Kouros of Apollonas

The Kouros of Apollonas, also called the Colossus of Dionysus, is a 10.7 metre tall unfinished statue of light grey Naxian marble with a weight of around 80 tonnes. It is located in an ancient quarry near Apollonas (), a small town in the northern part of Naxos, one of the Cycladic Islands in the Aegean Sea. The statue is a kouros dating from Archaic period of Ancient Greece, around the turn of the seventh and sixth centuries BC.

The statue was formerly considered to be a statue of Apollo since it was located near the town of Apollonas. Bondelmonte called it a "statue Apollonis" in the fifteenth century on account of the proximity of the sanctuary of Apollo. Ludwig Ross referred to it as a Statue of Apollo in 1840. The name stuck for a long time, although Wilhelm von Massow identified the statue as Dionysos in 1932. Today it is classified as a kouros.

The Kouros of Apollonas is also referred to sometimes as the Kouros of Naxos, but this is unclear, since there are two other large kouroi at Melanes ().

The figure is roughly carved, but the body, head with beard and ears and the beginning of the hair are roughly recognisable. The arms have been cut by the stonemasons as rudimentary rectangles and the shaping of the feet had been begun; they are located on a 50 cm high plinth. The unfinished kouros lies in a rough stone slope. The extent to which cracks in the kouros are contemporary with its construction cannot be determined. The cracks are already visible in a sketch of 1835 by Schaubert for a copper etching.

In most cases, kouros statues depict naked young men with their arms at their sides. It is clear however that the Kouros of Apollonas was to be a depiction of an older man with a beard and that its right arm would have been stretched out in front of it.

The archaic kouroi have usually been interpreted as depictions of Apollo. On account of its beard, the Kouros of Apollonas has instead been interpreted as the Greek god Dionysus.

...
Wikipedia