Where Is Apoxyomenos (The Scraper)? Museum Location

Q: What is an apoxyomenos?

The Greek word means 'one who scrapes himself.' Athletes covered their bodies in olive oil before exercise. Afterward, they used a curved bronze tool (strigil) to scrape off oil, sweat, and dirt.

Q: Who was Lysippos?

Lysippos was Alexander the Great's court sculptor. He created over 1,500 bronze works, none of which survive. We know his style only through Roman marble copies like this one.

Q: Why is the Apoxyomenos important?

Lysippos introduced new proportions for the human figure: smaller head, longer limbs, three-dimensional poses. His innovations influenced all later classical sculpture.

Ancient Roman The Apoxyomenos ("The Scraper") shows an athlete scraping oil and dirt from his body with a curved tool called a strigil. This Roman marble copies a famous Greek bronze by Lysippos from around 330 BCE. The relaxed pose and slender proportions revolutionized Greek sculpture.

Unlike earlier athletic statues with frontal poses, the Apoxyomenos extends his arms into the viewer's space. The figure appears to move in three dimensions. Lysippos created a new canon of human proportions: smaller head, longer limbs, more naturalistic stance. Pliny wrote that Lysippos "made the heads smaller and the bodies more slender." The sculpture stands in the Vatican Museums' Pio-Clementino Museum.

The Greek word means 'one who scrapes himself.' Athletes covered their bodies in olive oil before exercise. Afterward, they used a curved bronze tool (strigil) to scrape off oil, sweat, and dirt.

Lysippos was Alexander the Great's court sculptor. He created over 1,500 bronze works, none of which survive. We know his style only through Roman marble copies like this one.

Lysippos introduced new proportions for the human figure: smaller head, longer limbs, three-dimensional poses. His innovations influenced all later classical sculpture.

Apoxyomenos (The Scraper)

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