Dying Niobid

cults3d

The statue represents a young woman who, wounded to death by an arrow, falls to her knees striving to extract it. In her we can recognize one of the daughters of Niobe, the mythical queen who, mother to seven sons and seven daughters, dared boast of being more prolific than Leto and for this reason was punished by Apollo and Artemis with the murder of her children. According to a recent and evocative hypothesis (by E. La Rocca), the statue, a Greek original dateable between 440 and 430 BCE, was part of the pedimental group of the Temple of Apollo Daphnephoros at Eretria.