Kouros from Apollonas

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Kouros of Apollonas or Colossus of Dionysus

The Kouros of Apollonas , also known as the Colossus of Dionysus , is a 10.70 meter unfinished statue made of light gray Naxos marble and weighs around 80 tons. It is located in an ancient quarry near Apollonas , a small town in the north of Naxos , one of the Greek islands of the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea . The statue from the archaic period of ancient Greece is of the Kouros type from the turn of the 7th / 6th centuries. Century BC Chr.

Naming

The kouros from the head end

The statue was previously thought to be a statue of Apollo , as it was near the site of Apollonas. Already in the 15th century Bondelmonte gave her the name "Statue Apollonis" because of its proximity to the Apollon sanctuary. Ludwig Ross referred to it as a statue of Apollon in 1840, although it was known that the toponym Apollonas came from an inscription in the nearby sanctuary. The name lasted for a long time, although Wilhelm von Massow assigned the statue to Dionysus as early as 1932 . Today it is classified as a kouros.

The Kouros of Apollonas is sometimes referred to as the Kouros of Naxos . This is not clear, as there are two other larger than life kouroi by Flerio at Melanes .

Manufacturing

According to Carl Blümel , a sculptor and director of the Pergamon Museum , the early Greek stone sculptors initially worked like the Egyptian stone sculptors. The shape of the figure was drawn or scratched. The sculptures could be worked on from all sides. They worked layer after layer. Two-dimensional contours were created in these work processes. So the stone sculptors never worked on a leg, arm or head by themselves, but always had the big picture in mind, and the figure was holistic at every stage of the work. They rounded the figure only after the outer contour had been worked out. This can be clearly seen in the sculpture of Apollonas.

They used bronze pointed chisel , therefore, had the sculptures countless dot-shaped holes possibly also by two tip or pointed hammers were created and edited in the course of the work process with ever finer chisels and finer cuts. As the crystal grains of the marble were smashed during this work, a silk-like surface was created in the final processing.

Quarry

Pattern of the coarse-grained light gray to bluish Naxos marble of the "Alexander" type from Kinidaros

The Kouros of Apollonas is located in an ancient marble quarry , which is one of the oldest quarries in Greece. It is not far from Apollonas on a dirt road above the place. It is a typical surface quarry, in which rock bodies protruding from the rock or earth layers were mined near the surface at that time.

Stone transport

The statue, which is estimated to weigh around 80 tons, was carved out of the rock on three sides. The kouros lying on its back was not completed. In the back of the kouro, 5 to 8 cm wide wedge holes were made, which were made 32 to 37 cm apart. In the middle between the back of the kouros and the rock, there is a recognizable rectangular hole with a width of 40 cm and 10 × 10 cm, which was intended to accommodate the wooden lifting beam. This recess is in the center of gravity of the Greek monolith . This ancient stone extraction technique can be traced through traces in numerous places in the quarry, as the quarry was no longer used in later times. The figure is inclined downwards at an angle of 30 ° towards the north. It was raised by 19 cm on the east side and moved 32 cm to the north, down the slope. S. Casson pointed this out as early as 1936/37.

This is the first attempt at stone transport of this kouro, as there is no path carved in stone for further transport. Due to its size and weight, the figure remained unfinished in the quarry.

Description of the kouros

The head of the kouros

The figure is exposed like a block, the body, the head with the beard and the ears are recognizable in their outer shape, also the beginning of hair. The stonemasons carved the arms rudimentarily rectangular and the formation of the feet has begun in their outer shape, they are located on a 50 cm plinth . The rock layer in which the unfinished kouros lies shows deposits in the stone that run lengthways through the entire body. The extent to which cracks already existed in pre-Christian times cannot be traced. In an illustration by the draftsman Schaubert on an engraving from 1835, cracks can be seen.

interpretation

The Kouros statues are in most cases the representation of naked youths who have put their arms on the sides of their bodies. The Kouros of Apollonas shows that it is an older man with a beard and that this Kouros should stretch his right arm forward at an angle.

In the past, the archaic kouroi have been interpreted as depictions of Apollo . The Kouros of Apollonas can be interpreted as the Greek deity Dionysus because of his beard .

Others

Two more unfinished, larger-than-life kouroi with broken feet, the kouroi of Flerio , are located near Melanes on Naxos in a village garden and in an open-air quarry. They are divided into a lower and an upper kouros, one being 5.5 meters high without a plinth and the other with a plinth 5.5 meters high. The colossus of the Naxians on the island of Delos , which is around 9 meters tall and weighs 25 tons, comes from this marble deposit near Melanes .

On Naxos there were two other kouroi that are smaller than life and not perfect. One lay in the quarry of Apollonas and was transported to the Museum of Athens by Ludwig Ross in 1834. Another from Flerio is in the Naxos Museum on a terrace.

literature

Web links

Commons : Kouros of Apollonas  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b pits: Naxos and Delos. P. 294 (see literature).
  2. ↑ a b pits: Naxos and Delos . P. 294. Note 78.
  3. ↑ Blümel: Greek sculptor . P. 16 (see literature).
  4. ↑ Pits: Naxos and Delos. P. 293
  5. ↑ a b pits: Naxos and Delos . P. 296.
  6. ↑ Other reasons why the statue remained unfinished are given by tourist guides, in travel guides and on websites. These cannot be proven. There is a statement that it was recognized late in the manufacturing process that the statue had several cracks, or it is assumed that the ancient stone sculptors assumed that the statue could break when loosened from the rock layer or that the client did not pay for the statue. The opinion of the archaeologist Gruben that the monolith was too heavy to transport is undisputed in research.

Coordinates: 37 ° 10 ′ 44.9 ″  N , 25 ° 32 ′ 53.6 ″  E