Lycian Apollo

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For other uses, see Lycian.
Statuette of the Lycian Apollo type, Museum of the Ancient Agora of Athens (inv. BI 236)
Statuette of the Lycian Apollo type, Museum of the Ancient Agora of Athens (inv. BI 236)
A Lycian Apollo at the Louvre
A Lycian Apollo at the Louvre

The Lycian Apollo type, originating with Praxiteles and known from many statue and figurine copies as well as from 1st century BCE coinage, is a statue type of Apollo showing the god resting on a support (a tree trunk or tripod), his right arm touching the top of his head[1], and his hair fixed in braids on the top of a head in a haircut typical of childhood. It is called Lycian not after Lycia itself, but after its identification with a lost work described by Lucian[2] as being on show in the Lykeion, one of the gymnasia of Athens. Its main exemplar is the Apollino in Florence or Apollo Medici, in the Uffizi, Florence.[3]

Another literary source does not attribute this type to Praxiteles, but the attribution is traditionally supported on the grounds of the type's similarity to Praxiteles's Hermes from Olympia - one replica of the Lycian Apollo even passed as a copy of the Hermes for a time[4]. The comparison essentially rests on the Apollino, whose head has proportions similar to those of the Aphrodite of Cnidus[5] and whose pronounced sfumato confirms the long-held idea that it is Praxitelean in style.

Nevertheless, most exemplars of this type exhibit a pronounced musculature which does not resemble masculine types normally attributed to Praxiteles - it has further been proposed that it is a work of his contemporary Euphranor[6], or of a 2nd century BCE work[7] The Apollino, for its part, would thus be an eclectic creation from the Roman era, mixing several styles from the "second classicism" (ie from the 4th century BC).[8].

[edit] References

  1. ^ A pose also used in the Amazon statue types and, in the second century CE, in the Ludovisi Dionysus, a Roman sculpture.
  2. ^ Anacharsis (7).
  3. ^ (German) Wilhelm Klein, Praxiteles, Lepizig, 1898, p. 158.
  4. ^ (French) Martinez, « Les styles praxitélisants », p. 334.
  5. ^ As represented by Head Ma421 in the Louvre. (Italian) Giulio Emmanuele Rizzo, Prassitele, Milan et Rome, 1932, p. 80-81.
  6. ^ (German) S. F. Schröder, « Der Apollon Lykeios und die attische Ephebie des 4. Jhr » in Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung, 101 (1986), p. 167-184.
  7. ^ (German) M. Nagele, « Zum Typus des Apollon Lykeios » in Jahreshefte des Österreichischen archäologischen Instituts in Wien, 55 (1984), p. 77-105.
  8. ^ (French) Martinez, « Les styles praxitélisants », p. 335.
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