The ''Arrotino'' (Italian - the "Blade-Sharpener"), or formerly the ''Scythian'', thought to be a figure from a group representing the '' Flaying of Marsyas'' is a Hellenistic-Roman sculpture ( Pergamene school) of a man crouching to sharpen a knife on a whetstone.

Discovery and ownership

The sculpture was likely excavated in the early sixteenth century, since it is recognizable in an inventory made after the death of Agostino Chigi in 1520 of his villa in

Trastevere Trastevere () is the 13th of Rome, Italy. It is identified by the initials R. XIII and it is located within Municipio I. Its name comes from Latin (). Its coat of arms depicts a golden head of a lion on a red background, the meaning of which i ...

, which would become the

Villa Farnesina The Villa Farnesina is a Renaissance suburban villa in the Via della Lungara, in the district of Trastevere in Rome, central Italy. Built between 1506 and 1510 for Agostino Chigi, the Pope's wealthy Sienese banker, it was a novel type of suburb ...

. Later the sculpture formed part of the garden of sculptures and antiquities that Paolantonio Soderini inherited from his brother, Monsignor Francesco Soderini, who had arranged them in the

Mausoleum of Augustus The Mausoleum of Augustus (; ) is a large tomb built by the Roman Emperor Augustus in 28 BC on the Campus Martius in Rome, Italy. The mausoleum is located on the Piazza Augusto Imperatore, near the corner with Via di Ripetta as it runs along th ...

; Paolantonio noted in a letter of 1561 that ''il mio villano''— "my peasant"— had gone away, and it is known that a member of the Mignanelli family sold the ''Arrotino'' to Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici. It was removed to the

Villa Medici The Villa Medici () is a sixteenth-century Italian Mannerist villa and an architectural complex with 7-hectare Italian garden, contiguous with the more extensive Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in the historic ...

, where it was displayed until it was removed in the eighteenth century to the

Medici The House of Medici ( , ; ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first consolidated power in the Republic of Florence under Cosimo de' Medici and his grandson Lorenzo "the Magnificent" during the first half of the 15th ...

collections in

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

Interpretation

In the Medici collections the ''villano'' was reinterpreted as a

Scythian The Scythians ( or ) or Scyths (, but note Scytho- () in composition) and sometimes also referred to as the Pontic Scythians, were an ancient Eastern Iranian equestrian nomadic people who had migrated during the 9th to 8th centuries BC fr ...

, or divorced of its ''

genre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...

'' associations entirely by becoming a royal barber or butler overhearing treasonous plotting against the state, raising it to the level of moralised history, which ranked higher in the contemporary

hierarchy of genres A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value. In literature, the Epic poetry, epic was considered the highest form, for the reason expressed by ...

. Only since the seventeenth century has it been recognized as having formed one part of a

Hellenistic In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

group of "

Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...

flaying

Marsyas In Greek mythology, the satyr Marsyas (; ) is a central figure in two stories involving music: in one, he picked up the double oboe (''aulos'') that had been abandoned by Athena and played it; in the other, he challenged Apollo to a contest of ...

" (akin to the better-known multiple figures of ''

Laocoön and his Sons The statue of ''Laocoön and His Sons'', also called the Laocoön Group (), has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and put on public display in the Vatican Museums, where it remains today. The st ...

'', the Odyssean groups at Sperlonga, or the Pergamene group of which the ''

Dying Gaul Dying is the final stage of life which will eventually lead to death. Diagnosing dying is a complex process of clinical decision-making, and most practice checklists facilitating this diagnosis are based on cancer diagnoses. Signs of dying ...

'' was once a part). The identification with a Marsyas group was introduced in 1669, in a publication by Leonardo Agostini, who recognized the theme in antique engraved hardstones. The ''Arrotino'' was also for a long time thought to be an original Greek sculpture, and one of the finest such sculptures to have survived. As such, plaster copies were made for show and for art instruction (one made for the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its ...

is now on view at the Courtauld). The original was often displayed beside one of the variants of the other great ancient sculpture of a crouching figure, the '' Crouching Venus'' also in the Uffizi collection.The two sculptures were paired in this fashion in the Parterre du Nord at Versailles, clearly visible in Étienne Allegrain's panoramic ''Promenade of Louis XIV in the Parterre du Nord'' 1688. However, the ''Arrotino'' is now recognised simply as a first-century BC copy from a

original. It is on display in the

Tribuna of the Uffizi The Tribuna of the Uffizi is an octagonal exhibition hall in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Designed by Bernardo Buontalenti for Francesco I de' Medici in 1584, the most important antiquities and High Renaissance and Bolognese paintings ...

, alongside Old Master paintings, as it has been since the 18th century.

Notes

External links

{{coord missing, Italy Classical sculptures in the Uffizi 1st-century BC Roman sculptures Pergamene sculpture Roman copies of Greek sculptures Nude sculptures of men