The Apollino or Medici Apollo is a Hellenistic sculpture of the god Apollo of the Apollo Lykeios type. It is now in the Uffizi, Florence.
Its head has proportions similar to those of Praxiteles's Aphrodite of Cnidus[1], and thus it has been argued to be a copy of a Praxitelean original, or at least to be Praxitelean in style. Others argue it is an eclectic creation from the Roman era, mixing several styles from the "second classicism".[2]. Its left arm may have held a bow.[3]
Found complete in Rome, it was originally in the Borghese collection, until it moved to the Medici collection at Villa Medici. Unlike many ancient sculptures in the Medici collection, it was not moved to Florence in the 17th and 18th centuries, remaining in Rome.[4] It was seen by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who commented:
| “ | It is difficult to conceive anything more delicately beautiful than the Ganymede; but the spirit-like lightness, the softness, the flowing perfection of [the Apollino's] forms, surpass it. The countenance, though exquisitely lovely and gentle, is not divine. There is a womanish vivacity of winning yet passive happiness, and yet a boyish inexperience exceedingly delightful. Through the limbs there seems to flow a spirit of life which gives them lightness. Nothing can be more perfectly lovely than the legs, and the union of the feet with the ankles, and the fading away of the lines of the feet to the delicate extremities. It is like a spirit even in dreams. The neck is long yet full, and sustains the head with its profuse and knotted hair as if it needed no sustaining. | ” |
Early during its time at the Uffizi it was broken by a picture falling on it[5] and restored by Lorenzo Bartolini, who covered the whole statue with a layer of paint to disguise the repairs.
