Bust of Apollo of Piombino
- Title:
- Bust of Apollo of Piombino
- Collection:
- Cornell Cast Collection
- Creator:
- Musées Nationaux Moulages (reproduction)
Unknown (original)
- Photographer:
- Mericle, Danielle
- Date:
- ca. 1890-1900
1st c. BCE
- Site:
- Paris, France (reproduction)
Piombino, Italy (discovery site, 1832) (original) - Location:
- Goldwin Smith Hall (Room 172 E), Binenkorb Center, Cornell University
Paris, France (reproduction)
Piombino, Italy (discovery site, 1832) (original) - ID Number:
- CCC_0787
- Accession Number:
- Sage no. 56
727 - File Name:
- CCC_0787.tif
- Original Measurements:
- 115 (H) cm (complete statue)
- Culture:
- Greek
- Style/Period:
- Hellenistic, archaistic
- Work Type:
- casts (sculpture)
- Materials/Techniques:
- plaster casts (sculpture)
bronze sculpture in the round (inlays in copper and silver) (original) - Subject:
- Apollo (Greek deity)
- Image View Type:
- overall
- Image View Description:
- from front
- Measurement:
- 45.5 (with socle) x 34.5 (without socle) x 33 x 16.5 (centimeters, height x height x width x diameter)
- Description:
- This is a cast of the bust of the Apollo of Piombino, a bronze under-life-size statue discovered off the the coast of Piombino, Tuscany, Italy in 1832 and housed in the Louvre. The wavy hair sits in flat ripples on the head, tight curls border the forehead. The back of the hair is bound loosely by a thin fillet. Eyes are almond-shaped and filled in this cast (the sockets of the original are hollow and were likely inlaid), broad eyebrows are rendered in relief, the nose is small and flat-bridged. The bust includes the chest to the sternum, the shoulders, and uppermost section of the arms of the statue. The cast is hollowed at back. The head of this cast was broken off and repaired at some point in the past, but the projecting portion of the hair at the neck-level of the back of the head is broken away. An oval seal on the base identifies the Musées Nationaux Moulages as the maker of this cast. The original statue stands in the traditional stiff pose of Archaic kouroi. Its eyebrows, lips, and nipples are inlaid in copper, and a dedicatory inscription in an archaistic Greek script is inlaid in silver on the left foot. A similar statue of Apollo unearthed in the House of C. Julius Polybius at Pompeii in 1977 bolstered scholarly conclusions that the Piombino Apollo is a later, archaizing work rather than an original of the Greek Archaic period as it was early and disputedly held up to be. This hypothesis is now generally accepted and the work is dated to the 1st century BCE.
- Notes:
- Items in the Cornell Cast Collection are meant for inventory and reference purposes. Metadata may not be complete in all cases.
no. Br 2 - Bibliography:
- Brunilde S. Ridgway, "The Bronze Apollo from Piombino in the Louvre," Antike Plastik 7 (1967), 43-75, figs. 1-11, pls. 24-34
Florence Rionnet, L'Atelier de moulage du musée du Louvre (1794-1928) (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1996), 142, no. 148 (moulage partiel)
www.louvre.fr - Repository:
- Cornell University (current)
Paris, Louvre (original) - Collecting Program:
- Cornell Collections of Antiquities
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The images in the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Casts are protected by copyright, and the copyright holders are their creators, generally Cornell University Library, Annetta Alexandridis, and Verity Platt. This collection of plaster casts owned by Cornell University was photographed by Cornell University Library, Alexandridis, Platt, and Andreya L. Mihaloew from 2010-2015, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Annetta Alexandridis. Cornell is providing access to the materials for research and personal use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Please contact Annetta Alexandridis and Verity Platt for more information about this collection, or to request permission to use these images.