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Abstract. – Following Viviers’ suggestion that the signature of Boupalos appears on the North Frieze of the Siphnian Treasury at Delphi, the author re-examines the career of this famous Ionian sculptor and his family. There are arguments in favour of the literary tradition which attributes to Boupalos a caricature portrait of the poet Hipponax, following the traditions of iambic poetry for symposia. The dispute between Hipponax and Boupalos could in fact reflect a politico-social and cultural dispute in Archaic Ionia, like that between Hipponax and the painter Mimnes. In this dialectic between poetry and art (sculpture and painting) a new reading of a fragment of Hipponax attacking Boupalos is proposed, where the poet defends the superiority of poetry, which is more supple than inert and silent sculpture.