L'apporto cicladico nella più antica plastica monumentale in Attica

The monumental Athenian sculpture, which in the solonian age of the polis develops in its originality and excellence, becoming a fundamental reference for the other schools, shows a debut strictly linked to the Cycladic world, a circumstance which has not always been fairly considered by scholars. The stylistic and chronological characteristics observable in Richter’s “Sounion Group” sculptures found in Attica, reveal an original Cycladic contribution in the field of artisanal and technological mastery of the new art that was exported, at the same time as the marble, by the Naxian sculptors, as B.S. Ridgway had noticed in the 70ies. The archaeological evidence from Sounion and the neighbouring region, thoroughly re-examined by the A., contributes to the definition of such a Cycladic pole, closely connected with the commercial route plying along the east coast of Attica. A sole example of an inscription on the body of the kouros statue, on fragment IG 3 1024A from the sanctuary of Athena, c. 550 BC, contributes in defining the emporic character of the sanctuaries on the extreme tip of Attica, illustrated by the other categories of earlier finds. At last, by means of some indicative examples, like the kore in the Museum of Peiraeus 2530, the A. examines the continuity and complexity of the Cycladic contribution, naxian and parian, in the series of the Attic Archaic sculptures.