After Lysippus, 19th century

French school of the 19th century. After LISIPO (Sicyon, Peloponnese, ca. 390 BC - ca. 318 BC).
Black blued bronze.
A copy of the same characteristics but larger and made of lead by Francesco Righetti (1749-1819) is preserved in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; another copy made of marble is preserved in the Capitoline Museums. Both sculptures are based on the marble statue made by Lysippus (ca. 370 - 305 BC), one of the great artists of post-classical Greek sculpture.
Measurements: 23 cm.

The original sculpture of Cupid drawing his bow was made by Lysippus during the second half of the 4th century BC for the renowned sanctuary of the god in Thespias, where Eros was by far the greatest divinity of the city. This work was made in bronze and was later copied in marble in Roman times, which is why it has survived to the present day. Formally, the statue of Lysippus represented an Eros at the limit of the childish age, in a moment of transit or beginning of adolescence, as a neoteric country. The treatment of the hair and the softness of the sculpture responds to the candid mode of representation of the god throughout history.

Francesco Righetti specialized in the realization of bronze or lead copies of famous sculptures of classical antiquity.