Museum Home Current Exhibitions The Agrigento Youth

October 27, 2010–April 18, 2011 at the Getty Villa

Statue of a Kouros (The Agrigento Youth) / Greek
Statue of a Kouros (The Agrigento Youth), Greek, about 480 B.C., Museo Archeologico Regionale, Agrigento, Sicily. Photo © Angelo Pitrone
 
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The Agrigento Youth, an important work from the Museo Archeologico Regionale in Agrigento, Sicily, is on loan to the Getty Museum and will be on view through April 19, 2011. The statue is displayed in a gallery devoted to images of Athletes and Competition (Gallery 211) at the Getty Villa. The figure is a rare example of an early classical marble statue called a kouros, or nude young man.

Sculptures such as this were made to serve as costly dedicatory objects, functioning as votive gifts to a god or to honor the memory of a dead man as part of his funerary ritual. Works of this type have been excavated from sanctuaries and cemeteries in Greece and around the Mediterranean, including southern Italy and Sicily. This sculpture—one of the best preserved examples of the kouros type in Sicily—was found in fragments and was excavated from two cisterns in the area of San Biagio near the ancient temple of Demeter and Persephone in ancient Akragas (present-day Agrigento) in 1897.

Statue of a Kouros (The Agrigento Youth) / Greek
Statue of a Kouros (The Agrigento Youth) (detail), Greek, about 480 B.C., Museo Archeologico Regionale, Agrigento, Sicily. Photo © Angelo Pitrone
 
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The figure was carved by an unknown artist around 480 B.C., at a time of change in artistic styles between the Archaic and the Classical periods when the rigid poses and serene expressions of Archaic works were becoming more naturalistic. Its solemn facial features and erect stance embody the so-called Severe Style.

Unlike Athenian sculptures of this date, the youth's posture does not relax into a contrapposto stance in which most of the weight is borne by one leg, but maintains the even spread of weight across the hips, a trait common for earlier kouros types. In addition, the right leg of the Agrigento Youth is extended rather than the left. The stone from which it was carved is a white marble imported from Greece, which indicates that it was an expensive and important commission.

The sculpture is also distinguished by certain features which call attention to its Sicilian origins. The structure of the head is long and the face is oval-shaped, with prominent cheekbones, heavy-lidded eyes and a prominent lower lip. Sharply patterned hair is a feature common to all kouroi, but in Sicily the treatment is even more pronounced, with delineated strands of finely carved locks forming into a cap and rolled into a thick coil of hair banded by a simple diadem. Here, residue of the red pigment indicating the original color of the hair is clearly visible.

Statue of a Kouros (The Agrigento Youth) at the Getty Villa
Statue of a Kouros (The Agrigento Youth) with its new seismic isolation base and pedestal at the Getty Villa.
 
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Seismic Protection

Before installing the Agrigento Youth at the Getty Villa, the Museum's conservation team collaborated with conservators from Agrigento's Museo Archeologico Regionale to construct a custom seismic isolation base and pedestal.

When the sculpture returns to Sicily, it will be accompanied by its new pedestal and earthquake-resistant mount for display in its home museum.

About the Museo Archeologico Regionale of Agrigento

Located just outside the town at Contrada San Nicola, the Museo Archeologico Regionale in Agrigento, Sicily, chronicles the history of the ancient Greek colony of Akragas and its territory from prehistory to the Roman period. The museum features panoramic views over the Valley of the Temples, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The area surrounding the museum was recently identified as the upper part of the ancient city, where numerous architectural remains of an amphitheater and residential quarters have been uncovered.

More information about the Museo Archeologico Regionale of Agrigento is available on their website. (Website is in Italian.)

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The loan of The Agrigento Youth is part of a long-term collaborative agreement between the Getty Museum and the Sicilian Ministry of Culture and Sicilian Identity. Learn more about this cultural collaboration.