The Apollo Belvedere, 1995

The Apollo Belvedere is a marble sculpture that was rediscovered in the late 15th century; for centuries it epitomized the ideals of Classical Antiquity for Europeans, from the Renaissance through the 19th century. In the 1530s it was engraved by Marcantonio Raimondi, whose printed image transmitted the famous pose throughout Europe. Before his engraving existed, the Mantuan sculptor Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, called "L'Antico", had made a careful wax model of it, which he cast in bronze, finely finished and partly gilded, to figure in the Gonzaga collection, and in further copies in a handful of others. Albrecht Dürer reversed the Apollo's pose for his Adam in a 1504 engraving of Adam and Eve, suggesting that he saw it in Rome. When L'Antico and Dürer saw it, the Apollo was probably still in the personal collection of Giuliano della Rovere, who, once he was pope as Julius II, transferred the prize in 1511 to the small sculpture court of the Belvedere, the palazzetto or summerhouse that was linked to the Vatican Palace by Bramante's large Cortile del Belvedere. It became the Apollo of the Cortile del Belvedere and the name has remained with it, though the sculpture has long been indoors, in the Museo Pio-Clementino at the Vatican Museums, Rome. The marble is a Hellenistic or Roman copy of a bronze original by the Greek sculptor Leochares, made between 350—325 BC. For centuries it was treasured as the most celebrated work of Greek sculpture. The neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova adopted the fluent Apollo Belvedere for his marble Perseus (Metropolitan Museum).

Text from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Belvedere