An icon of classical beauty, the
Apollo Belvedere of the Vatican Museums, will once again be
visible to the public after five-year-long restoration work.
The statue portraying the god Apollo having just shot an arrow
with his bow was restored to re-establish its solidity, using
among other things a carbon and steel bar inserted in its base
said Guy Devreux, the head of the Vatican Museums' Stone
Materials Restoration Laboratory.
Plaster fragments dating back to the 5th and 4th century BC
found among the ruins of the imperial palace of Baia north of
Naples were also used to rebuild a hand of the statue, replacing
one created during restoration work carried out in the 16th
century by Giovannangelo Montorsoli after the statue was
discovered in Rome in 1489.
The restoration of the statue - which was made by a copyist
workshop that was active in Rome in the first decades of the 2nd
century A., replicating a bronze masterpiece made in Greece
around 330 B.C. - cost 150,000 euros in addition to the 100,000
for the renovation project and was partly funded by the Patrons
of the Art in the Vatican Museums, said the museums' director
Barbara Jatta.
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