With powerful, bunched musculature (like a pillowcase packed full of bars of soap!) this impressive red torso at the Met is among my favorites, in subject matter and material.
He is one of a number of Imperial Roman copies of centaurs from a (presumably) Hellenistic prototype, with the most famous in the Musei Capitolini: a grand 2nd century pair found in Tivoli. The older, bearded one is shown with bound hands, being tortured by a sadistic little Eros perched behind him while his younger counterpart mocks the older, as a more docile Eros perches on his rump.
The Capitoline pair is carved from flinty dark grey marble, quarried near Aphrodisias in Asia Minor, and the sculptors (based on their signatures) seem to have been similarly exported. This rosso antico torso in New York resembles the young centaur’s torso quite closely, down to the hairy whorls and veining.
Centaurs, fauns, silenoi, and other woodland fantasy creatures were rendered in coloured marble far more than other subjects (it seems to me). And I wonder why: was it a decorative consideration for mythological groups? Or perhaps meant to heighten their otherness and fringe role in the of hinterlands of humanity?
