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Friday, July 13, 2012

ICONOGRAFIA ITALIANA: L'APOLLO pitio, saurottono, DEL BEL-VEDERE

Speranza

The number of images of "L'Apollo del Belvedere" make it an interesting image to use to compare the works of different artists.
Casts of the Apollo del Belvedere were abundant in public places and schools in the 19th century.








Engraving from 1747.

Domenico Rossi,
Raccolta di Statue Romane Antiche
data in Luce sotto i gloriosi auspici della Santita di N.S. Papa Clemente XI.
Roma, Gaetano Zenobi, 1704.

L'APOLLO pitio del Bel-Vedere
Drawing by Bourdon Engraved by Quéverdo Niquet.
  












Detail.



Bryn Mawr College has a copy of Hendrick Goltzius' print
 L'Apollo pitio del Belvedere.

Above, a print by Marcantonio Raimondi, at the Metropolitan Museum of New York:


Photograph of the Original scupture, for years at the Bel-Vedere courtyard -- Bel-Vedere Villa, Roma.



 

Albrecht Durer's Apollo was influenced by the L'Apollo pitio del Belvedere.
Human Figure
Human Figure drawings by Albrecht Durer.


 De Symmetria Partium in Rectis Formis Humanorum Corporum / Underweysung der Messung (Multilingual Edition)


De Symmetria Partium in Rectis Formis Humanorum Corporum

Underweysung der Messung (Multilingual Edition)

This is also by Albrecht Durer.

The title translates as
"On the symmetry of objects and how parts resemble each other when viewed at right angles"



 
Marjan Sterckx notes in her article about Sculptures by Women in the Nineteenth-century Urban Public Space that the idea of a woman sculpting a male figure was seen as threatening, and publishes this cartoon of a Damien Apollo to prove it.

William Hogarth includes "L'Apollo del Belvedere", in his print The Analysis of Beauty.

 

Apollo vincitore della pitone, 
Drawn by Bouillon, Engraved by Avril Fils.
See another post with more pictures from this book: Classical Sculptures from the Musée Francais.




December 1832 edition of The Penny Magazine.

L'APOLLO, vincitore della Pitone, DEL BEL-VEDERE.
The names of few works of art are so familiar to our eyes as those of the "L'Apollo del Bel-Vedere, one of the innumerable wonders of Villa Bel-Vedere, in Roma.
The L'Apollo vincitore della pitone, detto "del Belvedere", was found at Anzio, which was the birth-place ot Nero, and one of his favourite places of residence.
As in the case of the Laocoonte, "L'Apollo vincitore della pitone, detto "del Bel Vedere", was for some time supposed to be a work belonging to what we are accustomed to call the best age of Greek sculpture, by which, as we have already explained, we generally understand the period of FIDIA and that immediately following it.
Indeed the Apollo del Bel Vedere is now sometimes called the work of FIDIA, just as if there were some good reason for giving it that name.
And here it may be well to put our readers on their guard against giving credit to the loose assertions of most writers as to matters of antiquity.

Very few have either time, inclination, or sufficient knowledge to investigate them completely.

When then an assertion is made, such as, that the Apollo Belvidere is the work of Phidias, it is quite fair to ask for the proof; and perhaps this will apply equally well to other assertions about things of more importance than the paternity of a statue.
Some French critics first observed the fact of the Apollo being made of Carrara marble, which Pliny speaks of as being newly worked in his time, under the name of marble of Luna.

If this is undisputed, we cannot assign the Apollo to any other epoch but that of the early Roman emperors, and it seems the most probable hypothesis that it was made for Nero to adorn his sea villa at Anzio.

This man, whom history has represented to us as a cruel tyrant, an unnatural son, and the murderer of his wife, was still a lover of the arts, and perhaps no mean judge of them, as far as we can discern through that cloud of abuse in which the history of the early emperors is enveloped.

The noble figure of "L'Apollo, vincitore della pitone, detto del Belvedere" perhaps one of the last efforts of Grecian art to perfect the ideal form of the Archer god, stood at Nero's bidding in all its beauty before the master of the Roman world.

And can we doubt that he felt and admired that perfection which never yet was embodied in a living form?

To attempt to express by words the impressions which are produced by the highest productions of nature or art, is a vain attempt: with those who do not feel, it results in mere words that have no definite meaning; with those who do, it can only result in a complete conviction of the inability of words to express the images of thought.

.



