The Ancient World

The Chatsworth Head, Ancient Greece, 470 BC-460 BC

“The statue was found complete by peasants in 1836 in the bed of the Pediaeos river north of the village of Politiko (ancient Tamassos) in central Cyprus. The findspot was later revealed by excavation to have been a very important sanctuary dedicated to Apollo. According to the account of the finders preserved in Ludwig Ross’s account of his visit to Cyprus in 1845, the statue was naked, with the exception of a wide belt, with the left foot extending forward. The arms, legs and head were cast separately from the body, indicated by the fact thay they broke off as the statue was dragged away from the site.The existence of the belt suggests a more archaic form for the body than the head, whose closest parallels lie in the Severe Style of Greek sculpture in the second quarter of the 5th century BC.

The staue was broken up and sold for scrap bronze for a very low price, with the exception of the head which came into the possession of an English collector and dealer who later sold it on to the Duke of Devonshire. Cornelius Vermeule suggests the statue was a cult image similar to that from the temple of Apollo at Miletos and furnishes the origin with arrows or a phiale in one hand and a bow in the other, though this is not certain as cult statues of this kind are very rare on Cyprus”

The British Museum