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

Detached Left Forearm and Hand of 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:

Broken from the rest of the left arm some distance above the wrist, this fragment preserves much of the left forearm and the entire hand. The fingernails and folds of the palm are finely modeled, giving the hand a lifelike appearance. The positioning of the fingers and thumb suggests that the hand once gently grasped something, perhaps a slender branch of the now-lost tree.

Object facts

• Title: Detached Left Forearm and Hand of 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: 25.9 x 8.8 x 8.7 cm (10 3/16 x 3 7/16 x 3 7/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 2004.30.b

A detail from the museum

The thumb and fingers are solid bronze, while the rest of this section is hollow.

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.

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.