From Antique, Italy or France, late 17th-early 18th century Apollo of the Belvedere Bronze figure Standing on a bronze base and a square ormolu pedestal; dark brown patina with light brown highlights H. 53.5 cm (21 in.) Total height: 58 cm (22 ¾ in.) Provenance: Former Belgian private collection ; Former Charles Ratton collection, Paris ; Christie's sale, Paris, 1 December 2016, lot 113. Exhibition: Lost Treasures of Strawberry Hill: Masterpieces from Horace Walpole's collection, Strawberry Hill House, London, 20 October 2018 - 24 February 2019. Comparative bibliography : F. Haskell & N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500 - 1900, Yale, 1981. J. Warren, 'Florence, Paris, Rome: Cultural crossing points', in Beauty & Power: Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Peter Marino Collection, exh. cat., Wallace Collection, London, 2010, p. 21. A bronze figure of Apollo Belvedere, after the Antique, Italian or French, late 17th/ early 18th century *Information for buyers: Lot from outside the EEC (indicated by a circle in the catalogue): to the commissions and taxes indicated in the general conditions of purchase, import VAT must be added (5.5% of the hammer price). *Information to the buyers : Lot from outside the EEC (indicated by a circle in the catalogue) : an import tax (5,5 % of the hammer price) will be due, in addition to the commissions and taxes indicated in the general conditions of purchase. This magnificently modelled bronze statuette is based on the famous antique marble from the Courtyard of the Belvedere in the Vatican Museums. Specialists disagree as to whether it is a Greek original or a Roman copy of a fourth-century Greek bronze sculpted in Hadrian's time. Whatever the case, the Apollo remains one of the most famous statues of Antiquity and has been praised by connoisseurs ever since it was placed in the Belvedere, around 1511. When the work arrived in Paris in July 1798, having been ceded by Pope Pius IV to the French as part of the "Treaty of Tolentino", the Apollo was triumphantly paraded through the streets of Paris in a box decorated with garlands. However, the work was sent back to Rome in January 1816 (Penny and Haskell, op. cit., pp.148-50). The history of castings of the Belvedere Apollo in France begins with the reign of Francis I (r. 1515-47) who, between 1542 and 1545, commissioned Primaticcio and Jacopo Vignola to make life-size bronze casts of ten of the greatest antique sculptures from the Cortile del Belvedere, including the Apollo, for his palace at Fontainebleau (Warren, loc. cit.,).