Apollo

I like the emotion of this one. Look and read  

 

Dear Gale,

Unfortunately, we do not know the name of the sculptor who "took" this portrait about 2800 years ago. IMHO the art of portraiture have not progressed much from that time:wink: I was amazed to see how little was actually used to express the character of the person, which seems to be quite complex and far from primitives many expect from the times of the "childhood" of the Mankind. The model was obviously used for several other portraits, including bronze and fresco (I asked the permission to post those and waiting for the answer :biggrin . The facial features and character stays very well across the media, but the mood changes.

Technically, 1/30, f/2, ISO500, hand-held meter (incident reading) 85/1.8, D2X, mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, UniWB, hand-hold, manual focus, Katz split screen, burst of 3 frames at 5fps, 2 first frames deleted right away without looking. Photoshopped to delete an ugly piece of rusty metal supporting the "model".

Mēden agan - Nothing in excess (engraved on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, Mount Parnassus - where the photo was taken in Museum)

 

> Great sculpture

Yes, and one of so many. Going into those Ancient Greek things it is easy to see they were very concerned about the impression they will make and respect future generations will feel to them. They wanted us to remember and know them.

The legend has it that the last order of King Leonidas before the third day of battle begun was "Go and let them know". So Aristodemus did. Allegedly Aristodemus was the only one who could speak more then just "Come and get them".

Simonides, who wrote the epitaphs to Marathon and Thermopylae heroes, was also the inventor of mnemonics.