Draped Male Torso from Velanideza

The treatment of the mantle worn by this larger than life size statue is characteristic of the representations of the god Asklepios, but it also appears on funerary and honorary statues. This significant work, produced at the end of the Classical period of Athenian sculpture, came to light in Velanideza, a site near the coast of Athens, where other similar funerary monuments have been found. Thus it is most likely that the torso once belonged to the portrait statue of a dead man which stood over his grave. Originally it may have stood in a niche.