Abstract

A statue base (Delphi Museum, inv. no. 3951) discovered in 1896, southeast of the Apollo Temple at Delphi, preserves cuttings for a now lost bronze statue and evidence for the fourth-century Athenian sculptor Praxiteles’s commissions in the eastern Mediterranean. The inscription states that the demos Abydos, a Milesian colony in Mysia, dedicated a portrait of Chairidemos, son of Antiphanos of Pitania, to Apollo, and that Praxiteles Athenaios made it. Attributed to a shadowy third-century member of the Praxiteles family because of tripuncts (vertical rows of dots) separating some words in the inscription, the monument has been ignored. It does not even appear in Jacquemin’s recent publication of inscriptions at Delphi.

A reevaluation of the inscribed text, an examination of the old arguments for the attribution to Praxiteles’s hypothetical grandson, and a new look at the stone itself suggest that it should be assigned instead to the famous fourth-century sculptor himself. Furthermore, this base, with another now in the Thebes Museum, provides secure evidence for Praxiteles’s production of bronze statues. Overall, the five fourth-century bases from mainland Greece bearing his name all attest to Praxiteles’s work as a portrait artist. Delphi 3951, the only surviving Praxitelean votive commissioned by a city instead of a private individual, documents the sculptor’s work in bronze at the panhellenic site. Ancient literary sources emphasized Praxiteles’s mythological statues, especially his famous marble Aphrodite, but analysis of the archaeological record—fourth-century statue bases bearing his “signature”—reveals a different facet of his artistic profile. The inscribed base for a bronze statue at Delphi sheds new light on Praxiteles.