Detached Creature from the Cleveland Apollo: Apollo Sauroktonos (Lizard-Slayer) or Apollo the Python-Slayer
attributed to Praxiteles (Greek, Athenian, c. 400–330 BCE)
or Follower
c. 350–200 BCE
- Medium
- bronze, copper and stone inlay
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- Overall: 14.8 x 9.4 x 3.6 cm (5 13/16 x 3 11/16 x 1 7/16 in.)
- Culture
- Greece, Athens
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Greek and Roman Art
- Credit line
- Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Both snakelike and lizardlike in appearance, the creature has a scaly head and four small feet. These are attached asymmetrically to its long and sinuous body, some with carefully delineated toes, others less detailed. The smallest foot falls behind a line bisecting the creature, where radiography shows a pin joining two separately cast sections. Although the bronze of the front and back halves is quite similar, the front half shows greater porosity (air bubbles). Perhaps the original back half was damaged during casting, necessitating a new or re-casting of that portion of the creature, with a smaller, relocated fourth leg.
