Boy with Thorn

Boy with thorn (Italian Spinario ) is an ancient motif of the visual arts, especially sculpture. It is a naked boy pulling a thorn from his left foot.

Motif

Boy with thorn sitting on a boulder, the left leg bent over the right thigh down. With his left hand he holds the instep of the left foot, with the right he draws an invisible thorn from the sole of the foot. The head is bent over the foot. The hair is finely coiffed and falls in tresses on both sides.

The so-called " Capitoline Boy with thorn ", the most famous works, is located in the conservator palace in Rome. It is made of bronze and is without plinth 73 cm high. He is probably one of the few ancient statues that were placed always visible above the ground. This is indicated by his detailed mention as a simulacrum valde ridiculosum, quod priapum dicunt ( " a most ridiculous statue, which is called Priapus " ) in the manuscript De Mirabilibus Urbis Romae ( " About marvels of Rome "), a Master Gregorius from the 12th century down. 1471 the Boy with thorn by Pope Sixtus IV was bequeathed to the city of Rome and on public display alongside a number of other antique bronze figures on Capitol Hill. Length of the " Capitoline Boy with thorn " for an original of the 5th century BC was held and sometimes Lysippos, court sculptor to Alexander the Great attributed. Because the head of the Dornausziehers but was taken over by an erect statue and the location of the curls therefore does not correspond to the changed position of the head, is now assumed that there is a return stylization in the style of classicism by late Hellenistic models, the " Capitoline Boy with thorn ." Also, the right arm was cast and separately recognized.

Called A 1874 excavated on the Esquiline marble figure, " Boy with thorn Castellani ", located in the British Museum in London. She is 73 cm tall and is a late Hellenistic influenced Roman copy from the 1st century AD, which was created after a Greek original from the 3rd century BC. Two drill holes indicate that the " Boy with thorn Castellani " once served as a fountain decoration. His right leg is broken.

At the beginning of the Early Renaissance of Boy with thorn by Filippo Brunelleschi was resumed using it in 1402 during the renovation of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence as a model for a figure on the bronze doors. 1886 design by Gustav Eberlein was repeated in a marble statue that now stands in the Old National Gallery in Berlin.

Reception

Mythological interpretations saw in Boy with thorn Lokros, the son of Maera ( daughter of Proteus ) and Zeus. In Greek mythology Lokros is ancestor of Ozolian Locrians, who was injured according to the legend at the bottom and as a consequence the fulfillment of a prophecy realized and became the founder of cities.

In the Middle Ages, the mandrel was viewed as a symbol of original sin; the Boy with thorn was interpreted as a wayward sinner from the right path. In this context, the subject of capitals, facades, gates and on tombs has been widely used.

Heinrich von Kleist mentioned the Boy with thorn in his essay On the Marionette Theatre, which has the effect of human consciousness on the natural grace on the topic. The narrator speaks of a young man, on whose education is a wonderful grace was common at the time. As it a graceful, unconscious movement of the youth [ ... ] that a splinter from his foot runs, remembers, he tried to repeat it consciously, but the attempt, as might easily see ahead unsuccessful. He raised confuses the foot for the third and fourth, he picked it probably ten times: in vain! he was out of state to produce the same movement again [ ... ].

In Boll's narrative Wanderer, if you come to Spa ... the Boy with thorn is enumerated among other things, next to the Parthenon frieze as a classic prop of a grammar school.

In Ferdinand von Schirach's story "The Thorn" from the collection of crime museum guard field Mayer loses his mind because he can not answer the question of whether the boy had found the mandrel. The search in the foot remains with the magnifying glass unsuccessful, it seems field Mayer increasingly unclear whether the boy get to grasp the thorn at all, and if so, whether he had perhaps left him already incurred.

In Thomas Mann's novella " Death in Venice " compares Gustav von Aschenbach, Tadzio with the Boy with thorn. (See: " They had been careful not to put the scissors to his beautiful hair, as in Boy with thorn it curled in the forehead, above the ears and deeper still in the neck. " )