The Cleveland Museum of Art Collections New Acquisition

  Apollo Sauroktonos > Pliny: Eye Witness from the 1st century A.D.
 
 
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

Pliny: Eye Witness from the 1st century A.D.

Although Praxiteles was more successful, and therefore more famous for his marble sculptures, he nevertheless also created very beautiful works in bronze…. He made a youthful Apollo called the Sauroktonos ("Lizard-Slayer"), waiting in ambush for a creeping lizard, close at hand, with an arrow.
—Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book 34.69ff., 1st century A.D.

The Cleveland Apollo may be the very sculpture seen and described by the Roman author Pliny the Elder when he described what he considered to be the original in the 1st century A.D. (Natural History, book 34.69ff.). Pliny emphasized that although Praxiteles was more celebrated for his marble sculptures, the Apollo Sauroktonos was among several of his beautiful works in bronze.

The sculpture in the Cleveland Museum of Art is the only known life-size bronze version of Apollo Sauroktonos. Technical features such as the way it was cast and repaired in antiquity, as well as finishing touches like the copper inlay of the lips and nipples, and the stone insert for the right eye (the left is a restoration), are consistent with a date in the 4th century B.C.

Because of these features, and the extremely high quality of the modeling and casting, it is probable that the sculpture is a Greek original, although it might have been possible to cast and finish such a work during the Hellenistic or Roman periods.

If the sculpture is Greek, the ancient eyewitness account by Pliny would make The Cleveland Apollo a unique masterpiece, as there exists no other large Greek bronze original sculpture anywhere in the world that can be securely attributed to any Greek master sculptor through literary sources.

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