Georgios Vroutos

Born in Athens in 1843, he studied sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts from 1859 to 1864 under Georgios Fytalis. At the same time, beginning in 1859, he worked in the marble studio of Ioannis Kossos. In 1866, on the recommendation of Queen Olga, he received a scholarship and continued his studies in Rome, first at the French Academy and later at the Accademia di San Luca. While in Italy, he created one of his best-known works, "The Spirit of Copernicus", which for many years adorned Nikolaos Thon’s mansion in Ampelokipoi, in Athens. He returned to Athens in 1873 and opened his own marble studio in Plaka.

He produced statues (of Korais, Zappas, Averoff, Solomos, and Serpieris), funerary monuments, busts, reliefs, and figures of gods and heroes of ancient Greece. In 1883 he was appointed professor of sculpture at the Athens School of Fine Arts, where he taught until his death. In 1888 he was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1900 he received a prize at the Exposition Universelle in Paris for his "Eros Breaking His Bow" (c. 1896). Vroutos was one of the most prominent and productive sculptors of modern Greece. Strongly influenced by Antonio Canova, he embraced the principles of Neoclassicism. He died in Athens in 1909.