This larger-than-life-size bronze statue depicts a heroic figure with perfect, godlike proportions. His lifted arm once held a lance in a gesture of victory. The proud stance of this figure is characteristic of depictions of Alexander the Great (Alexander III of Macedon, 336 –323 BC). The pose is based on a famous prototype, Greek sculptor Lysippos’s Portrait of Alexander with a Lance (c. 320 BC), which was widely emulated in Hellenistic and, later, Roman sculpture.

Monumental sculptures such as this were created for display in public spaces throughout the entire Roman Empire, and for presentation in temples devoted to the Imperial Cult, where Roman emperors and their wives, past and present, were worshipped. The first Roman emperor, Augustus (27 BC–AD 14), followed the example of Alexander the Great and declared himself divine. Subsequent Roman emperors did the same, and their statues and monuments portrayed their bodies as idealized gods with little regard for their actual appearance. The heads, however, would have been likenesses of the emperors, easily identified from coins used during their reigns.

 It is not known where this particular bronze was cast, nor whom it was meant to portray, nor where it was intended to be displayed.

This statue was purchased by the de Menils in 1962 as a 4^th-century BC Greek bronze, said to have been found near Tarsus, Turkey [1] [2], and given to the Museum that year. Later scholarship has suggested that it is an Imperial Roman, Severan period, sculpture [3] [4] [5]. It was associated throughout the 1970s and 1980s, by some scholars, with other bronzes that had been found near Bubon, Turkey [6] [7]. However, that opinion was ultimately disproved in 1993 [8]. The Houston sculpture was acquired in 1962; the excavations at Bubon commenced two years after, in 1964. [8]

[1] 1962 MFAH acquisition record.

[2] M-L. D’Otrange Mastai, “The Connoisseur in America, ‘Gifts of Sculpture for Houston Museum,’” The Connoisseur 154, no. 621, (November 1963): 202–3.

[3] Cornelius C. Vermeule, Roman Imperial Art in Greece and Asia Minor (Cambridge: 1968), fig. 164.

[4] Herbert Hoffman, Ten Centuries that Shaped the West: Greek and Roman Art in Texas Collections (Houston: Institute for the Arts, Rice University, 1971), Fig. 111.

[5] Philip Oliver-Smith, “The Houston Bronze Spearbearer,” ​Antike Plastik ​15, no. 8 (1976): 95–109.

[6] Vermeule, C. C., 1980. “The late Antonine and Severan Bronze Portraits from Southwest Asia Minor,” in Eikones. Studien zum griechischen und romischen Bildnis. Hans Jucker zum sechzigsten Geburtstag gewidmet, Basel, pp. 185-190.

[7] Kozloff, Arielle P. “Bubon: A Re-Assessment of the Provenance.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 3 (March 1987): 130–43.

[8] Inan, J. “Neue Forschungen zum Sebasteion von Boubon und seinen Statuen.” In Akten des II. Internationalen Lykien-Symposions Vienna, 6.-12. Mai 1990, ed. J. Borcchardt, J. and G. Dobesch, 213–39. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1993.