Apollo Belvedere. The Apollo Belvedere is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity.
The Apollo is now thought to be an original Roman re-creation of Hadrianic date. The distinctively Roman foot-wear is one reason scholars believe it is not a copy of an original Greek statue.
It was rediscovered in central Italy in the late 15th century during the Italian Renaissance and was placed on semi-public display in the Vatican Palace in 1511, where it remains. It is now in the Cortile del Belvedere of the Pio-Clementine Museum of the Vatican Museums complex.
From the mid-18th century it was considered the greatest ancient sculpture by ardent neoclassicists, and for centuries it epitomized the ideals of aesthetic perfection for Europeans and westernized parts of the world. The Greek god Apollo is depicted as a standing archer having just shot an arrow.
Although there is no agreement as to the precise narrative detail being depicted, the conventional view has been that he has just slain the serpent Python, the chthonic 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 is 2.24 m high. Its complex contrapposto has been much admired, appearing to position the figure both frontally and in profile. The arrow has just left Apollo's b
The Apollo is now thought to be an original Roman re-creation of Hadrianic date. The distinctively Roman foot-wear is one reason scholars believe it is not a copy of an original Greek statue.
It was rediscovered in central Italy in the late 15th century during the Italian Renaissance and was placed on semi-public display in the Vatican Palace in 1511, where it remains. It is now in the Cortile del Belvedere of the Pio-Clementine Museum of the Vatican Museums complex.
From the mid-18th century it was considered the greatest ancient sculpture by ardent neoclassicists, and for centuries it epitomized the ideals of aesthetic perfection for Europeans and westernized parts of the world. The Greek god Apollo is depicted as a standing archer having just shot an arrow.
Although there is no agreement as to the precise narrative detail being depicted, the conventional view has been that he has just slain the serpent Python, the chthonic 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 is 2.24 m high. Its complex contrapposto has been much admired, appearing to position the figure both frontally and in profile. The arrow has just left Apollo's b
Wikipedia ...