PLATE XLI
The Apollo Belvedere
The position of the god, standing as he is with his feet well apart and extending one hand forward while the other drops almost to his side, suggests that he has just shot an arrow from his bow and with his eye is following its distant flight. This interpretation is certainly in harmony with other representations of him, although here he seems to be playing the rôle of archer before a throng of admirers rather than to be engaged in the serious business of hitting a living mark, and although, too, almost all of his individual characteristics have been idealized away. From a marble (a copy of a Hellenistic bronze) in the Belvedere of the Vatican (Brunn-Bruckmann, Denkmäler griechischer und römischer Sculptur, No. 419).
