Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo
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The Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo is a lifesize[1] marble kouros formerly in the collection of the comte Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier (1752-1817), member of the académie française and French ambassador to the Sublime Porte from 1784 until the fall of the monarchy,[2] now conserved in the British Museum. [3] The nude sculpture is an Imperial Roman copy of a Greek bronze original that would have dated, judging from its style, about 460-450 BCE.
[edit] Notes
- ^ 1.82m.
- ^ Choiseul-Gouffier visited Athens on his way, where he coveted the Parthenon's metopes, obtained a firman, as Elgin did later, to remove antiquities from the Acropolis, and sent to France a part of the Parthenon frieze which was two metres long. He published his impressions as Voyage Pittoresque en Grèce (Brussels 1782), often reprinted, and republished as late as 1842, as Voyage pittoresque dans l’Empire Ottomane. In Constantinople he gathered about him a semi-formal academy where gentlemen engaged in recording the beauties and treasures of the city gathered. See Chantal Grell, "Les ambiguités du philhellenisme: L'ambassade du comte de Choiseul-Gouffier auprès de la sublime porte (1784-1792)" Dix-huitième siècle, 27 (1995) pp 223-235. His marble bust of Marcus Aurelius, found by the French consul Louis Fauvel in Attica in 1789, was sold in 1818; it was later acquired by the Musée du Louvre. See also French Wikipedia:Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier
- ^ Inv. no. 209.
