The bronze art treasure, Apollo Saettante, Apollo the Archer, is visiting Los Angeles through the summer, far from his home in the Real Museo Borbonico in Naples.
The luminous statue arrived on the cliffs of Malibu, California, where he received a tender beauty treatment from Getty Museum conservationist Erik Risser and curator David Saunders, antiquities specialists working in collaboration.
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Originally a fixture of the Temple of Apollo in Pompeii, the dear boy, his arms upraised to hold a bow and arrow that have long since disappeared, was discovered in bits and pieces in 1817 after being buried in ash by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. Reassembled, the slender bronze archer underwent various patch-and-paste jobs over the last two hundred years. The Getty’s boffo preservationists, using x-ray radiography, ultra-violet photograph, endoscopic examination and good old-fashioned book research, restored and spruced him up, and now he’s on view, spanking new at 3,000 years old (see before/after, left and right photos above).
Who says L.A. doesn’t offer the best nip-and-tuck in the world?
And he’s a beauty, his exquisite dark-olive skin shimmers; he’s a smooth-sailing, heavy-metal god.
Yet another Apollo frolics our way this April, to our anticipation and delight. He’s the charming, debonair and, oh heck, legendary and personable New York City Ballet dancer, Jacques d’Amboise, known for his execution of the great neo-classic role that Balanchine fashioned for Serge Lifar in 1928.
Promoting his latest book, “I Was a Dancer,” d’Amboise will chat with ballet maven Sasha Anawalt, lucky woman, at the cozy Mark Taper Auditorium of downtown’s Central Library. Here’s Alastair Macaulay’s book review in the New York Times.
As spring arrives in Los Angeles, the gods smile ~!
Apollo from Pompeii: Investigating an Ancient Bronze | The Getty Villa
Jacques d’Amboise book talk | ALOUD | Central Library | April 20