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| Belvedere Torso Roman marble sculpture of the 1st century BC, based on an earlier work Vatican Museums |
"Most visitors paid their homage to the Torso, but one of the earliest references to it makes it clear that it was not admired by the uncultivated (goffi), and its reputation was essentially an academic one. The fact that Michelangelo had not merely admired the Torso in the abstract but had actually 'discovered a certain principle [in it] ... which principle gave his works a grandeur of gusto equal to the best antiques' led to its becoming known as 'the school of Michelangelo'. This made a great impact on artists, as Maffei acknowledged – and as can be observed in many paintings and some statues. 'Hence you see alwaies a world of sculptors designing it out', wrote one seventeenth-century visitor to Rome."
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| J.M.W. Turner Belvedere Torso ca. 1789-93 student drawing in chalk - made in London from a cast Victoria & Albert Museum |
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| William Hilton Belvedere Torso ca. 1801-1839 drawing British Museum |
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| James Anderson Belvedere Torso ca. 1845-55 albumen silver print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| after Jan de Bisschop Belvedere Torso 1730s etching Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| after Jan de Bisschop Belvedere Torso, twice 1730s etching Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
"Reynolds told his students that "a mind elevated to the contemplation of excellence perceives in this defaced and shattered fragment, disjecti membra poetae, the traces of superlative genius, the reliques of a work on which succeeding ages can only gaze with inadequate admiration." Well over a hundred years earlier the Torso had been turned into the very symbol of the art of Sculpture: we find it, for instance in Jacques Buirette's Union of Painting and Sculpture (Louvre) – a marble relief (below) presented by him to the Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture in 1663 as a reception piece, and thereafter it is included in many allegories of the arts until well into the nineteenth century."
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| Jacques Buirette Union of Painting and Sculpture 1663 marble relief Louvre |
"Its fragmentary condition also gave the Torso symbolic significance of a quite different kind: the frontispiece of Perrier's anthology of 1638 portrayed a gaunt figure of Time remorselessly devouring the stump of its arm, as it had and would continue to devour the other famous statues which he illustrated."
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| François Perrier Frontispiece with Time devouring the arm of Belvedere Torso 1638 etching British Museum |
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| Ludovisi Mars Roman marble copy of earlier Hellenistic work Museo Nazionale Romano |
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| Anonymous Ludovisi Mars 18th century drawing British Museum |
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| Domenico de Rossi Ludovisi Mars ca. 1704 engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| James Anderson Ludovisi Mars ca. 1845-55 albumen silver print Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Eight versions of the marble figure-group below – called Pan and Apollo – were known in Rome. Other popular titles were Marsyas and Olympos ; Pan and Daphnis ; Satyr and Boy ; Satyr and Faun ; Silenus and Bacchus. Current belief maintains that the smaller figure holding pipes should not be identified as Apollo but as the shepherd Daphnis. The version from the Farnese collection (immediately below) was transferred to the National Museum in Naples at the end of the 19th century, along with many Farnese sculptures.
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| Pan and Apollo (Farnese version) Roman marble copy of earlier Hellenistic work Museo Archaeological Nazionale, Naples |
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| Anonymous engraver Pan and Apollo (Farnese version) ca. 1550-85 engraving British Museum |
In the same way and in the same period the Cesi/Ludovisi version of Pan and Apollo (below) was carried along when that collection also was surrendered to the state and transferred to the national museum in Rome.
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| Domenico de Rossi Pan and Apollo (Cesi/Ludovisi version) ca. 1704 engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |
"Du Bellay's description of a Satyr tempting a boy with a gift which the boy likes 'although the wild giver does not find favor with him' may refer to either the Cesi or the Farnese group both of which he could have seen in Rome between 1553 and 1557. It is also hard not to believe that Riccio's bronze statuette of a Satyr couple (below), although the approaches here are both heterosexual and reciprocal, was made without knowledge of some version of this group."
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| Andrea Riccio Satyr and Satyress ca. 1510-20 bronze statuette Victoria & Albert Museum |
– quote passages by Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny from Taste and the Antique (Yale University Press, 1981)