The campaignsSupport the Louvre | Become a Patron! | The campaigns | Apollo Kitharoidos

This large bronze statuette dating to the 2nd or 1st century BC is a superb depiction of Apollo, the Greek god of the arts, male beauty and light. It was likely part of the decoration of a Roman villa on the outskirts of Pompeii, destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The Apollo survived and lay buried beneath the volcanic ashes, which saved it from a second form of destruction as most classical bronzes were melted down from antiquity to the Middle Ages for their metal.

Identified in 1922 in the Durighello collection, the Apollo Kitharoidos from Pompeii remained in private French collections for nearly a century and was never shown to the general public. The Louvre holds two bronze figures of comparable size, which give us an idea of the statuary used to decorate Roman residences: a Mercury and a Hercules, discovered in Herculanum in the 18th century and gifted to Napoleon Bonaparte by Ferdinand IV, King of Naples and the Two Sicilies, in 1803. The acquisition of the Apollo Kitharoidos, listed as a French National Treasure in 2017, would complete this small corpus of exceptional ancient artworks unearthed in the villas destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

In 2020, more than 6,600 donors helped bring the Apollo Kitharoidos into the national collections.