Plaster Cast Frieze: Grave Stele of Aristion

The top part with a crowning (most likely a palmette) is missing. Aristion is depicted as a bearded hoplite facing right. He wears a short thin chiton above which is a corselet decorated with painted ornaments including maeanders, zigzags, and a star on the shoulder. He wears an Attic helmet (with its top imssing) on his head and greaves on his shins. His right arm hangs down and he holds a spear in his left hand. He stands bare foot on a projecting horizontal band on which is inscribed; ergon Aristokleous (the work of Aristokles). The beard is rendered by wavy incised lines and the hair is combed into spiral curls with volute terminals. The face is terracotta color with traces of red at the bottom of the slab.

This is one of the finest Late Archaic sculptures with the anatomical details dynamically worked, particularly the details of the upper arms and the quadriceps on the thighs. This is by the hand of the sculptor Aristokles who specialized in funerary sculptures. Robertson suggests that this may be the grave of the sculptor Aristion of Paros and, given the ancient Greek liking for using similar name forms in a family, possibly Aristokles who carved the stele may have been a relation of the deceased: son, brother, or nephew. Aristokles’ name is found on a base from the Themistoklean wall of Athens built after the battle of Salamis from the ruins of the Persian destruction of the city. This base is from a grave monument of a Karian who had died in Athens. The inscription is in Greek but the deceased’s name is also given in Karian letters. Robertson then posits that Aristokles’ portrayal of Skylax’s son, Tymnes, is partially preserved in the Sabouroff head in the Berlin Museum as a representation of a foreigner, which explains some unusual aspects of the head in the Attic tradition to which it clearly belongs.

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Boardman, John. 1978. Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period. Oxford University Press, 164, pl. 235.

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Robertson, Martin. 1975. A History of Greek Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 111, pl. 29b,c.