Clemente Marconi, James R. McCredie Professor in the History of Greek Art and Archaeology; University Professor; Director, IFA and University of Milan Excavations at Selinunte

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Discovered in 1961 in Ugento, a town in the province of Lecce and a former Messapian settlement, the bronze statue of Zeus—depicted striding forward, ready to hurl his thunderbolt while holding an eagle—is not only among the most significant examples of Late Archaic Greek bronze sculpture, but also the representative of a still largely unrecognized category of Greek statues produced for native or other non-Greek centers in Magna Graecia (southern Italy and Sicily). These works raise numerous questions concerning cross-cultural exchange and have been variously interpreted depending on scholars’ perspectives: at one extreme as evidence of a Greek presence in the non-Greek hinterland, at the other as war booty. Although our knowledge of the statue’s ancient context remains limited, what we know of Messapian culture in the sixth century BCE allows us to view the Ugento Zeus as a remarkable example of the process of selective adoption and adaptation of Greek art by Messapian communities, a process that did not lead to a “deculturation” of the natives.