Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Apollo.
The gallery
Apollo Belvedere
Roman copy after Leochares, c. 120–140 AD
A marble statue of Apollo shown just after loosing an arrow, traditionally considered a Roman copy after a Greek bronze attributed to Leochares. For centuries it was hailed as the supreme ideal of classical male beauty. It stands in the Vatican Museums, Rome.
Apollo and Daphne
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, 1622–1625
A life-size marble sculpture capturing the instant Apollo overtakes the fleeing nymph Daphne as she turns into a laurel tree, bark and leaves sprouting from her fingertips. A virtuoso masterpiece of Baroque sculpture, it is displayed at the Galleria Borghese, Rome.
The Charioteer of Delphi
Unknown, c. 470 BC
A rare surviving Greek bronze of a victorious charioteer, dedicated at Apollo's sanctuary at Delphi to commemorate a chariot-race triumph. Its calm, austere features exemplify the Early Classical severe style. It is preserved in the Delphi Archaeological Museum.
On screen
In music & on stage
Apollo
Igor Stravinsky
Stravinsky's Apollon musagète for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes shows the young god taught by the Muses — cool, luminous classicism after the shock of the Rite.
Apollo et Hyacinthus
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Mozart's first true opera, written at eleven: Apollo's love for Hyacinthus, the jealous Zephyrus, and the boy reborn as a flower — Latin school drama set to precocious music.
Daphne
Richard Strauss
Strauss's bucolic tragedy ends as Apollo transforms the fleeing Daphne into the laurel — the god of music mourning the voice he has just silenced.