Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo

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The over-lifesize^[1] Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo is a Greek bronze statue.

1 Style and details
2 Rediscovery and display
3 Notes
4 See also
5 References

[edit] Style and details

Though the satyr is missing both arms, one leg and its separately-cast tail (fixed in a surviving hole at the base of the spine), its head and torso are remarkably well-preserved despite millennia spent at the bottom of the sea. The satyr is depicted in mid-leap, head thrown back ecstatically and back arched, his hair swinging with the movement of his head. The facture is highly refined, the whites of his eyes are inlays of white marble.

Though some have dated it to the 4th century BC and said it was an original work by Praxiteles or a copy thereof, it is more securely dated either to the Hellenistic period of the third and second centuries BCE, or possibly to the "Atticising" phase of Roman taste, in the early second century CE. A high percentage of lead in the bronze alloy suggests to its being made in Rome itself.

[edit] Rediscovery and display

The torso was recovered from the sandy sea floor at a depth of 500 m (1600 ft.) off the southwestern coast of Sicily, on the night of March 4, 2003, in the nets of the same fishing boat (operating from Mazara del Vallo, hence the sculpture's name) that had in the previous year recovered the sculpture's left leg. Other well-known underwater finds of Greek bronzes have been retrieved from the Aegean and Mediterranean seas, generally from shipwreck sites: the Antikythera mechanism, the Antikythera Ephebe and the portrait head of a Stoic discovered by sponge-divers at Antikythera in 1900, the Mahdia shipwreck off the coast of Tunisia, 1907; the Marathon Boy off the coast of Marathon, 1925; the standing Poseidon of Cape Artemision found off Cape Artemision in northern Euboea, 1926; the horse and Rider found off Cape Artemision, 1928 and 1937; the Getty Victorious Youth found off Fano on the Adriatic coast of Italy; the Riace Warriors, found in 1972; and the Apoxyomenos recovered from the sea off the Croatian island of Lošinj in 1999.

Restoration at the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro, Rome, included a steel armature so that the statue can be displayed upright. When first displayed to the public after conservation (in the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, from 31 March to 2 June, 2003), it was hailed as the finest new discovery in Italian waters since the Riace Warriors found in 1972. On 12 July 12 2003 it returned to Mazara del Vallo, where it is currently displayed in the Museo del Satiro in the church of Sant'Egidio. There, it is provided with an anti-seismic base, to secure it against tremors in this earthquake zone.