Apollo Sauroktonos
Unknown (Roman copy after Praxiteles) (Praxiteles active c. 375-335 BC) · 25-50 AD
A slender adolescent Apollo leans against a tree trunk, his weight on one leg, and watches a lizard climbing the bark. In his lost right hand he held a dart, ready to pin the creature to the tree. His hair, bound with a ribbon, is drawn into a low bun. The god of light and of sudden death is shown here as a boy at play, and the sinuous curve of the body is the hallmark of Praxiteles. The lizard's head, the right forearm and hand, the left arm and hand and the right ankle were remade in marble long ago.
Pliny the Elder records a bronze Apollo the lizard slayer by Praxiteles, made around three hundred and fifty BC, and this Parian marble copy, carved in Italy in the second quarter of the first century AD, is one of the finest of the many Roman versions. It was in the Borghese collection in Rome by the mid seventeenth century, and came to the Louvre in 1807 when Napoleon bought the collection from his brother in law Camillo Borghese. Walk around it: the lean of the body only makes sense with the tree.
Did You Know? Sauroktonos means lizard killer: the god of prophecy is shown hunting a lizard, a creature the ancients associated with divination.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.