- Ares Borghese
The Ares Borghese is a Roman marble statue of the imperial era (1st-2nd c AD). It is 2.11m high. It is identifiable as
Ares by the helmet and by the ankle ring given him by his loverAphrodite .This statue possibly preserves some features of an original work in bronze, now lost, of the
5th century BC .The cult and representation of Ares are very rare in the ancient Greek world, especially in sculpture. It has been thought that this statue may be derived from one by
Alcamenes , an Athenian sculptor who, according to Pausanias (I, 8, 4), made a statue of Ares that was erected on theAthenian agora . However, the temple of Ares to which he refers had only been moved fromAcharnes and re-sited in the Agora inAugustus 's time, making this a chronological impossibility. Also, statues known to derive from Alcamenes' statue show the god in abreastplate (one is depicted [http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=20221 in this relief] ). So, in all, this statue may not be a copy of Alcamenes's, but instead a Roman creation according to a classicising orNeo-Attic type.Later, widely dispersed, this type was paired with female statues of the
Venus de Milo type for portraits of the imperial Roman couple, symbol of the union between military and peace, such as the "Mars and Venus".Formerly part of the
Borghese collection , it was purchased from there in 1807 by Napoleon.External links
* [http://cartelen.louvre.fr/cartelen/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=849 Louvre catalogue]
* [http://www.skulpturhalle.ch/sammlung/highlights/2005/11/ares_borghese.html Skulpturhalle Basel]
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