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1104 Belvedere Apollo
The Apollo Belvedere or Apollo of the Belvedere—also called the Pythian Apollo— is a celebrated marble sculpture from classical antiquity. It was rediscovered in central Italy 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.
The Greek god Apollo is depicted having just shot a death-dealing arrow. The episode represented may be the slaying of Python, the primordial serpent guarding Delphi—making the sculpture a Pythian Apollo. Alternatively, it may be the slaying of the giant Tityos, who threatened his mother Leto, or the episode of the Niobids.
The large white marble sculpture—2.24 m (7.3 feet) high—depicts the Greek god Apollo as a standing archer. The complex contrapposto of the work has been much admired; it appears to position the figure both frontally and in profile. Although there is no agreement as to the precise narrative detail being depicted, the conventional view has been that the god has just overtaken the serpent Python, the chthonic serpent of Delphi. 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. He is entirely nude except for his sandals and that 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 Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli (1506–63), a sculptor and pupil of Michelangelo.
The Apollo became one of the world's most celebrated art works when in 1755 it was championed by the German art historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) as the best example of the perfection of the Greek aesthetic ideal. Its noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, as he described it, became one of the leading lights of neo-classicism and an icon of the Enlightenment. Goethe, Schiller, and Byron all endorsed it. The Apollo was one of the artworks brought back to Paris by Napoleon after his 1796 Italian Campaign. From 1798 it formed part of the collection of the Louvre during the First Empire. (Wikipedia)
1104 Belvedere Apollo
The Apollo Belvedere or Apollo of the Belvedere—also called the Pythian Apollo— is a celebrated marble sculpture from classical antiquity. It was rediscovered in central Italy 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.
The Greek god Apollo is depicted having just shot a death-dealing arrow. The episode represented may be the slaying of Python, the primordial serpent guarding Delphi—making the sculpture a Pythian Apollo. Alternatively, it may be the slaying of the giant Tityos, who threatened his mother Leto, or the episode of the Niobids.
The large white marble sculpture—2.24 m (7.3 feet) high—depicts the Greek god Apollo as a standing archer. The complex contrapposto of the work has been much admired; it appears to position the figure both frontally and in profile. Although there is no agreement as to the precise narrative detail being depicted, the conventional view has been that the god has just overtaken the serpent Python, the chthonic serpent of Delphi. 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. He is entirely nude except for his sandals and that 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 Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli (1506–63), a sculptor and pupil of Michelangelo.
The Apollo became one of the world's most celebrated art works when in 1755 it was championed by the German art historian and archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768) as the best example of the perfection of the Greek aesthetic ideal. Its noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, as he described it, became one of the leading lights of neo-classicism and an icon of the Enlightenment. Goethe, Schiller, and Byron all endorsed it. The Apollo was one of the artworks brought back to Paris by Napoleon after his 1796 Italian Campaign. From 1798 it formed part of the collection of the Louvre during the First Empire. (Wikipedia)