Silanion was the best-known of the Greek portrait-sculptor

Ancient Greek sculpture

Ancient Greek sculpture is the sculpture of Ancient Greece. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages. They were used to depict the battles, mythology, and rulers of the land known as Ancient Greece.-Geometric:...

s working during the fourth century BC. His floruit is given by Pliny (Naturalis Historia, 34.51) as the 113th Olympiad, that is, around 328-325 BC; the tradition recorded by Pliny was that Silanion had no famous teacher. Of two of his known works, however, his idealized portrait head of Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

 was commissioned by Mithridates of Persia

Mithridates of Persia

Mithridates was a Persian of high rank, and son-in-law of the king Darius III, who was slain by Alexander the Great with his own hand, at the Battle of the Granicus in 334 BC, when he plunged his lance through Mithridates' face.-References:*Smith, William ; Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography...

 for the Academy of Athens

Academy of Athens

Academy of Athens may refer to:* Platonic Academy* Academy of Athens...

, c. 370 BC, Of it and of an idealized portrait head of Sappho

Sappho

Sappho was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life...

, later copies survive, if the number of surviving copies can be correlated to the fame of the commissions. Both are of simple ideal type, the Sappho not strictly a portrait, since Sappho (sixth century BC) lived before the age of portraiture. The best copy of the Plato is in the Glyptothek

Glyptothek

The Glyptothek is a museum in Munich, Germany, which was commissioned by the Bavarian King Ludwig I to house his collection of Greek and Roman sculptures . It was designed by Leo von Klenze in the Neoclassical style, and built from 1816 to 1830...

 of Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 (illustration).

Silanion also produced a "portrait" of the poet Corinna

Corinna

Corinna or Korinna was an Ancient Greek poet, traditionally attributed to the 6th century BC. According to ancient sources such as Plutarch and Pausanias, she came from Tanagra in Boeotia, where she was a teacher and rival to the better-known Theban poet Pindar...

. Other "portrait" heads by Silanion evoked mythic and legendary heroes. An Achilles

Achilles

In Greek mythology, Achilles was a Greek hero of the Trojan War, the central character and the greatest warrior of Homer's Iliad.Plato named Achilles the handsomest of the heroes assembled against Troy....

mentioned by Pliny was later adapted to represent Ares

Ares

Ares is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. In Greek literature, he often represents the physical or violent aspect of war, in contrast to the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and...

, and an equally idealized Theseus

Theseus

For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...

is mentioned by Plutarch

Plutarch

Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...

.

Silanion wrote a treatise on proportions that is mentioned by Vitruvius

Vitruvius

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....

(vii, introduction).