Son of the sculptor Cephisodotos, Praxiteles was to be the most popular artists in the ancient world. Many of his sculpturs were copied: and his work is mainly known through ancient descriptions and Roman marble copies.

Marathon Boy

Above: Praxiteles' or School of Praxiteles' Marathon Boy, found in Marathon Bay (bronze).

In Praxiteles' hands, Apollo, who used to be pictured as a serious and harsh avenger, was portraited as a youngster. His statue Apollo Sauroktonos ("The Lizardkiller," below) has a young man's body, soft and beautiful. His statues were made to be watched from all angles.

Apollo Sauroktonos

David G. Mitten of Harvard University Art Museums describes Praxiteles' Apollo as, "... by far the most important work of Classical sculpture to come to light and be acquired by a North American art museum since World War II."

"This magnificent sculpture has several stylistic and technical features that we associate with monumental Classical Greek bronzes, and ancient testimony attributing to Praxiteles an 'Apollo Sauroktono' in bronze greatly adds to the work's importance," says Michael Bennett, Harvard University Art Museum's curator of Greek and Roman Art. Only two known life-size marble copies of the "Apollo Sauroktonos" exist, one at the Louvre and the other at the Vatican.

One of his original statues, the Hermes statue in Olympia, with the god carrying a young Dionysos as a baby on his arm, has survived. The sculptor began to create figures that interacted with their environment in all three dimensions: these figures could be viewed from any angle with equal effectiveness.

Hermes and Dionysos “Sardanapallos”