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The Apollo of Piombino or the Piombino Boy is a famous Greek bronze statuette in late Archaic style that depicts the god as a ''
.
The two sculptors responsible could not resist secreting inside the sculpture a lead tag inscribed with their names, which was found when the sculpture was conserved in 1842. One was a Tyrian émigré to
The Apollo of Piombino or the Piombino Boy is a famous Greek bronze statuette in late Archaic style that depicts the god as a ''kouros
kouros ( grc, κοῦρος, , plural kouroi) is the modern term given to free-standing Ancient Greek sculptures that depict nude male youths. They first appear in the Archaic period in Greece and are prominent in Attica and Boeotia, with a les ...
'' or youth, or it may be a worshipper bringing an offering. The bronze is inlaid with copper for the boy's lips, eyebrows, and nipples. The eyes, which are missing, were of another material, perhaps bone or ivory.
It was found in 1832 at Piombino
Piombino is an Italian town and '' comune'' of about 35,000 inhabitants in the province of Livorno ( Tuscany). It lies on the border between the Ligurian Sea and the Tyrrhenian Sea, in front of Elba Island and at the northern side of Maremma.
...
(Roman Populonia), in Etruria
Etruria () was a region of Central Italy, located in an area that covered part of what are now most of Tuscany, northern Lazio, and northern and western Umbria.
Etruscan Etruria
The ancient people of Etruria
are identified as Etruscans. Thei ...
, in the harbor off the southwest point, and was purchased for the Musée du Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
in 1834. Its archaic style led scholars like Reinhard Lullies and Max Hirmer to date it in the 5th century BCE and place its facture in Magna Graecia
Magna Graecia (, ; , , grc, Μεγάλη Ἑλλάς, ', it, Magna Grecia) was the name given by the Romans to the coastal areas of Southern Italy in the present-day Italian regions of Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily; the ...
, the Hellenic culture area of southern Italy; Kenneth Clark illustrated it in ''The Nude'' (1956), Karl Schefold included it in ''Meisterwerke Griechischer Kunst'' 1960 and casts of it were to be found in university and museum study collections; one made by the Louvre has been returned to Piombino.
Instead, B.S. Ridgeway (Ridgeway 1967) proved it to be not simply an archaizing sculpture of the 1st century BCE, of the kind designed to appeal to a Roman with refined tastes, but a consciously fabricated Roman forgery
Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally refers to the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific intent to defraud anyone (other than themself). Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be forb ...
, with a false inlaid inscription of silver in archaic lettering on the left leg. The inscription dedicates this Apollo to Athena
Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of v ...
, an anomaly.Musée du Louvre: Apollo of Piombino.
The two sculptors responsible could not resist secreting inside the sculpture a lead tag inscribed with their names, which was found when the sculpture was conserved in 1842. One was a Tyrian émigré to Rhodes
Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the S ...
. The Louvre's website adds that a comparable work uncovered in 1977 in Pompeii
Pompeii (, ) was an ancient city located in what is now the ''comune'' of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was burie ...
, in the house of C. Julius Polybius, corroborates the hypothesis of an archaizing pastiche, made for a Roman client in the 1st century BCE.
The study of ancient Greek sculpture during the past few decades has moved away from the traditional practice of identifying sculptures based on brief literary descriptions and attempting to recognize the characteristic manner of some famous names as reflected in reproductions of their work and variants based on their style, to concentrate instead on the socio-political world in which sculpture was created and other less subjective criteria.
References and Corresponding Notes
Further reading
*Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, "The bronze Apollo from Piombino" ''Antike Plastik'' 7 pp 43–75. (1967). *R. Lullies and M. Hirmer, ''Greek Sculpture'' (New York) 1960. {{DEFAULTSORT:Apollo Of Piombino 5th-century BC Greek sculptures category:Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures of the Louvre Art of Magna Graecia Bronze sculptures in Paris Sculptures of Apollo Ancient Greek bronze statues of the classical period Archaeological discoveries in Italy Statues in France Hellenistic and Roman bronzes Nude sculptures 1832 archaeological discoveries