APOXYOMENOS

On the 18^th of May in the Archaeological Museum of Zagreb an exhibition was opened and the most attractive underwater find found in the Adriatic up to now was presented to the public. Bronze life-size statue is representing a young athlete who has just completed his bout or his exercise and is shown at the moment of relaxation when he is cleaning his body of oil, sweat and dust of palestra, with special tool called strigilus. This is why this type of statue is called Apoxyomenos (the „Scraper“). According to the powerful arms and back, he was a fighter. Specific traces of injuries on his ears suggest he was a wrestler.

Statue was found on the seabed near islet of Orjule, close to the island of Lošinj. The finder was a Belgian sports diver and amateur photographer René Wouters, who had shown a photograph of his find to an underwater archeologist Robert Sténuit. Than, at the end of 1998,   official report to the Croatian authorities followed, with the proposal of the join project for the investigation, what was accepted. Activities of  rising the statue from the sea and exploration of the site was lead through (executed) by international team in 1999, financed by the Oxford Maritime Ltd and Croatian government.

The process of statue conservation had lasted for another six years, and was performed by the Croatian Conservation Institute from Zagreb in cooperation with the Opificio delle Pietre Dure from Florence, and with a contribution of several world experts. The entire external and partly internal surface of the statue was covered with a layer of corrosion products and organic limestone. The removal of the incrustations was exclusively mechanical, without the application of any chemical preparations.

The statue was cast with the use of the indirect lost wax process. It was not cast in a single piece, but was composed of seven parts (head, torso, legs, arms, pubic area). No clay core was found inside. The mistakes of the casting process were repaired with a lot of patches of different sizes and shapes. The lips and nipples were made reddish copper. Radiocarbon analysis of the organic materials found inside the statue dates time of sinking in the 1st century AD. Statue was a solitary find – there are no traces of shipwreck. Only one great lead anchor stock was found near by. The spot even now serves as the anchorage in the case of northern wind. So, the statue fold from the ships board or was thrown out.

Although the investigation is over, a lot of questions has still remained unanswered. Is the statue Greek original or a copy? Original is related to the sculptor circle of Lysippus, dating in the end of the 4th – beginning of the 3rd century BC. Composition of the bronze alloy is similar to the other Hellenistic Greek statues. Some technical details are similar to Roman statues. A motive of  Apoxyomenos was popular in antiquity, but all other finds are Roman replicas for sure. The closest example is „Twin brother“, composed of 234 fragments found in Ephesus 1896, today kept in the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna. One life-size bronze head was bought via Sotheby's by the Kimbel Art Museum from Texas.

Exhibition in Zagreb will be remain open until 17th October, when it will be moved to Florence, Italy.