Ancient Gifts from the Sea

By A. T. Baker

Fifth century B.C. masterpieces saved by sand and science

Thrusting out of the sea bottom, the hand on the sinewy forearm was reaching beyond the abyss of time. Two swimmers spotted it while diving off a beach at Riace Marina, a resort in Reggio Calabria on the toe of the Italian boot. Their find was not far offshore (about 325 yds.) or in very deep water (less than 26 ft.). But it turned out to be astonishingly distant in age: about 24 centuries, in fact. Experts quickly uncovered a 990-lb. life-size bronze figure of a warrior. Near by they found a second bronze of similar heft and warlike dignity.

That was eight years ago. Very soon it was determined that the statues were an important find: almost certainly works of Greek sculptors of the 5th century B.C., a period from which few large bronze sculptures have survived. Now on display for the first time, in the Archaeological Museum in Florence, these magnificent bronzes also stand as tributes to the art of their restorers.

Sculpture restoration is delicate work: a slip of a tool can destroy craftsmanship that has survived thousands of years. Restorers at the National Museum of Reggio Calabria kept the statues for three years and cleared them of superficial dirt. But to remove encrusted sand, gravel and stones, the prizes were shipped to the Archaeological Museum in Florence. Experts there spent five years employing special scalpels, tiny hammers driven by compressed air and a new, ultrasonic cleaning technique to remove the remaining detritus. What had saved the works, besides the restorers' loving labors, was the sand into which they had sunk: it protected the pieces from corrosion.

The best known among the few bronzes that survived from this period are the Poseidon in the Athens National Archaeological Museum and the charioteer in Delphi. In their restored state, the two statues at the Florence museum rank with this select company. Scholars and amateurs alike have been fascinated by both the perfection of the preservation and the skill of the statues' creators, as reflected in such details as the whorls of a beard, the braids of a headband, the shiny, silver-plated teeth and the copper lips, eyelashes and nipples.

Giuseppi Foti, Reggio Calabria's superintendent of antiquities, is preparing to take back these Greek gifts from the Ionian Sea and has been working on what he hopes will be the definitive fix on their authorship and origin. Among Foti's theories, the most probable could be that a Roman ship returning from plundering Greece was caught in a storm, and the statues were jettisoned to save the vessel from foundering.

Foti thinks the statues must date from not much later than the Archaic period, which ended in 450 B.C., since their posture is the typical Archaic stance, with the left foot forward. The bronze alloy is typical of that period. But the delicacy and realism of the detail and the elaboration of musculature suggest that the sculptors were already moving toward the exquisite modeling that became the glory of classical Greece in the age of Pericles.

Florence University's Professor Enrico Paribeni is particularly fascinated by the headbanded statue: "It is so heroical, so full of itself, so mightily angry with its huge silver teeth--you could not live with it in your room. It emanates such a vivid presence that it is practically intolerable." He recalls a legend that Locri, a Greek colony near where the statue was recovered, was founded by Ajax Minor, a violent Greek hero who, on the night before the fall of Troy, reputedly raped Cassandra upon the altar of the goddess Athena. What Paribeni believes, or would like to believe, is that the statue retrieved from the sea represents that "dreadful, bad hero, Ajax of Locri." So far, nobody has said him nay.

--A.T. Baker

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