The Chiaramonti Niobid

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This sculpture portrays one of Niobe's daughters as she desperately tries to evade the deadly arrows of Apollo and Artemis. According to legend, Niobe, Queen of Thebes, boasted about having 14 children, seven sons and seven daughters, making her superior to Leto, who only managed to give birth to Zeus two offspring, Apollo and Artemis. The two gods take revenge on Niobe for disrespecting their mother by mercilessly killing all her children with arrows, with Apollo targeting the males and Artemis taking out the females. This statue is likely a copy from the Hadrian era, possibly part of a larger group sculpture featuring all the Niobids. Various versions of this group exist, all copied from an original dating back to the Hellenistic period, with the most complete version displayed in Florence's Uffizi Galleries. This work was discovered in the mid-1500s at Hadrian's Villa near Tivoli during excavations led by Cardinal Ippolito d'Este. This cast from The Statens Museum for Kunst comes from a copy of the Vatican's version and is combined with a head from another copy of the Florence type (KAS 568b, also available on Scan the World).