The original Artemision God is a classical Greek sculpture recovered from the sea in 1928 and is one of the highlights of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.
The replica was gifted to the University of Melbourne in 1956 by the Greek Orthodox Community of Melbourne and Victoria to commemorate the 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympic games, which were held in the southern hemisphere for the first time that year.
According to researcher Juliana Charpantidou, "it is one of only two known official replicas, the other was gifted to the UN headquarters in New York in 1953."
The story of how the replica came to be commissioned, produced and delivered to Melbourne is a fascinating one, and recent research has shown it is a more complicated and significant story than previously known.
The University of Melbourne holds a significant collection of outdoor sculptural works, among them a full-size replica of the famous Artemision God bronze. Source: SBS Greek
It is a story that involves many important figures in the art, sporting and diplomatic communities of 1950s Australia such as Sir Joseph Burke, Sir Frank Beaurepaire, and the first Greek Ambassador to Australia, His Excellency Dimitri Lambros.
Today this story and the significance of the gift given by the Greek Orthodox community to the University as a symbol of friendship is not widely known either among the Greek Orthodox Community organization, or the University community.
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