The Dancing Faun of Pompeii

The Dancing Faun was discovered on October 26, 1830 in the ruins of the most opulent Roman home discovered at Pompeii: the House of the Faun, as it later became known, which was also home to the Alexander Mosaic. The Faun is thought to be either a 2nd-century Greek original, or a very high-quality Roman copy.

Fauns are spirits of untamed woodland, which literate and Hellenized Romans often connected to Pan and Greek satyrs, or wild followers of the Greek god of wine and agriculture, Dionysus. It is purely decorative sculpture of a high order: "the pose is light and graceful," Sir Kenneth Clark observed, the modeling well understood, the general sense of movement admirably sustained," though he missed in its suavity the stimulus of sharper contrasts to be found in Renaissance nudes.

Source:

The Dancing Faun of Pompeii (CosmoWenman) / CC BY 3.0