The Apoxyomenos from Croatia
Apoxyomenos (the “Scraper”) is one of the conventional subjects of ancient Greek votive sculpture. It represents an athlete caught in the familiar act of scraping sweat and dust from his body with a strigil, the small curved instrument used in Roman baths.
This substantially complete bronze Apoxyomenos, who strigilates his left hand held close to his thigh, was discovered by René Wouten. He found this bronze statue fully covered in sponges and sea life. No parts of the statue were missing, though its head was disconnected from the body. The bronze figure was recovered in 1996 from the northern Adriatic Sea between the Vele Orjule and Kozjaki inlets, near the Croatian city of Lošinj.
At 192 cm in height, this Apoxyomenos is currently thought to be a Hellenistic copy of sculptor Lysippos’ Apoxyomenos from the second or first century BCE. It is currently conserved, as the Croatian Apoxyomenos, in Zagreb’s Mimara Museum. The Apoxyomenos is similar to an Ephesus bronze votive figure in several ways: the almost portrait-like individuality of the face and a non-Classical form with a broad, fleshy jaw, short chin and hair made rough and unruly by sweat and dust.