Italian, Rome, first half 19th century | After the Antique | The Apollo Belvedere and The Callipygian Venus

Copying two of the most celebrated marbles from antiquity, this elegant pair of bronzes was probably made in Rome for a Grand Tour clientele. The Apollo Belvedere takes its name from the Belvedere Courtyard in the Vatican where the ancient marble was displayed from around 1503 and remains today, despite being taken to Paris in 1798, until Antonio Canova successfully negotiated the return in 1816 of the art treasures looted by Napoleon from Italy. The model is paired here with a reduction of the Callipygian Venus ('Venus of the beautiful buttocks'), a Roman marble now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. Dated to the 1st or 2nd century BC, the Callipygian Venus was long housed in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, before being restored by Carlo Albacini and transferred to Naples at the close of the 18th century.

RELATED LITERATURE
F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900, New Haven and London, 1981, pp. 141-143 and 316-318