Apollo Belvedere

early 2nd century CE

Marble · Vatican Museums, Vatican City

A Roman copy of a Greek bronze of about 330 BCE, probably by Leochares. Found in Rome in 1489, it became for three centuries the model of ideal male beauty.

Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere owned it and, as Pope Julius II, set it in the Vatican’s Belvedere court by 1508.
Montorsoli rebuilt the missing arm and hand in 1532–33; the left hand is now a cast of an ancient fragment found at Baia.
Look at the pose: the god has just loosed an arrow; the bow in his left hand is lost.
Taken to Paris under Napoleon and returned in 1816.

Apollo, son of Zeus, is god of light, music, prophecy and archery. He is always young and beardless, often with bow, lyre or laurel.

Chlamys: A short cloak pinned at the shoulder, here hanging from Apollo’s arm.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain