The Statue of a Wounded Amazon

In this essay, am going to analyze two sculpture pieces of art. The two pieces of art are Stele of Girl with Doves and the Statute of a Wounded Amazon. The Stele of Girl with Doves is a sculpture relief sculpture that depicts a youthful girl in a sweet moment bidding farewell to her pet doves. This relief is an artistically presentable sculpture. Various mediums are used in sculpture work depending on the choice of the artist. The sculpture of Stele of Girl with Doves is made out of marble, Parian medium. The dimensions of his sculpture are thirty-one and half inches height. The Stele of Girl with Doves was designed during the classical period dating back to around ca.450-425 B.C in the Greek culture. In works of art, the sculpture of the Steel of Girl with Doves is classified as a stone sculpture. The sculpture of the Steel of Girl with Doves is a statue whose posture is tremendously fascinating. In antiquity, stone sculptors from the Cycladic islands mainly used plenty of marble in their work. Similarly, the sculptor of this relief, Stele of Girl with Doves has used marble to bring out the posture of this sculpture (metmuseum.org).

The anatomy of the Steel of Girl with Doves is presented from the view of a small girl standing, with her head bowing down with a stern graveness that is uncommon in a young person; her face is tranquil and firm. The sculpture of the steel Girl with Doves employs a posture that depicts a girl wearing peplos; a woolen cloth folded over at the top and tied up at the wait. The girl poses in gentle gravity holding two doves. The unsown edges of her garment lie open in a pattern of fold on her right. The sculpture of the steel of Girl with Doves has two views that is, the font view and the side view. The major view of the sculpture of the Steel of Girl with Doves is the front view, in which it is clearly visible of the holding one dove passionately close to her while the other perches gently on the edge of her left hand (metmuseum.org).

The purpose of this sculpture is better understood from a cultural context to express the sentiment of the antiquity period illustrating the epitome of femininity in the Greek community. During antiquity, the Greek community practiced unfairness and injustice to women. Greece women had to spend a lifetime controlled by men all their life. The age-old custom of the Greek society has been brought in this piece of art. The sculpture of the steel of Girl with Doves shows a small girl looking down in sorrow saying farewell to the two Doves. The theme in this piece of art is that it is difficult for the female gender to live happily due to society’s perception of women during those times. The Greek society did not value women’s work at all. The women in ancient Greece society were only respected for being a housewife, which the girl in the sculpture resents. The depiction of the girl bowing her head in the sculpture is a description of unhappiness that Greece women underwent during antiquity. The girl in the relief sculpture is a likely symbolic of the suffering of the Greece women during that period.  Artists have managed to encourage contemporary women to achieve perfection by illustrating ideal femininity by use of realistic subjects (mlahanas.de).

The statue of a wounded Amazon is a sculpture relief that depicts a wounded Amazon, which is a copy of the original Greek bronze of a period between 450-425 B.C. The sculpture of the Wounded Amazon measures eighty and a quarter inches. The original bronze copy of the Statue of a wounded Amazon stood in the sanctuary of Artemis. Ephesus is the place where the Amazons had cultic and legendary and cultic with the goddess on the coast of Asia Minor. However, on this relief sculpture of the Statue of a Wounded Amazon depicts the mythical warrior woman who has been stripped of her horse and weapon and wounded on her right breast. The marble copy of the relief sculpture of the Statue of a wounded Amazon has the lower legs and feet replaced with plaster casts taken from some different marble copies of this kind from Copenhagen and Berlin. Other restorations on this piece of art include the lower part of the pillar, the lower end of the left forearm and the entire right part. All these are eighteenth-century restorations. The artist has employed posture in this relief sculpture to a tremendous detail. The woman warrior in the relief sculpture is dressed in short, sleeveless garment, which is unfastened at one shoulder and belted at the waist with a makeshift bit of bridle. The garment worn by the mythical woman warrior is similar to the clothing that was worn by Greece men, for hard labor or sporting activities such as horse riding. The background is not given much focus in this relief sculpture. This relief sculpture has a simple scene on which it stands on a pillar with a slightly dull background. The relief Statue of a Wounded Amazon has a pattern of folds that are evenly applied on the garment that the mythical warrior woman is dressed. This is a characteristic of the classical sculpture of the second half of the fifth century. The mythical woman warrior in the relief leans on the pillar at her left and rests her right arm in a graceful manner on her head to express sleep or exhaustion (metmuseum.org).

The purpose of this piece of art was to serve to as an Amazon for the temple of Artemis. The Ephesians made the most popular sculptors of that time from Greece to land in Ephesus to compete in making of a statue of an Amazon. In cultural context, the relief sculpture, Statue of a Wounded Amazon, experts say the Amazons used to wear a dress that was well adapted to reveal the right breast to enable the warrior woman to user her bow with greater flexibility. However, in this sculpture, the left breast is more exposed suggesting the possibility that she was a left handed Amazon since her right breast is wounded. Her dress is also short to allow her free movement as warrior (metmuseum.org)