A Bronze Figure of Zeus, Late Hellenistic or Early Roman Imperial, circa 2nd half of the 1st Century B.C/early 1st Century A.D.

inspired by Greek sculpture of the later 5th/4th Century B.C., the god standing with his weight on the right leg and formerly holding a scepter in the raised left hand, the missing right hand once holding a thunderbolt, his powerful torso with nipples inlaid in copper, the finely modeled face with thick beard of symmetrically curling locks, long moustache, lips overlaid in copper, silver-inlaid eyes, and prominent brow, the hair radiating from the crown in long wavy locks, swept up above the forehead, and falling in masses of long engraved curls over the ears and nape of the neck.

Fleischman Collection, New York

The Search for Alexander: Supplement to the Catalogue, catalogue of the exhibition at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1982, no. S-10, entry by J. Geary Volk
The Search for Alexander: Supplement to the Catalogue, catalogue of the exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum, March 5th - July 10th, 1983, Toronto, 1983, pp. 12-13, no. S-14, illus., entry by J. Geary Volk
J. Geary Volk, "A Lysippan Zeus," California Studies in Classical Antiquity, vol. III, 2, 1984, pp. 272-283, pls. I-XI, and XIX
The Gods Delight: The Human Figure in Classical Bronze, Arielle P. Kozloff and David Gordon Mitten, eds., catalogue of the exhibition at The Cleveland Museum of Art, November 16th, 1988 - January 8th, 1989, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, February 9th - April 9th, 1989, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, May 9th - July 9th, 1989, Cleveland, 1988, no. 29, pp. 168-172, illus.

For a related example (reversed) found at Paramythia in Epirus and now in the British Museum see H.B. Walters, Catalogue of the Bronzes, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan, in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, London, 1899, no. 274, pl. 6 (LIMC, vol. VIII.2, p. 278, no. 116). For a related bronze figure of Zeus in the Antikensammlung, Munich, see H. Bülle, Der Schöne Mensch, Munich, 1922, pl. 59 (LIMC VIII.2, p.277, no. 115). Also see Richter, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes, no. 207, for a similar example in The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Bronze figures of Zeus or Poseidon in the Roman period are highly ecletic in style. The present figure, for instance, combines 5th Century B.C. Polycleitan features, such as the musculature and posture, with later 4th Century traits like the upswept locks of hair over the forehead. On the combination of classical and Lysippan elements in small-scale Roman bronze figures of Zeus see H. Menzel, "Observations on Selected Bronzes in the Master Bronzes Exhibition," Art and Technology, 1970, p. 231, and Polyklet, p. 420 and no. 215.

The Greek sculpture which may have served as inspiration for the present bronze could be the Zeus Brontaios, or Thunderer, by Leochares (see Pliny, Natural History, 34.79), which was taken to Rome and placed in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus (see S. Boucher, Recherches sur les bronzes figurés de Gaule pré-romaine et romaine, Rome, 1976, pp. 67-68; G. Donnay, "Le Iuppiter Tonans du Capitole romain et ses imitations dans les bronzes figurés,” and H. Menzel, "Die Iuppiterstatuen von Brée, Évreux, und Dalheim, und verwandte Bronzen," in Toreutik und figürliche Bronzen römischer Zeit: Akten der 6. Tagung über antike Bronzen, 13-17 Mai, 1980, Berlin, 1984, pp. 107ff. and 186ff., respectively).