Su una statua di vecchio pastore al Museo di Antichità di Torino

Anna Maria Riccomini

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Abstract

The Archaeological Museum of Turin (Museo di Antichità) keeps a torso of an old peasant wearing a short tunic and carrying a little animal (a lamb?) in a bag. It is a genre figure in the tradition of late Hellenistic statue types featuring old and derelict labourers. The same exaggerated realism can be found also in a head of an elderly man preserved in the same Museum, so far unpublished, which I suggest to identify as the original head of the torso. Not only is this proposal supported by stylistic features (the head is characterized as “low” and “rustic” by the deformity and the stark realism of the face), but also by size correspondence.