Editing Apollo (section)

== Apollo in the arts ==
Apollo is a common theme in Greek and Roman art and also in the art of the [[Renaissance]]. The earliest Greek word for a statue is "delight" ({{lang|grc|ἄγαλμα}}, ''agalma''), and the sculptors tried to create forms which would inspire such guiding vision. [[Maurice Bowra]] notices that the Greek artist puts into a god the highest degree of power and beauty that can be imagined. The sculptors derived this from observations on human beings, but they also embodied in concrete form, issues beyond the reach of ordinary thought.<ref>C. M. Bowra, ''The Greek Experience'', pp. 148, 149.</ref>

The naked bodies of the statues are associated with the cult of the body which was essentially a religious activity.<ref>C. M. Bowra, ''The Greek Experience'', pp. 148, 150.</ref> The muscular frames and limbs combined with slim waists indicate the Greek desire for health, and the physical capacity which was necessary in the hard Greek environment.<ref>C. M. Bowra, ''The Greek Experience'', p. 5.</ref> The statues of Apollo and the other gods present them in their full youth and strength. "In the balance and relation of their limbs, such figures express their whole character, mental and physical, and reveal their central being, the radiant reality of youth in its heyday".<ref>C. M. Bowra, ''The Greek Experience'', p. 150.</ref>

===Archaic sculpture===
Numerous statues of male youths from [[Archaic Greece]] exist, and were once thought to be representations of Apollo, though later discoveries indicated that many represented mortals.<ref>Delphi, 467, 1524</ref> In 1895, V. I. Leonardos proposed the term ''[[kouros]]'' ("male youth") to refer to those from [[Keratea]]; this usage was later expanded by Henri Lechat in 1904 to cover all statues of this format.<ref>V.I. Leonardos(1895). ''Archaelogiki Ephimeris'', Col 75, n 1.</ref><ref>Lechat (1904). ''La sculpture Attic avant Phidias'', p. 23.</ref>

The earliest examples of life-sized statues of Apollo may be two figures from the [[Ionians|Ionic]] sanctuary on the island of [[Delos]]. Such statues were found across the Greek-speaking world, the preponderance of these were found at the sanctuaries of Apollo with more than one hundred from the sanctuary of ''Apollo Ptoios'', [[Boeotia]] alone.<ref>J. Ducat (1971). ''Les Kouroi des Ptoion''.</ref> Significantly more rare are the life-sized bronze statues. One of the few originals which survived into the present day—so rare that its discovery in 1959 was described as "a miracle" by Ernst Homann-Wedeking—is the masterpiece bronze, ''[[Piraeus Apollo]]''. It was found in [[Piraeus]], a [[port city]] close to Athens, and is believed to have come from north-eastern [[Peloponnesus]]. It is the only surviving large-scale Peloponnesian statue.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Homann-Wedeking|first=Ernst|url=https://archive.org/details/artofarchaicgree00homa|title=The Art of Archaic Greece|date=1968|publisher=Crown Publishers|location=New York|pages=144–145|via=Internet Archive}}</ref>

===Classical sculpture===

[[File:Apollon de Mantoue Louvre MA689.jpg|thumb|[[Apollo of Mantua]], marble Roman copy after a 5th-century-BCE Greek original attributed to [[Polykleitos]], Musée du Louvre]]
[[File:Runeberg ateneum apollon ja marsyas.jpg|thumb|Marble sculpture of Apollo and [[Marsyas]] by [[Walter Runeberg]], at the arrivals hall of [[Ateneum]] in Helsinki, [[Finland]]]]
The famous [[Apollo of Mantua]] and its variants are early forms of the [[Apollo Citharoedus]] statue type, in which the god holds the [[cithara]], a sophisticated seven-stringed variant of the lyre, in his left arm. While none of the Greek originals have survived, several Roman copies from approximately the late 1st or early 2nd century exist, of which an example is the [[Apollo Barberini]].{{Citation needed|date=December 2024}}

===Hellenistic Greece-Rome===
Apollo as a handsome beardless young man, is often depicted with a cithara (as Apollo Citharoedus) or bow in his hand, or reclining on a tree (the [[Apollo Lykeios]] and [[Apollo Sauroctonos]] types). 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. The marble is a [[Hellenistic Greece|Hellenistic]] or Roman copy of a bronze original by the Greek sculptor [[Leochares]], made between 330 and 320 BCE.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/collezioni/musei/museo-pio-clementino/Cortile-Ottagono/apollo-del-belvedere.html |title=Belevedere Apollo |publisher=Vatican Museums (Pio Clementino Museum) |access-date=19 May 2023}}</ref>

Another haloed Apollo in mosaic, from [[Hadrumentum]], is in the museum at [[Sousse]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tunisiaonline.com/mosaics/mosaic05b.html |title=Mosaics in Tunisia: Apollo and the Muses |date=8 July 2008 |access-date=30 July 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080708143541/http://www.tunisiaonline.com/mosaics/mosaic05b.html |archive-date=8 July 2008 }}</ref> The conventions of this representation, head tilted, lips slightly parted, large-eyed, curling [[Hairstyle|hair cut]] in locks grazing the neck, were developed in the 3rd century BCE to depict [[Alexander the Great]].<ref>Bieber 1964, Yalouris 1980.</ref> Some time after this mosaic was executed, the earliest depictions of Christ would also be beardless and haloed.{{Citation needed|date=December 2024}}