Statue of Pericles, Bürgerwiese, Dresden

What it is

This is a photograph by Paulae, taken on 9 September 2009, of a weathered grey stone statue on the Bürgerwiese in Dresden. It shows a bearded, muscular standing man, nude except for drapery at the hips and over one arm, raising one hand, on a tall pedestal among trees. The Commons record says the statue was made by Thaddäus Ignatius Wiskotschill and that it first stood in the garden of the Marcolini palace.

Why it matters

The statue is a later monument, made long after Pericles' death in 429 BCE. Its nude, muscular body follows classical sculpture, which European artists and patrons admired and imitated for centuries. Such statues show how later people chose to honour Athenian statesmen, often by imagining them in heroic, idealised form rather than as they really looked.

Look closer

• What pose and gesture does the statue use, and what might it be meant to express?
• Why does a statue of a historical Athenian appear nude in a German city park?
• What does the statue tell us about nineteenth-century ideas of Pericles, and what does it not tell us about him?