Cleveland Apollo

The Cleveland Apollo is a 4th-century BC life-size bronze statue, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art as catalogue number 2004.30 - it acquired it in 2004 using the Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund.

It is also known as Apollo the Python-Slayer,[1] since it is a copy of the Apollo Sauroctonos, the original of which is attributed to Praxiteles. The figure sways at a wide angle, as in the Apollo Sauroctonus in the Vatican Museums and the Resting Satyr in the Capitoline Museums. It was produced using the indirect lost wax technique,[2] with stronger contours than marble copies of the subject.

History

Previously unknown, the work appeared on the art market in 2003. Its seller stated it came from a private residence in the former German Democratic Republic, where it had been thought to be an 18th or 19th century copy. Its present owner purchased it the following year, but it soon became a subject of controversy, with rumours that it had in fact originated in looting of a site in Italy or Greece. This led Greece's Central Archaeological Council to make an official request that the Louvre ban the work from its Praxiteles exhibition in spring 2007.[3]

Italy also demanded that the work be returned,[4] but the Cleveland Museum of Art backed the seller's account of the work and initiated scientific examination of the work. This uncovered the work's patina and traces of long burial with alternation between dry and humid environments.[5] Chemical analysis also showed that the statue was ancient but the base was in a different mainly lead alloy and dated to the Renaissance at the earliest[2] - the lead taken from the base at the point where it joined to the right foot was just under 100 years old, arguing against the object being recently looted.[2]

gollark: Okay, stop there.
gollark: Well, he failed at the first one, then.
gollark: Only under foolish divine command theory.
gollark: I disagree with "a deity cant perform bad acts".
gollark: "God" implies a sentient being with agency or something, generally.

References
  1. "Catalogue entry".
  2. Bennett, p. 208.
  3. ""Louvre backs down on ancient statue here", The Plain Dealer".
  4. "Italy unveils 14 artifacts returned by Cleveland Museum, CBC News, 2 July 2009".
  5. Bennett, p. 207.

Bibliography
  • (in French) Michael Bennett, "Une nouvelle réplique de l'Apollon Sauroctone au musée de Cleveland", in Alain Pasquier and Jean-François Martinez, Praxitèle, exhibition catalogue, musée du Louvre, 23 March-18 June 2007, éditions du Louvre & Somogy, 2007 ISBN 978-2-35031-111-1, p. 206-208.
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