Antoine-Louis Barye
(Paris 1795-1875)

Thesee Combattant le Minotaure

Second version ca. 1857
Bronze, brown-green over red patina
Cast by Atelier Barye between 1857 and 1875
Height 45,1cm

The slaying of the minotaur, the half-man half-bull by Theseus, the Athenian hero, is a subject taken from Plutarch’s Lives (Theseus 19). King Minos of Crete demanded of Athens an annual tribute of seven youths and seven maidens who were to be sacrificed to the minotaur. Posing as one of the youths, Theseus obtained access to the monster in his labyrinth and slew it with a sword.
The hero’s striding pose recalls the stances of the figures in Jacques-Louis David‘s Oath of the Horatii (1785; Paris, Musée du Louvre). In seemingly arrested action. Theseus is poised to strike the monster, which he holds by the ear. The minotaur has wrapped its leg around that of the hero and claws his back and shoulder. On the ground lies the scabbard for the sword that Ariadne, the love-stricken daughter of King Minos, had provided to Theseus. The arrangement of Theseus’s hair is borrowed directly from the fifth-century BC Greek bronze statue of the Apollo di Piombino (Paris, Musée du Louvre), which had been discovered in 1832.

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