L"APOLLO" di Cellini: "APOLLO è sol la luce/Cosmo è principio della gran scuola, e Duce"

Speranza

A drawing for the Seal of the Accademia del Disegno has an OVAL FRAME.

Executed in wash, the 'disegno' shows

APOLLO PIZIO, a frontal nude lit from the right with head slightly turned, holding a bow and arrow, triumphant over the serpent PITONE which lies beneath his feet.

Behind APOLLO is a cloack against which his left shoulder and arm are silhouetted and which blows out in a pattern of free folds on the opposite side.

This beautiful and poetic image also has an inscription, but an inscription of a more personal and less didactic kind.

The planet of the SUN, the torch of the Universe, explains CELLINI, was depcted by the ancients as APOLLO.

When the waters receded after the great Flood, a dense mist remaiend, which prevented the earth from germinating until it was dissolved by the sun's rays.

Just as the sun fosters the growth of plants and grasses and flowers and animals, so SKILL in design (disegno) enables MAN to build stupendous palaces, theatres, temples, towers, loggias, houses, and bridges and to decorate them with statues and paintings.

Tourtous as this reasoning is, the image of APOLLO on the seal is UNFORGETTABLE in its freedom, confidence and ideality.

The accompanying inscription reads:

APOLLO è sol la luce
Cosmo è principio de la gran scuola, e Duce.

More fully worked up and more carefully cogitated, this sheet was submitted to the Academy.