or Polycleitus or Polykleitos
flourished 5th century BC, Greece
Greek sculptor.
His Spear Bearer (с 440 BC) was known as "the Canon" because it illustrated his book of that name, which set forth his theory of the ideal mathematical proportions of the human body and proposed that the sculptor strive for a dramatic counterbalance between the relaxed and tense body parts and the directions in which they move. His balanced and rhythmical bronze statues of young athletes, such as Man Tying on a Fillet (с 420 BC), demonstrated his principles and freed Greek sculpture from its tradition of rigid frontal poses. With Phidias , Polyclitus was the most important Greek sculptor of his age.