Flourished Fifth Century B.C.E.
Sculptor

Bronze Medium. Polyclitus the Argive sculptor worked almost exclusively in bronze. He made statues of victorious athletes in Panhellenic games; his colossal gold and ivory statue of Hera for her temple in Argos, though celebrated in antiquity, never attained the status of its Pheidian counterparts in terms of the admiration it inspired. Polyclitus's reputation chiefly rests on his Doruphoros, or Spearbearer, usually dated circa 445-440. Lysippus was said to have commented, perhaps with some irony, that this statue was his teacher. Polyclitus also wrote a treatise called the Canon, probably in relation to the statue, which outlined a series of numerical proportions for the body. Only a couple of fragments remain of this work, and it has been suggested that Polyclitus may have been working with slight deviations from such numerical formulae to achieve his desired effects. It is also...