Belvedere Torso

Copy in plaster acquired in 1898. The sculpture is seated on a loin’s skin, which might refer to Hercules slaying the Nemean Lion. Since the Renaissance artist Michelangelo refused to produce the missing parts of the sculpture, students in art academies have had to confront it. The incompleteness stimulates the imagination and ignites the creative process. Attempts at securing a date on the creation of it ran into difficulties of an ideological kind, since it appears to be carved in a period, when Greece was under Roman rule. The lack of freedom was considered incomparable with the existence of such a lively sculpture. The inscription underneath the figure reads: “Apollonius, son of Nestor, Athenian”.

A plaster cast in the Royal Cast Collection of SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark, scanned in 3D. SMK publishes the scan with the Public Domain Mark: no known copyright. SMK does not endorse ModelsXi.