Wounded Amazon

This Amazon has been wounded, and has fled into a sanctuary of Artemis. The wound is beside her breast under her raised right arm, several drops of blood sculpted below it. She leans on a pillar with her left arm. Exhaustion emanates from her pose: unarmed and barefoot, she turns her head down towards her wounded side and rests her arm over her head. Although she carries no weapons, her clothing marks her as an Amazon: she wears her thin chiton gathered at the waist, as warriors did to allow freer movement in battle. Moreover, the chiton leaves her left breast bare, as is typical for Amazons; but the partial baring of her right breast is also due to the wound. Beneath her left ankle are traces of a band attachment for spurs, identifying her as a rider. A copy of the same Amazon type (the “Sciarra” type) in Copenhagen preserves the same band on both feet.
The Berlin and Copenhagen Amazons, along with other copies in the same series, point back to a lost bronze original. Another series of copies derives from at least two further Amazon statues also originally in bronze. All three bronze originals were made by the most famous artists of the high Classical period in competition against each other; among them were Phidias, Polykleitos, Kresilas, and probably two others. The Roman author Pliny the Elder relates the contest in his book on bronzes (Nat. Hist. 34, 53). The winning statue was to be chosen by the artists themselves – whichever they all judged second-best, after their own work. It was proposed again recently that the Berlin statue copies Polykleitos’ entry in the contest. Pliny also writes that the Amazon statues were dedicated in the Artemision of Ephesos. The Amazons, a race of horse riders from the north, were said to have founded the Artemis sanctuary and endowed it with the cult image of the goddess. They also took refuge there during their flight from Dionysos and Herakles. Dedicating the bronze originals of the Amazon statues in the Artemision of Ephesos, therefore, visually recalled the right of asylum in the sanctuary.