Contrapposto is a way of posing a standing figure with its weight on one leg. That leg stays straight, while the other relaxes and bends at the knee.
Seen from the front, the hip above the straight leg rises and the shoulders tilt the opposite way, so the whole body takes a slight curve from the feet to the head. It is the way most people stand while they wait in line.
The name is Italian and means set against, or counterpoised. Renaissance artists chose it because the two halves of the body answer each other, one hip high and the other low. The pose itself is much older than its name. Greek sculptors found it in the fifth century BC, after more than a century of carving the opposite.
Cool Stories About Art is a newsletter to learn art the fun way.
Join 200,000+ readers and get:
10 new art stories / month
The entire archive of content (140+ articles)
Comment, ask questions, and chat with other readers
Before that discovery, their young men stood on both feet at once, stiff and upright, the left leg forward and the arms down along the sides, a stance borrowed from Egyptian art. These statues are called kouroi, and the one pictured above is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
A living body rarely holds that position for long, because one leg soon takes over the load. It took Greek sculptors generations to carve what the eye sees every day.
A boy from the Acropolis
The earliest surviving statue to stand otherwise is a marble youth from the Acropolis, the rocky hill at the heart of Athens. He was carved shortly after 480 BC and is now in the Acropolis Museum. At first glance he looks like one more kouros, until the eye reaches his knees…
What You'll Discover
Why the Spear Bearer needed a tree trunk.
How a raised hip changes the whole body.
Alberti's test for a convincing standing figure.
The saint who brought the pose back.
Where contrapposto ends and the serpent begins.