Apollo Belvedere

 

Apollo Belvedere

Between 350 and 325 BC.

White marble

Vatican City, Vatican Museums

The Apollo Belvedere, also called the Pythian Apollo, is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity. It was rediscovered in the late 15th century, during the Renaissance. From the mid-18th Century, it was considered the greatest ancient sculpture by ardent neoclassicists and for centuries epitomized ideals of aesthetic perfection for Europeans and westernized parts of the world.

Description

The sculpture depicts the Greek god Apollo, who has just overtaken the serpent Python, a monster recently ravaging the coast of Delphos. The arrow has just left his bow and the effort impressed on his musculature still lingers. His hair, lightly curled, flows in ringlets down his neck and rises gracefully to the summit of his head, which is encircled with the strophium, a band symbolic of gods and kings. His quiver is suspended across his left shoulder. His robe (chlamys) is clasped at his right shoulder and is turned up only on his left arm and thrown back.

The lower part of the right arm and the left hand were missing when discovered and were restored by Giovanne Angelo de Mentorsoli, a sculptor and pupil of Michaelangelo.

History

Antiquity

The marble is either a Hellenistic or a Roman copy of a lost bronze original made between 350—325 BC by the Greek sculptor Leochares.

The Renaissance

Before its installation in the Cortile del Belvedere, the Apollo, which seems to have been discovered in 1489,^[1] apparently received very little notice from artists^[2] and though it has always been known to have belonged to Giuliano Della Rovere before he became pope, as Julius II, its placement has been confused until as recently as 1986:^[3] Cardinal Della Rovere, who held the titulus of San Pietro in Vincoli, stayed away from Rome for the decade during Alexander VI's papacy, 1494-1503; in the interim, the Apollo stood in his garden at SS. Apostoli, Deborah Brown has shown, and not at his titular church, as had been assumed.

Once it was installed in the Cortile, however, it immediately became renowned and a demand for copies of it arose. The Mantuan sculptor Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, called "L'Antico", made a careful wax model of it, which he cast in bronze, finely finished and partly gilded, to figure in the Gonzaga collection, and in further copies in a handful of others. Albrecht Dürer reversed the Apollo's pose for his Adam in a 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve, suggesting that he saw it in Rome. When L'Antico and Dürer saw it, the Apollo was probably still in the personal collection of Giuliano della Rovere, who, once he was pope as Julius II, transferred the prize in 1511 to the small sculpture court of the Belvedere, the palazzetto or summerhouse that was linked to the Vatican Palace by Bramante's large Cortile del Belvedere. It became the Apollo of the Cortile del Belvedere and the name has remained with it, though the sculpture has long been indoors, in the Museo Pio-Clementino at the Vatican Museums, Rome.

In the 1530s it was engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi, whose printed image transmitted the famous pose throughout Europe.

The 19th century

The neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova adopted the fluency of the Apollo Belvedere for his marble Perseus (Vatican Museums) in 1801.

Works inspired or influenced by the Apollo Belvedere

• Durer, Albrecht, Adam and Eve (1504 engraving)
• Canova, Antonio, Perseus (1801, Vatican Museums)
• Crawford, Thomas, Orpheus and Cerberus (1838-43; Boston Athenaeum, later Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

Notes

External links

• Image of Apollo Belvedere with a fig leaf
• The sculpture shown with and without a fig leaf
• 16th century engraving by Marcantonio Raimondi

References

• Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique (Yale University Press) Cat. no. 8. Critical history of the Apollo Belvedere.

Landmarks of Rome
	Basilicas and other Christian sites: · Basilica di San Clemente · Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore · Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls · Basilica of St. John Lateran · Ghetto · St. Peter's Basilica · Sistine Chapel · Santa Maria in Trastevere · Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II · Palazzo Barberini ·
	Gardens, Parks, and Natural Attractions: · Tiber Island · Villa Borghese
	Ancient Temples, Monuments, and Sporting Venues: · Ara Pacis · Castel Sant'Angelo · Circus Maximus · Colosseum · Pantheon · Roman Forum · Temple of Portunus · Largo di Torre Argentina · Obelisks · Temple of Jupiter (Capitoline Hill) · Temple of Hercules Victor ·
	Aqueducts, Fountains, and Walls: · Trevi Fountain · Baths of Caracalla · Aurelian Walls · Spanish Steps · Servian Wall · Palazzo Farnese · Piazza Navona ·
	Sculptures: · Apollo Belvedere · La Bocca della Verità · Laocoön and his Sons ·
	Seven Hills: · Aventine Hill · Caelian Hill · Capitoline Hill · Esquiline Hill · Palatine Hill · Quirinal Hill · Viminal Hill ·

Donate to Wikimedia