Torso of a woman, Iris

Copy in plaster transferred from the Roya Academy of Art in 1952, but cast before 1887 on the Greek original made by the sculpturer Phidias (ca. 480-430 BCE). Phidias was the main artist behind the creation of the High Classical Style, and of one of the seven wonders of Antiquity: the statue of Zeus in Olympia, the Parthenon friezes and pediment sculptures. The original is in the British Museum as part of the so-called “Elgin Marbles” transferred from Greece in the beginning of the Eighteenth century by Lord Elgin, when Greece was under Ottoman rule. The question of handing back the originals to Greece again is part of an ongoing debate. It also forms part of the debate that the Elgin Marbles have been cleaned of remains of original color. Beauty had to be white, and this ideal also formed a background for the interest of the Eighteenth-century in cast collections.

A plaster cast in the Royal Cast Collection of SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark, scanned in 3D. SMK publishes the scan with the Public Domain Mark: no known copyright. SMK does not endorse ModelsXi.

Danish title: Torso af kvinde, Iris.