Detached Creature from the Cleveland Apollo: Apollo Sauroktonos (Lizard-Slayer) or Apollo the Python-Slayer (c. 350–200 BCE): Art, History and Details

Detached Creature from the Cleveland Apollo: Apollo Sauroktonos (Lizard-Slayer) or Apollo the Python-Slayer (c. 350–200 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Praxiteles (Greek, Athenian, c. 400–330 BCE); Follower.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the 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.

Object facts

• Title: Detached Creature from the Cleveland Apollo: Apollo Sauroktonos (Lizard-Slayer) or Apollo the Python-Slayer
• Date: c. 350–200 BCE
• Creator attribution: Praxiteles (Greek, Athenian, c. 400–330 BCE); Follower
• Culture: Greece, Athens
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: bronze, copper and stone inlay
• Dimensions: Overall: 14.8 x 9.4 x 3.6 cm (5 13/16 x 3 11/16 x 1 7/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 2004.30.c

A detail from the museum

Despite its small size, the creature was cast in two solid parts.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.
• Stephen Ongpin Fine Art, and Stephen Ongpin. Renaissance to Futurism: A Selection of Italian Drawings, 1500-1920. 2015, 6.
• Neils, Jennifer. “Praxiteles to Caravaggio: The Apollo Sauroktonos Redefined.” Art Bulletin 99, no. 4 (December 2017): 10-30.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.