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The Doryphoros: The Perfect Human Body

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The work on the right of Anavysos Kouros is the Doryphoros, c. 450-440 B.C.E, a Roman marble copy of a Greek bronze sculpture. This work is from the Classical Period of ancient Greece immediately following the Archaic Period. Polykleitos is the artist responsible for this work and he described it as the “ Canon” meaning an idealized form that could be studied and replicated. Doryphoros means a spear bearer and is a free-standing nude male sculpture. The Doryphoros, according to Doctors Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, “was one of the most sought-after, and most copied, Greek sculptures.” Because of Polykleitos’s idea of relating beauty to ratio and mathematical precision, the Doryphoros represents the ideal perfect human body where all the parts of the body are in proportion to each other and the body as a whole. …show more content…

The work is incredibly detailed and idealized. When looking at the sculpture, one can see how muscular the body is, the details of the hair, the almost bleak expression of the face, and the overall relaxed pose in which the sculpture stands. Every muscle is displayed and is perfect in size, shape, and length in relation to the body. The hair is sculpted in such a way where it is possible to point numerous strands and the type of hair altogether. The left arm is positioned as if there was something being held which would be the spear that the Doryphoros originally

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