Apollo Belvedere

Overview

The Apollo Belvedere is a celebrated marble sculpture in the Vatican Museums (Cortile del Belvedere, Museo Pio-Clementino, Rome). The work depicts the Greek god Apollo as a standing archer who has just released an arrow. The sculpture stands 224 cm tall and is a Roman copy (dated to the 2nd century AD) of an original Greek bronze (c. 330-320 BC) attributed to the sculptor Leochares.

Rediscovered in central Italy in the late 15th century and placed in the Vatican from 1511, the Apollo Belvedere became the canonical ideal of male beauty during the neoclassical era, famously championed by art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann in 1755 as the supreme example of Greek aesthetic perfection. (Source: Wikipedia, « Apollo Belvedere »; Vatican Museums website.)

Marie and the Apollo

For Marie the Apollo is first of all a likeness of the Duke of Hamilton. She studied and copied the cast: on 7 June 1873 « L'Apollon du Belvédère que je vais copier a un peu de ressemblance avec le duc, l'expression surtout... la même manière de porter la tête, et le nez est comme le sien » (005.0202); on 4 July 1873 she finds the same resemblance, as striking to her as that between a Mendelssohn presto and a Strauss march (006.0181). On 17 September 1873 she brings « Néron et Apollon » to the dinner table to argue about male beauty and says the Apollo looks like Baron Merck (009.0221, 009.0227). On 3 January 1875, in front of a mirror with a moustache of hair, she hovers « entre l'Apollon du Belvédère et Hamilton » (028.0138). On 17 December 1875 Loftus has the mouth that makes him resemble Hamilton and the Apollo (050.0913, with a reader footnote). Describing Hamilton on 26 May 1876 she gives him « une lèvre copiée sur celle de l'Apollon du Belvédère » (061.0194). On 13 February 1877 she will never forget « le costume d'Apollon du Belvédère » (068.1486), a memory from a masked ball. On 16 March 1884 a beautiful model has « de la Vénus de Milo en bien plus beau et de l'Apollon du Belvédère » (103.0550). Many bare mentions of « Apollon » in the diary refer to the same ideal.

Related

Duke of Hamilton, Venus de Milo.