Statuette of a Youth

c. 520–500 BC

Statuette of a Youth, c. 520–500 BC. Italy, Etruscan, Archaic Period. Bronze; overall: 10.5 cm (4 1/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund 1929.441 Cast in one piece with its hollow base (perhaps designed to crown a candelabrum), this small bronze portrays a young man wearing a semicircular cloak adorned with punched circles along its edges. This likely represents an embroidered tebenna, an Etruscan forerunner to the Roman toga praetexta. He appears to stride forward, his right leg trailing behind and right hand extended, perhaps once holding an object. Unusually, this figure places his hand on hip with thumb in front, fingers in back.