Belvedere Apollo and Medici Venus

Belvedere Apollo and Medici Venus.

A pair of engravings made by Pietro Fontana, identified as Apollo di Belvedere and Venere de Medici; published by Luigi Bardi in around 1820.

The statue known as the Belvedere Apollo was transferred to the Vatican when Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere was elected Pope as Julius II (1503-1513) and has been there ever since. The work has been dated to mid-way through the 2nd century A.D. and is considered to be a copy of an original bronze statue of 330-320 B.C. by Leochares, one of the artists who worked on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The Venus de' Medici is a five foot high Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. On this occasion it is a 1st-century BC marble copy of Greek bronze, made by a sculptor following in the footsteps of Praxiteles, one of the leading Greek sculptors of the 4th century B.C. Highly regarded by the time of the Grand Tour, Luca Giordano made hundreds of drawings of it, Samuel Rogers made daily appointments with it, Zoffany included it in his 1778 Tribuna of the Uffizi, and Lord Byron devoted five stanzas of Childe Harold to describing it. The sculpture is now held in the collection of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Pietro Fontana was an Italian engraver born in 1762 and working in Rome. He specialized in subjects dealing with the Vatican and the Papacy and was a member of the Accademia di San Luca. He started his career as a student of Raffaello Morghen, and is best known for his complete series of engravings of the sculptures of Canova. He died in Rome in 1837.

o.s:24.25 in x 19.25 in.

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