Shedding New Light on an Ancient Bronze Figure

Since its acquisition nearly 20 years ago, the Cleveland Apollo, a rare example of a nearly life-sized ancient bronze sculpture, has become a CMA favorite.

The young Greek god welcomes visitors from the Ames Family Atrium into the historic 1916 building, and many stop to admire or ponder the work.

Recently, though, in October 2021 and again in January and February 2022, Apollo was off view as part of the CMA's latest research campaign, aimed at understanding more about both the original manufacture and modern reconstruction of the sculpture.

The Cleveland Apollo is the only surviving large-scale bronze of its iconographical type, known as Apollo Sauroktonos (Apollo the Lizard-Slayer). This name comes from the Roman author Pliny the Elder (first century AD).

Describing bronze works made by the Athenian sculptor Praxiteles, active in the mid-fourth century BC, Pliny mentions “the youthful Apollo, known as the Sauroktonos, because he is aiming an arrow at a lizard [sauros in Greek] which is stealing towards him.”

For centuries, scholars have connected this description with numerous artworks — especially Roman marble sculptures —showing the young Greek god Apollo in a distinctive pose and hairstyle, standing on his right leg and leaning to his left.

With his left arm raised, he reaches toward a tree and looks toward a climbing lizard. The Cleveland Apollo belongs to this group, since it clearly shows the adolescent god similarly posed and coiffed.

The left bronze forearm and hand also survive, along with an unusual serpentine creature, all once part of the sculpture. In addition, a small flat bronze base remains, whether from the original sculpture or a later adaptation. Certainly, a tree/other support has now been lost.

Even before its acquisition in 2004, scholars have had much to say about the Cleveland Apollo.  Some suggest it could even be the very sculpture seen by Pliny, perhaps slaying the mythical Python rather than a mere lizard, while others have thought it a later, Roman sculpture.

Study has shown that it is a hollow-cast sculpture, made using the indirect lost-wax technique. A sculpture this size would have been made in multiple sections, cast separately from molds then joined together through a process called flow or fusion welding. Note the ovals  across the top of the right foot, a sign of the pooled bronze poured to join two sections.

Other joins are more difficult to spot, but a new radiograph shows that the cast section of the head, for example, extends to midneck. Though no evidence of the join appears on the surface, one missing ancient patch on the back of the neck may fall on or very near the line.

Such patches, often rectangular, appear on many other large-scale bronzes, hammered into shallowly excavated areas of the surface to cover small holes or other casting flaws.

When new, both welds and patches would have been carefully polished and integrated into the sculpture, making them even more difficult to spot. More than 20 patches appear on the Cleveland Apollo, many of them near the right hip.

Other interesting technical features include the highly realistic hair and fingernails, which show evidence of detailed finishing; with a technique called chasing, lines were refined and made more visible using a sharp tool.

The lips and nipples, now colored green from corrosion, were further embellished through inlay in a purer copper alloy, which would have appeared as pink as a freshly minted penny, contrasting with the surrounding bronze skin color.

A hint of the original color appears where the surface has been damaged, revealing the base metal. X-ray fluorescence, a non-destructive form of analysis performed in these areas, shows the elemental makeup of each material, confirming these visible differences.

Just as radiographs permit us to see the joins between original cast sections, they also reveal where pieces of the sculpture were fractured and later rejoined with modern adhesives and a stainless steel and Plexiglas armature.

Surprisingly, a look inside the sculpture with a borescope, or a camera on the end of a long, fiberoptic cable, showed that the last restorer used cardboard packaging from ladies’ stockings as backing to fill a small hole in Apollo’s hip!