Johann Gerog Heck
Iconographic Encyclopaedia of Science, Literature, and Art,



Top Row Left to Right:
ERCOLE with the boy TELEFO on his arm, in Rome,
Statue of ANTINOO DEL BELVEDERE, 
 Boy wrestling with a goose, 
  Statue of MELEAGRO, in Rome, 
  Statue of GERMANICO, from the 15th century; it belongs to the period of the revival of art, but the sculptor is not known.Bottom Row Left to Right: 2.
L'Apollo DE: Belvedere
 Laocoonte del Bel-Vedere, 
 Statue of a Faun.
Weird race history chart showing the Apollo at the top of the chain. From the post at Contexts.org.


Another evolutionary drawing from a frog to Apollo by Johann Kaspar Lavater, from the web site Griechische Philosophen über die Evolution der Arten.















Proportions of Apollo from the same site, the page Apollo Belvedere.

Check out other posts on Physiognomy.


Sculpture by Antico,
Italian School, 15th Century.
Pope Julius II. Viewing the Newly-found Statue of the Apollo Belvedere
From the painting by Carl Becker. From Romance of Roman Villas, by Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney.

Copies of Ancient statues in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Goethe in Rome
with images of the Apollo Belvedere.


At Amazon.com:
APOLLO IGNUDO
A different Apollo, "APOLLO IGNUDO", a  plate from Raccolta di Statue Antiche e Moderne by Roman publisher Domenico de Rossi.

Here's a link to a blog post about a fragment of a statue, posssibly Apollo, that was returned to Greece in 2007.
Swiss hand back to Greece stolen statue of Apollo from Crete

This is a post about the GRUPPO DI LAOCONTE  which has a similar number of alternate renderings of the famous sculpture:
The MELEAGRO, the Apollo DEL Belvedere, the Laoconte, and the Mercurio; The Banks of the Tiber - A Traveler's Essay (TRAVEL, HISTORY, LITERATURE, ART, ITALY)
Le Culte D'apollon Pythien À Athènes (French Edition)


Carl Becker painted a painting of Pope Julius II viewing the newly found Apollo Belvedere, the image appeared as the frontispiece of The Romance of Roman Villas by Elizabeth W. Champney, from project Gutenberg.
A better image of the painting reproduced in The Cosmopolitan Magazine from 1892.


Engraving from the New Gresham Encyclopedia. Link.


Raphael, Dürer, and Marcantonio Raimondi: Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print
A print by Marcantonio Raimondi from the Met Museum.

Copying and the Italian Renaissance Print.





Apollo from R. Ackerman's book.


A print from 1870 showing "L'Apollo vincitore della pitone, detto "Del Bel Vedere", in the center and Triumph of the Emperor Titus; Apotheosis of Augustus; Julius Caesar; Augustus; Livia; Titus; Julia; Trajanus; Relief on the Column of Trajanus

Relief from the Arches of Trajanus.


cigar box label




cigar box label



Print of the head of the Apollo Belvedere used as an example of the caucasian race.

GOLTZIUS -- Apollo

 
Apollo



The drawing depicts the statue called "L'Apollo del Belvedere (7.3 feet high), a Roman copy of a lost bronze original dated c. 350-325 BC by the Greek sculptor Leochares.
The figure represents the Greek god Apollo after his defeat of the serpent Python using a bow and arrow.
The figure’s taut muscles indicate that he has just released the arrow.

University College London

Napoleon and the Apollo Belvedere


APOLLO DEL BELVEDERE,
Louis Gabriel Blanchet


Leonardo Berizzi (first half of the nineteenth century)
Apollo del Belvedere 
a copy of the press R. Morghen, G. Volpato, 1833.
Raffaello Morghen (Portici 1758 - Florence 1833)
 Giovanni Volpato
L'Apollo of Belvedere 
From:
"Principij del disegno tratti dalle più eccellenti statue antiche pubblicati ed incisi da Giov. Volpato e Raffaele Morghen, Rome 1786.
Marcantonio Pasqualini (1614–1691) Crowned by Apollo, 1641 Andrea Sacchi (Italian, Roman, 1599–1661) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Hall at the Royal Academy, Somerset House from the Victoria and Albert Museum
Apollo Belvedere in a landscape.

SPINARIO Boy Extracting a Thorn and L'Apollo del Belvedere



Jan de Bisschop - Two Studies Of The Apollo Belvedere, And One Of The Gaul And His Wife

Apollo Belvedere by Alba C. Galvez

Proportions of Apollo from Denis Diderot's Encyclopedia

Another example of proportions from the Encyclopedia is in this post. And another on here.

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