The Cleveland Museum of Art Collections New Acquisition

  Apollo Sauroktonos > The Cleveland Apollo
 
 
Attributed to Praxiteles
(Greek, Athens, about 400/390–330/325 B.C.)
Apollo Sauroktonos ("Lizard-Slayer"),
probably 350–275 B.C. possibly 275 B.C.-A.D. 300
Bronze, copper and stone inlay
The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund 2004.30

The Cleveland Apollo

The life-size bronze statue of Apollo Sauroktonos ("Lizard-Slayer"), acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art, may be the only surviving original sculpture actually produced in Praxiteles' workshop.

The complete sculpture most likely once showed the young god pulling back a laurel sapling with his raised left hand, while with his right he held an arrow at waist level. The term "Lizard-Slayer" refers to the lizard that climbed up the small tree, as the adolescent Apollo waited for the precise moment to strike the reptile with his arrow.

The newly acquired statue is missing the tree, the right arm from above the elbow, and the left arm from the shoulder. The left hand and part of the forearm exist, detached from the figure, as does the lizard.

Two largely complete Roman marble copies of the work, one in the Louvre, and the other in the Vatican, preserve the composition, except for the stout tree that was not part of the bronze original.

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