Pergamene - Gaddi

Pergamene - GaddiA minimalist line art rendering of the Gaddi Torso, the Hellenistic Greek marble fragment of the 2nd or 1st century BC held at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The original torso is among the most studied ancient sculptures in the Western canon admired by Michelangelo, whose Sistine Chapel figures carry its echoes and it is here reduced to its essential lines. Only the trunk of the ancient marble survives: no head, no arms, no legs below the thighs.

A print of Heracles and Antaeus — the Greek hero wrestling the Libyan giant whose strength renewed itself every time he touched the earth

Walter Crane (1845–1915) was a central figure in the Arts & Crafts movement

god of ecstasy and the formless

Whatever its date of casting

born at dawn and already a prodigy by evening

the birth of the goddess of love from the foam of the ocean

The Greeks themselves were aware of how strange this looked

The couple's fifty daughters are the Menae — the personifications of the months of the moon

acquired by the Borghese family

half-man creatures of Greek myth

Canova held the figures at the moment just before the kiss — the tension

The finest surviving examples are held today at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli