The DISCOBOLUS is the centerpiece of the British Museum's traveling exhibition "The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece," a collection of more than 130 objects of Greek and Roman antiquity.
The show runs through October 6, 2013.
Hadrian loved all things Greek and the "Discobolus" was sculpted during his reign based on a lost Greek original from 450-440 B.C.
That means you will be looking upon a statue which Antinous may have seen, and which Hadrian most certainly gazed upon since he had commissioned it for his sprawling villa outside Rome.
The statue, the most iconic work in the show, depicts a discus thrower frozen in the instant before he launches the disc. This is the first time ever that the "Discobolus" has ever been loaned out by the British Museum.
The contours of the marble sculpture are predictably smooth and cool. Yet the precise articulation of his physique, the balanced contrast of tense and relaxed musculature, and the fluid, natural trajectory of his implied movement animate the figure like a coil poised to spring.
The obsessive detail and slavish devotion to the ideals of beauty evident in "Discobolus" tells us much more about the values and culture of the ancient Greeks than the figure depicted.
While the "The Body Beautiful" accounts for nearly every stage of physical life, the emphasis is decidedly carnal.
Not only did the Greeks privilege nudity more than other ancient cultures (their contemporary Persians considered the nude body shameful, for instance), much of their artwork and artifacts seem designed to stoke the sexual appetite.
Don't pass up this opportunity to see a sculpture which Hadrian commissioned for his own home.
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