Youth of Magdalensberg

The Youth of Magdalensberg is a Roman bronze statue from the first century BC It was in 1502 found on the Carinthian Magdalen mountain and is today just by a cast from the 16th century known, located in the antique collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna ( Inventory number VI 1).

Until the 20th century the statue was also known as " Youth of Helenenberg " after the old name for the Magdalen mountain.

Description

The sculpture made ​​of bronze represents a naked boy standing in approximately life size is (height 1, 85 m). Leg is the right leg, free leg, the left, touching the ground only with the toes. The left arm hangs down freely, the right hand is raised to shoulder height. The head is half turned to the right and follows the gesture of the right hand.

On the right thigh an inscription is engraved:

It is the dedication of two freedmen who were probably as a trader in the city on the mountain Magdalen active.

Interpretation

Neither the statue itself nor from the inscription can be an identification as gods portrait derived. Therefore, there is a wealth of interpretations. These range from athletes on bulb holder ( Lychnophoros ) to various deities. Also a found together with the youth gilt bronze round shield, which is now lost, helps with the interpretation further not. The shield bore the inscription

The founders of the shield were therefore a free Celt, a freedman of Northern Italy Barbia gene and a native Celtic slave of the same family. This family also belonged to one of the two founders of the youth statue.

More recent interpretations view the statue as a cult statue of a Celtic Mars on the shrine on the mountain summit, as Noreia priests, dedicated as part of the Noreia statue group, or as Mercuriusstatue, which stood on the forum of the city.

Classification

The statue is an eclectic work of Roman ideal sculpture and was made in the first half of the first century BC. Model was the Greek sculpture of the 5th and 4th century BC Possibly it is the copy of a work of the school of Polykleitos.

The youth is the only known antique bronze monumental sculpture from the Eastern Alps and therefore of national importance.

Provenance

The statue was found in 1502 by a farmer plowing on a terrace to the south of the summit. Soon after, she came into the possession of the Bishop of Gurk and humanists Matthäus Lang von Wellenburg. This she took in 1519 to Salzburg when he was Archbishop of Salzburg. Until the 1980s it was assumed that the statue in 1806 came from Salzburg to Vienna. 1986 led investigations of the casting technology as well as scientific analysis of the metal, however, to the conclusion that the Vienna statue is a cast from the mid-16th century.

The whereabouts of the original is not to clarify with certainty. As protocols of the Salzburg cathedral chapter prove it arrived in 1551 in the possession of King Ferdinand I, after a cast had been made, the first remained in Salzburg and in 1806 came to Vienna. The original was taken to Spain, where it is in 1662 and 1786 detected in the royal gardens of the Palace of Aranjuez. Since the beginning of the 19th century, however, the original of the statue is missing.

From the original two images are known. One comes from the inscription work Inscriptiones sacrosanctae vetustatis of Peter Apianus and Bartholomaeus Amantius 1534, the other is a fresco Hans Bock the Elder Bergers. in the chapel ruin of the city residence of Landshut from 1542.