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)
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].

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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