Italian, 18th century, After the Antique | Italie, XVIIIe siècle, d'après l'Antique

Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé;

their sale, Christie's, Paris, 25 February 2009, lot 568;

private collection, Lombardy

____________________________________________

Collection Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé ;

leur vente, Christie's, Paris, 25 February 2009, lot 568 ;

Collection particulière, Lombardie

The Apollo Belvedere in the Vatican ranks among the most celebrated statues from antiquity. Today thought to be a Hadrianic copy, made in c. 120-140 CE, of a 4th-century BCE Greek bronze original, the statue was excavated in Rome in 1489. The marble was recorded in 1509 in the garden of S. Pietro in Vincoli, which was then under the custodianship of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, who became Pope Julius II (1503-1513). By 1511, the Apollo had been installed in the Cortile del Belvedere of the Vatican, and thereafter received a vast amount of attention from artists and commentators alike. The most influential of these was J.J. Winckelmann, who dedicated pages to the Apollo’s beauty and hailed it as the embodiment of antique ideals.

RELATED LITERATURE

F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique. The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven/London, 1981, pp. 148-151