Fragment of a marble copy after the Leaning Satyr of Praxiteles

The ancient historian Pliny recorded Praxiteles’ statue as one of the “famous” sculptures of the ancient world, and the influential German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann wrote extensively about it. The sculpture type was as famous in antiquity as it is today; over one hundred ancient Greek and Roman copies that replicate the form with greater or lesser freedom exist. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Capitoline Faun, a second century Roman copy in the Capitoline, excavated in the eighteenth century at Tivoli. This sculpture provided the inspiration, and title, for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni (1860). 

Greek artisans were renowned across the ancient world for accomplishments in sculpture, and contemporary and later cultures—including the Persians and Romans—coveted, collected, and copied their marble sculptures. The popularity of Greek sculpture among Roman patrons in the late Republic and Imperial periods, and the high regard in which Romans held earlier Greek art and literature, demonstrates an early example of antiquarian culture. By the third century BCE, wealthy Romans coveted and collected works of Greek art that demonstrated their cultural sophistication. Already regarded as the height of artistic achievement, sculptures in bronze and marble were especially sought out and were used by Romans to decorate their villas and gardens. Roman sculptors across the empire copied Greek models with greater or lesser degrees of exactitude, sometimes employing plaster casts and mechanical means, and other times copying well-known poses or statue groups with more freedom. 

For centuries, Roman copies were valued mostly for what they reveal about lost original Greek sculptures. Today, a reassessment of the freedom and ingenuity with which Roman sculptors creatively copied and employed Greek models has led to reappraisal of the skill and ingenuity of Roman artisans. A fascinating historical phenomenon, the Roman vogue for ancient Greek statuary finds modern parallels in the popularity of marble copies and plaster casts of ancient sculptures in the nineteenth century.