Young Apollo – Sculpture in La Serena

Apollo was one of the principal deities of Greek religion and was also worshipped by the Romans under the same name. He was the son of Zeus and Leto, as well as the twin brother of Artemis, and was associated with prophecy, music, healing, and archery. His sanctuary at Delphi, where the Greeks consulted his oracle, was the foremost centre of his prophetic cult. In Greek and Roman art he was frequently represented as a beardless youth, an appearance that distinguishes him from mature male gods.

Young Apollo represents the god as an adolescent nude in a relaxed pose. His raised right arm rests over his head, the torso follows a sinuous curve, and the left forearm leans on a tree trunk. In this work, Apollo's identity is conveyed by this established composition rather than by a narrative scene: the youthful body, lateral support, and arm lifted above the head place the sculpture within the Apollo Lykeios type.

The closest reference is the Apollino, also known as the Medici Apollo, preserved at the Uffizi Galleries under inventory number 1914 no. 229. The museum catalogues it as a mid-1st-century AD Roman replica in Parian marble of a 4th-century BC Greek composition traditionally attributed to Praxiteles. After a painting fell on the statue around 1840, Lorenzo Bartolini restored it; the Uffizi also identifies the right hand, the left arm below the elbow, part of the base, the nose, and the hair as modern reintegrations.

The La Serena marble closely repeats the Apollino's composition, including the raised arm, inclined head, curved stance, topknot, and tree-trunk support. Gabriel González Videla's memoirs record it as a 1.65-metre sculpture acquired in Rome that had previously decorated the Giuntini Palace in Florence. The same historical catalogue attributes the La Serena work to Lorenzo Bartolini and its Greek model to Kleomenes. The Uffizi's current catalogue does not support the latter attribution and instead links the Apollo Lykeios type traditionally to Praxiteles.

The memoirs are the documentary basis for crediting Bartolini in relation to the La Serena reproduction, but the sources reviewed do not provide a signature, workshop record, or exact carving date that would confirm this authorship independently. The sculpture entered the European group selected for Plan Serena, whose works were inaugurated on 31 October 1952; the precise reproduction method and individual installation date remain undocumented.