Commentary Prepared by Dr. Julia Lenaghan, Ashmolean Museum

A 135
Left arm from Tegea. Athens

Fragment of a bare left arm of a life-size figure. From a pediment of the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea. The temple was constructed by Scopas of Paros in ca. 350 BC.

Marble
Pedimental Figure
L 23 cm

From the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea.
Greece, Athens, National Museum, 180b
Ca. 350-340 BC

Preservation:
The arm was worked separately from the body. It begins at the middle of the biceps and is broken vertically through the middle of the forearm. There is a rectangular dowel hole in the horizontal surface through the middle of the biceps.

Description:
The fragment depicts a tensed and well-muscled left arm from the biceps to the middle of the foreram. The musculature emer The arm bends at an angle just smaller than 90 degrees. A small flat channel indicates the crease in the flesh at the bend. The musculature and bone structure of the arm are carefully modelled on its outer side. The inside of the arm is flat with little attention given to modelling.

Discussion:
The bare, bent left arm of a man was found in the area of the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea. Its technical details, marble, and size ensure that it belonged to the pedimental sculpture from the Temple. This Temple is best known from Pausanias’ description (8.45). For more general information on it and a discussion of other sculptural fragments from it, see cat.no. A 132-A 134 and A 136-137. Pausanias informs us that the east pediment was decorated with the Calydonian boar hunt and the west pediment with the battle between Telephus and Achilles on the plain of Kaikos. This arm might have belonged to a male figure in either one of these two pediments. At Tegea, ‘findspots’ are no indication of the object’s original locations since the fragments of the pediment were portable and reused. Whereas the rendering of the outside of the arm is tensed and detailed, the inside of the arm is only schematically worked. It probably faced the tympanum and was not visible to the viewer. This economy of carving, visible in all figures from the pediment, is here combined with another carving convenience, which is again visible in other figures of the pediment; the arm, from the biceps downwards, was worked separately from the body and dowelled to it by a rectangular metal plug. In addition, the arm displays the use of the running drill to create a shallow but distinct channel between the upper arm and the forearm; this technique for separating elements is typical of the sculptors of the pediments (see cat.no. A 134 and 136). J. Lenaghan

Bibliography:
C. Dugas, J. Berchmans, and M. Clemmensen, La sanctuaire d’Aléa Athèna à Tégée au IVe siècle (Paris 1924) 98, no. 28, pl. 98c first catalogue entry
A. Stewart, Skopas of Paros (Park Ridge, NJ 1977) 37, 42, pl. 20a-b mentioned in discussion of technique