Statue of a Wounded Amazon

The Berlin Amazon is one of several Roman copies of an original erected in the sanctuary of Artemis in Ephesus around 430 BCE. Pliny the Elder reported about a competition to create an Amazon for the sanctuary in which the most famous sculptors of the High Classical period took part. Like the other copies of this type, the Berlin Amazon is wounded in the right armpit. Standing on her right leg, with the left foot free behind, she leans on a pillar with her left lower arm and holds her right hand above her head. The figure wears a short, double-belted, finely pleated chiton of thin cloth, which has fallen off the left shoulder to leave the left breast uncovered. The head, with its full mouth slightly open, its strong nose and its eyes gazing to the ground between their heavy lids under widely arched eyebrows, is inclined to the right. This superbly executed work is a sculpture of the early Imperial period, shown here in new photographs for the first time since it was comprehensively restored.