Leochares

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(b ?Athens; fl later 4th century BC). Greek sculptor. One of the leading personalities in Attic sculpture of the 4th century BC, he may well have been an Athenian, as his original extant signatures are all from Athens. Leochares is explicitly described as an Athenian only in the inscription on the base of a lost imperial copy of his famous Ganymede (see below) from Rome (Florence, Uffizi; Inscr. Gr./1, xiv, 1253). According to Pliny (Natural History XXXIV.1), Leochares flourished in the 102nd Olympiad (372/1-368/7 BC), a date that seems too early given that he apparently collaborated with Lysippos on the lost bronze group of Alexander's Lion-hunt, a dedication by the general Krateros, who rescued the king during this event, erected at Delphi c. 320 BC (Plutarch: Alexander XL.iv). In fact, Leochares' career seems to have spanned the second half of the 4th century BC. One of his signatures is dated to 338/7 BC, but his career must have had an early phase a little before 355 BC, the year of the exile of the Athenian general Timotheos (411-354 BC), who had previously commissioned to Leochares a bronze portrait of the pro-Macedonian orator Isokrates (436-338 BC), which was erected in Eleusis (Plutarch: Lives of Ten Orators: Isokrates xxvii).

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Diana of Versailles

Apollo Belvedere

Leochares (Greek: Λεοχάρης) was a Greek sculptor from Athens, who lived in the 4th century BC.

Works

Leochares worked at the construction of the Mausoleum of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, one of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World". The Diana of Versailles is a Roman copy of his original (circa 325 BC). He is also thought to be the creator of the celebrated Apollo Belvedere, of which a Roman copy is currently housed in Vatican City.

Of his portrait-statues, the most celebrated were those of Philip, Alexander, Amyntas III, Olympias, and Eurydice II, which were made of ivory and gold, and were placed in the Philippeion a circular building in the Altis at Olympia, erected by Philip II of Macedon in celebration of his victory at Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC)

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