 |
| Antoine Lafréry Apollo Belvedere 1552 engraving British Museum |
The Apollo Belvedere is shown above in the 1550s occupying the niche where it had been placed in the 1520s. Standing over seven feet tall, the statue was from its first appearance regarded as the featured ornament of the Belvedere Courtyard at the Vatican. "In 1540 moulds were made for François I, and soon after a bronze replica was cast for Fontainebleau. Thereafter, until well into the nineteenth century, no sets of prints or casts or copies claiming to represent the most famous works of antiquity failed to include this statue, and numerous passages of rapturous prose were inspired by it."
 |
| Anonymous Italian photographer Apollo Belvedere late 19th century stereograph Victoria & Albert Museum |
"In early drawings of the Apollo much of the left forearm and some of the right hand are missing, but Antico in hist statuette completed the extremities; and after his arrival in Rome about 1532 or 1533 Montorsoli made additions to the marble itself, which were observed with hardly any comment and invariably reproduced in prints and casts and copies for over three centuries, but which became the subject of intense controversy in the second half of the nineteenth century and have recently been removed."
 |
| Jan de Bisschop Apollo Belvedere ca. 1655-70 engraving Rijksmuseum |
 |
| Jan de Bisschop Apollo Belvedere ca. 1663-68 engraving Rijksmuseum |
 |
| Anonymous Italian artist Apollo Belvedere 18th-19th century cameo Victoria & Albert Museum |
 |
| James Anderson Apollo Belvedere ca. 1845-55 albumen silver print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
 |
| Giacomo Zoffoli Apollo Belvedere after 1763 copy - bronze statuette Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
"James Fenimore Cooper, who found that the sculpture surpassed all his expectations when he saw it between 1828 and 1830, noted that the 'suspicion' that the work was a copy was 'whispered so loud that anyone may hear'. Whispering was necessary, for even as late as 1850 the Apollo was certainly still widely considered to be among the half dozen greatest works of art in the world."
 |
| Manufactory at Stoke-on-Trent The Apollo Belvedere as a bust 1861 Parian porcelain Victoria & Albert Museum |
"Through the nineteenth century, copies of the Apollo and of the Diane Chasseresse were paired – in bronze in the gardens at Malmaison, in marble in the gardens at Chatsworth and Saint-Cloud, in plaster in John Nash's gallery in London and, much later, in the Museum of Archaeology in Cambridge. The idea that these two statues are related was most discussed when they were together in the Musée Napoléon, but it can be traced back as far as the mid-seventeenth century when Chantelou suggested to Bernini that they were the work of the same artist. The idea that they were originally imagined converging to slaughter the children of Niobe seems to have been adumbrated early in the nineteenth century – the Niobids being considered as more exalted victims than the python of Delphi at which Apollo was more usually held to have just discharged his arrow."
Modern scholars are inclined to agree that both the Apollo Belvedere and the Diane Chasseresse (below) are marble copies executed under the Roman Empire of lost bronze originals which were probably conceived together. The Diane was first recorded late in the 16th century in France. Its export from Italy has not been traced. The statue was also known as Diana of Ephesus, Diane à la Biche, and Diane de Versailles. It served in some circles almost as a French national icon until 1821, when the Venus de Milo arrived and replaced the Diane Chasseresse in its spot of honor.
 |
| Diane Chasseresse Roman marble copy of an earlier bronze work Louvre |
 |
| Barthélémy Prieure Diane Chasseresse 1605 full-size bronze copy made for Fontainebleau |
 |
| Jan de Bisschop Diane Chasseresse ca. 1672-89 etching British Museum |
 |
| Hubert Le Sueur Diane Chasseresse 1634 full-size bronze copy commissioned by Charles I Royal Collection, Great Britain |
 |
| Claude Mellan Diane Chasseresse 1669 engraving British Museum |
 |
| Anonymous sculptor Diane Chasseresse 1847 copy - bronze statuette Royal Collection, Great Britain |