Doryphoros: Sculpting The Human Form

Polykleitos’s ideas about sculpting the human form was that it all boiled down to making a statue constructed according to an all-encompassing mathematical formula. Thus, his sculpture Doryphoros demonstrates the idealized canon of physical proportions. Doryphoros is meant to showcase the idealized male athlete or warrior, which embodies virture, civic ideals, and has an appearance mirrored that of the Gods. It also showcases the naturalism and idealism of the human body typical of Greek sculpture of the Classical Age. Polykleitos’s ideas were influential in ancient Greece because, according to Pliny the Elder, Polykleitos “alone of men is deemed to have rendered [the theoretical basis of] art itself in a work of art.” An anecdote from the