Type: Limited edition prints
Size: 48cm x 33cm
Tirage: 50 copies
A pencil drawing of the head of Menelaus, detail from the statue of the so-called "Pasquino Group" of Menelaus bearing the corpse of Patroclus.
Marble, Roman copy of the Flavian Era after a Hellenistic original of the 3rd century BC, with modern restorations.
Found in Rome; in the Medici collections in Florence, 1570; installed in the Loggia dei Lanzi since 1741.
In Greek mythology, Menelaus,(Greek: Μενέλαος, Menelaos, from μένος "vigor, rage, power" and λαός "people," "wrath of the people") was a king of Mycenaean (pre-Dorian) Sparta, the husband of Helen of Troy, and the son of Atreus and Aerope.
According to the Iliad, Menelaus was a central figure in the Trojan War, leading the Spartan contingent of the Greek army, under his elder brother Agamemnon, king of Mycenae.
Prominent in both the Iliad and Odyssey, Menelaus was also popular in Greek vase painting and Greek tragedy, the latter more as a hero of the Trojan War than as a member of the doomed House of Atreus.
