Mercury or Hermes Belvedere is one of the masterpieces of the Vatican Belvedere ( Pius Clement Museum ), which for a long time was mistaken for the image of Antinous and was called Antinous Belvedere .
In 1543, Pope Paul III purchased a statue for 1000 ducats from a man whose estate was under the walls of the castle of St. Angela Probably it was there that she was discovered. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fame spread throughout Europe: Charles I Stuart , Louis XIV, and Peter I ordered marble copies for themselves. Poussin saw in him the ideal of classical proportions, and Winkelmann (who took the statue for the image of Meleager ) particularly admired the elaboration of the face.
Since Ennio Quirino Visconti, it has been considered proven that the sculpture depicts the god Hermes . An idealized face thrown over the shoulder of the mantle and a relaxed counterpost indicate that the original for this copy of Adrian’s reign could be Praxiteles’s lost work like Hermes and Dionysus .
Reading Literature
- Brummer, Hans Henrik, 1970. The Statue Court in the Vatican Belvedere (Stockholm).
- Haskell, Francis, and Nicholas Penny, 1981. Taste and the Antique: the Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (Yale University Press), cat. no. 4, pp 141–43.
- Helbig, Wolfgang, 1963-72. Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen der klassistischer Altertümer in Rom , (Tübingen) 4th ed., I, pp 190–91.
Links
- Wikimedia Commons has media related to Antina Belvedere