Apollo Belvedere

Coordinates: 41°54′23″N 12°27′16″E / 41.906389°N 12.454444°E / 41.906389; 12.454444
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Belvedere Apollo
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Apollo Belvedere
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ArtistAfter Leochares
Yearc. AD 120–140
TypeWhite marble
Dimensions224 cm (88 in)
LocationVatican Museums, Vatican City
Coordinates41°54′23″N 12°27′16″E / 41.906389°N 12.454444°E / 41.906389; 12.454444

The Apollo Belvedere (also called the Belvedere Apollo, Apollo of the Belvedere, or Pythian Apollo)[1] is a celebrated marble sculpture from classical antiquity.

The work has been dated to mid-way through the 2nd century A.D. and is considered to be a Roman copy of an original bronze statue created between 330 and 320 B.C. by the Greek sculptor

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.

Description

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 (7.3 feet) high. Its complex

nude except for his sandals and a robe (chlamys
) clasped at his right shoulder, turned up 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 (1507–1563), a sculptor and pupil of Michelangelo.

Modern reception

Head of Apollo, modeled on the Apollo Belvedere (Marble, Roman copy of c. 120–140 AD), once in the collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani and James-Alexandre de Pourtalès (British Museum)

Renaissance

Detail

Before its installation in the Cortile delle Statue of the Belvedere palace in the

Escorial.[6] 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:[7] 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 famous in artistic circles and a demand for copies of it arose. The Mantuan sculptor

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.

In addition to Dürer, several major artists during the late Renaissance sketched the Apollo, including

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

18th century

The Apollo became one of the world's most celebrated art works when in 1755 it was championed by the German

First Empire, but after 1815 was returned to the Vatican where it has remained ever since.[9]

19th century

The neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova adapted the work's fluency to his marble Perseus (Vatican Museums) in 1801.

The

Romantic movement was not so kind to the Apollo's critical reputation. William Hazlitt (1778–1830), one of the great critics of the English language, was not impressed and dismissed it as "positively bad". The eminent art critic John Ruskin
(1819–1900) wrote of his disappointment with it.

Finally, starting something of a trend among some later commentators, the art critic

homoerotic appeal by way of explaining why it had been so long lionized.[8] The opinion was not widely accepted. Nevertheless, the work retained much popular appeal and casts of it were abundant in European and American public places (especially schools) throughout the 19th century.[citation needed
]

20th century

The Apollo Belvedere was featured in the official logo of the Apollo 17 Moon landing mission in 1972

The critical reputation of the Apollo continued to decline in the 20th century, to the point of complete neglect. In 1969, a summary of its reception up to that point was provided by the

coach parties, who have become the only surviving transmitters of traditional culture."[10]

Influence

References

Citations

  1. ^ Réveil, Etienne Achille and Jean Duchesne (1828), Museum of Painting and Sculpture, or Collection of the Principal Pictures, Statues and Bas-Reliefs, in the Public and Private Galleries of Europe, London: Bossanage, Bartes and Lowell, Vol 11, p. 126. ("The Pythian Apollo, called the Belvedere Apollo")
  2. ^ "Belvedere Apollo". Vatican Museums. Archived from the original on 9 July 2023. Retrieved 2023-08-20.
  3. ^ Paolo Prignani (25 June 2015). "L'Apollo del Belvedere, on CambiaVersoAnzio". cambiaversoanzio.wordpress.com (in Italian). Retrieved 2022-02-28.
  4. ^ Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford University Press) 1969:103 first noted the entries in 1489 and a repetition in 1493 in the somewhat chaotic Cesena chronicle of Giuliano Fantaguzzi.
  5. ^ H. H. Brummer, The Statue Court in the Vatican Belvedere (Stockholm) 1970:44–71, which gives the most concise review of the statue's discovery and its history.
  6. ^ Weiss 1969:103.
  7. ^ Deborah Brown, "The Apollo Belvedere and the Garden of Giuliano della Rovere at SS. Apostoli" Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49 (1986), pp. 235–238.
  8. ^ a b Barkan, Op. cit., pg 56.
  9. ^ Gregory Curtis, Disarmed, (New York: Knopf, 2003) pp. 57–61.
  10. Harper & Row
    , Publishers, pg 2.
  11. ^ Roland Wells Robbins, The Story of the Minute Man, (Stoneham, MA: George R. Barnstead & Son, 1945) pp. 13–24.
  12. ^ Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities vol. 1, (New York: Vintage Books, 1995): 33.
  13. ^ Marianne Moore, "In the Days of Prismatic Color," The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (New York: Penguin, 1994): 42.

Other sources

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

External links

Preceded by
Venanzo Crocetti Museum 		Landmarks of Rome
Apollo Belvedere 		Succeeded by
Augustus of Prima Porta
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