Borghese Warrior

Borghese Warrior (or Borghese Gladiator). Marble statue (Louvre, Paris) of a nude warrior in a vigorous attitude of combat (his sword and shield are missing, but he is evidently lunging at an opponent on horseback in a type of pose that has been described as a ‘heroic diagonal’). It was discovered in 1611 at Nettuno (near Anzio), had entered the Borghese collection by 1613, and was bought by Napoleon (brother-in-law of Prince Camillo Borghese) in 1807. The statue is signed by ‘Agasias, son of Dositheos, Ephesian’ and is generally considered to be a copy of a Hellenistic work influenced by Lysippus. It became famous soon after its discovery and for two centuries it was one of the most admired and copied of antique statues, praised particularly for its anatomical mastery: Bernini's David (made for the statue's then owner, Cardinal Scipione Borghese) is an early instance of a derivation from it and a more curious adaptation is found in Copley's Brook Watson and the Shark, in which the figure of Watson—horizontal in the water—is based, in reverse, on the Warrior. It is now much less admired as a work of art, Martin Robertson (A History of Greek Art, 1975) describing it as ‘harsh and unappealing’.