Kritios Boy Vs Kroisos Essay

In ancient Greece during the Archaic period, youth and athleticism were highly valued when creating statues. Both Kroisos, from 530 BCE and the Kritios Boy, from 480 BCE were both nude and had some form of muscular features sculpted onto them. However, the Kroisos has a stiff posture and is realistic while the Kritios Boy is more naturalistic and shows the first form of contrapposto.
Both the Kroisos and Kritios Boy are made of marble and have muscular features carved onto the bodies. They show how important nudity was during this time for artists creating the statues because it emphasised the strength and bodily beauty of the human form especially male youths. However, they both show several differences between each other.
On the Kroisos statue it has an archaic smile to show to show and give it a sense of life and because of this he shows some structure of the cheekbones. This almost resembles the way a real human being would look when they also smiled. Although this statue has a stiff posture even though one foot is moving forward the rest of the body continues to stay tense and rigid. He has his arms almost glued by his sides and you even see the stiffness in …show more content…
Doing this reflex the way human beings move and shift and shows a deeper sense of understanding how the body moves. Unlike the Kroisos, the Kritios Boy does not have the archaic smile and instead is emotionless and his eyes are carved out which could mean that they were filled with something like gems. Along with this we see no structure of the cheekbones the way the Kroisos had shown. However, his muscles are more smoother and not as rigid as the Kroisos as well as his hair. His hair has been sculpted to have a more flowing naturalistic style. The Kritios Boy arms may have also shown a sense of balance as well unlike the Kroisos which had also stayed stiff by his