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3 - The Body in Relief in Archaic Funerary Sculpture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2025

Jas' Elsner
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Milette Gaifman
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Nathaniel B. Jones
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
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Summary

Sculpted funerary monuments from Archaic Attica have traditionally been divided into two categories: those taking the form of a stele sculpted in relief and those taking the form of freestanding statues. In iconographical studies of these monuments, the distinction in medium has often been assigned interpretive weight, with those monuments carved in relief regarded as representing the deceased in a fundamentally different manner than those carved in the round. In contrast to such approaches, I attend in this chapter to points of continuity between relief and freestanding monuments in order to consider how they engage complementary forms of visualization. To do so, I focus on three case studies: the Gorgon stele from the Kerameikos in Athens, the Hoplite stele now in New York (together with its associated sphinx in Boston), and the “Hockey Player” base also from the Kerameikos. Ultimately, I argue, all sculpted funerary monuments from Archaic Attica mobilize aspects of relief sculpture, insofar as they position the body of the deceased between another world and our own.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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