THIS COLOSSAL R I G H T foot originally belonged to a statue several times larger than life-size. In antiquity this scale was only used for images of gods and emperors. Although the statue from which the foot came was Roman, the sandal is an elaborate Greek type first seen in the fourth century вс. It is therefore likely that the foot belonged to the statue of a senior Olympian god, probably represented seated, as a standing figure would have been more than five metres tall.

Limbs of colossal statues, particularly feet, were acquired as curiosities by eighteenth-century collectors. This foot was originally owned by Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803), British Ambassador to Naples, who presented his collection of Greek and Roman artefacts to the Museum in 1784. A list of donations to the Museum dated 31 January 1784 refers to it as ‘A Colossal Foot of an Apollo in Marble’.



From Naples, Italy, lst-2nd century AD
L. 88.9cm