Ein Neuzugang zur Gruppe der Herr-und-Hund-Stelen und die alte Frage nach attischen Vorbildern

Abstract

Two previously unpublished fragments of a Late Archaic–Early Classical Man-and- Dog stele from the Northern Sporades island of Skiathos serve as a starting point for a reconsideration of this type of monument. The provenance of the fragments as well as their placement within the group underline the thesis that such funerary monuments were primarily crafted by ›wandering sculptors‹. The widely held idea of Attic prototypes, on the other hand, proves to be a lesson in ›Athenocentrism‹; for a close examination of the two sculptural fragments from the Athenian Agora, which have repeatedly been cited as evidence, reveals both the absence of formal-typological elements of an Archaic Attic funerary relief and motivic-iconographic obstacles to a reconstruction into (Archaic) Man-and-Dog stelai. The general expectation of Attic prototypes for non-Attic sculptures does not only obscure the view of the (other) possible contexts of use of the Athenian fragments, but also of contrary tendencies within Late Archaic funerary monument design, i. e. external influences on the Attic funerary reliefs of the late 6th century B.C. Finally, the widespread distribution of the Man-and-Dog stelai suggests a particular popularity of the message that these images convey – by combining the public, status-emphasizing as well as the privateemotional function of a funerary monument.