Unknown artist
Poseidon/Zeus
Poseidon/Zeus (acquired 1967) is a copy of a famous Greek sculpture from the Classical period, 480-450 BC. The uncertainty surrounding the identity of the sculpture is due to the fact that the weapon which the figure is about to throw has not been found. A trident, the attribute of the Sea God, had revealed the sculpture to be a depiction of Poseidon. A thunderbolt had shown that the figure was Zeus. During the era of Classical art, from the beginning of the 5th century BC to the end of the 4th century AD, the art of Antiquity achieved a naturalistic depiction of the human figure which came to influence artists well into the 20th century. The physical perfection of the – frequently male – body was often strongly idealised and an expression of Antiquity’s admiration of the athletic body. Nils Möllerberg’s sculpture Boxaren from 1926 is an example of how this view has lived on to our time.