The statue depicts the nude figure of a youthful satyr who stands frontally, holding over his head with his right hand a now-missing pitcher from which he would have seemed to pour wine into the drinking vessel once held in his left hand (also now missing). The satyr stands in a naturalistic contrapposto stance, with his weight shifted onto his left leg, and his right knee slightly bent. He looks downward at his lowered hand. His hair is short and tousled, and a fillet and wreath surround the crown of his head. A support in the shape of a truncated tree is present behind his left leg. It is carved naturalistically with knobs and the remnants of sawn limbs. The head and right hand are restorations added in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. The penis is also a modern restoration. The statue is a Roman copy of Praxiteles' Pouring Satyr.
The figure of a youthful Satyr, recognizable only by his pointed ears, was found in 1657 in the theater of the imperial villa of the Roman emperor Domitian at Castel Gandolfo, together with three identical replicas. The Satyr Pouring Wine was first created by Praxiteles in the early 300s BCE and is known in dozens of Roman versions. For centuries the four satyr statues remained as a group in two major collections. First, the family of Cardinal Flavio Chigi in Rome owned the sculptures; they then sold them to the royal house of Saxony in Dresden.
The group was dispersed in 1838, however, when the British Museum received one of the satyrs in exchange for plaster casts of the Parthenon sculptures. The Soviet government seized a second satyr after World War II. In 1999, the latter was restituted to the heirs of the Saxon Royal House in Dresden, who then sold it to the Getty Villa.
Roman, ca. 81-96 CE, found at the imperial villa of emperor Domitian, at Castel Gandolfo.
Getty Villa Museum (2002.34)
