pedestal by Agasias, son of Dositheus, who is otherwise unknown.
It was found before 1611, at Nettuno among the ruins of a seaside palace of Nero on the site of the ancient Antium. From the attitude of the figure it is clear that the statue represents not a gladiator, but a warrior contending with a mounted combatant. Friedrich Thiersch conjectured that it was intended to represent Achilles fighting with the mounted Amazon, Penthesilea.
The sculpture was added to the Borghese Collection in Rome. At the Villa Borghese it stood in a ground-floor room named for it, redecorated in the early 1780s by Antonio Asprucci. Sold to Napoleon by Camillo Borghese in 1807, it was taken to Paris when the Borghese collection was acquired for the Louvre, where it now resides.
Misnamed a gladiator due to an erroneous restoration, it was among the most...
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