The Armento Rider is an ancient bronze sculpture of a rider and a horse that was originally found in the town of
Armento in southern Italy. Now part of the
British Museum
The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...
's collection, it is considered one of the oldest works of art from Western Greece or
Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia refers to the Greek-speaking areas of southern Italy, encompassing the modern Regions of Italy, Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, and Sicily. These regions were Greek colonisation, extensively settled by G ...
.
Description
The Armento Rider is a diminutive statue of a Greek warrior wearing a
corinthian helmet who bestrides a horse with a long
mane and elongated body. Solid cast in bronze in two separate pieces and made about 560-550 BC, it is one of the earliest bronzes to be produced in the
ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
world. The rider is shown beardless wearing a short belted
chiton
Chitons () are marine molluscs of varying size in the class Polyplacophora ( ), formerly known as Amphineura. About 940 extant and 430 fossil species are recognized.
They are also sometimes known as sea cradles or coat-of-mail shells or suck ...
and once used to hold a spear and reins for the horse.
Provenance
The bronze sculpture originally belonged to the Hungarian collector Gábor Fejérváry, who purchased it in
Naples
Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of N ...
in 1833. After passing through several collections, it was eventually acquired by the British Museum in 1904.
British Museum collection
/ref> When first discovered the statue was wrongly attributed to the settlement of Grumentum, although recent research has shown that it originated from Armento, an ancient Greek site from the region of Basilicata
Basilicata (, ; ), also known by its ancient name Lucania (, , ), is an administrative region in Southern Italy, bordering on Campania to the west, Apulia to the north and east, and Calabria to the south. It has two coastlines: a 30-kilometr ...
, southern Italy.
References
Further reading
*L. Burn, The British Museum book of Greece (London, The British Museum Press, 1991)
*C. Rolley, Greek bronzes (London, Sotheby's Publications / Chesterman Publications, 1986)
*H. B. Walters: British Museum. Select bronzes, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan, in the Departments of Antiquities, London 1915
{{British Museum
Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures in the British Museum
Statues in Italy
Bronze sculptures in London
Archaeological discoveries in Italy