Italian school, after the antique: Bust of the Apollo Belvedere, white marble, ca. 1800

H 65 cm

The Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican ranks among the most celebrated statues from antiquity. Today thought to be a Hadrianic copy, made in c. 120-140 CE, of a 4th-century BCE Greek bronze original, the statue was excavated in Rome in 1489. The marble was recorded in 1509 in the garden of S. Pietro in Vincoli, which was then under the custodianship of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who became Pope Julius II (1503-1513). By 1511, the Apollo had been installed in the Cortile del Belvedere of the Vatican, and thereafter received a vast amount of attention from artists and commentators alike. The most influential of these was J.J. Winckelmann, who dedicated pages to the Apollo’s beauty and hailed it as the embodiment of antique ideals. One of the most amusing descriptions of the Apollo was made by the great American painter Benjamin West. Upon visiting the Eternal City in the summer of 1760, he encountered considerable snobbery from the native populous who mocked him for a perceived lack of sophistication. Anxious to see the impression of this classical exemplar on West's supposedly uncultivated mind, they opened up the doors of the Belvedere to reveal the Apollo, only to be shocked when the painter dryly remarked, 'My God, how like it is to a young Mohawk warrior' (Haskell and Penny, op. cit., p. 150). The statue’s fame was further enhanced after it was ceded to Napoleon under the terms of the Treaty of Tolentino in 1797, arriving in Paris in a garlanded case in July 1798; it was returned to Rome in January 1816. The Apollo continued to fascinate Grand Tourists through the 19th century (link).

Ref.:

- A very similar but smaller sculpture sold at Sotheby's London, 5 December 2020, Lot 59 (GBP 10.080, link).