#leochares

Some watercolor studies... It's been ages since I broke out the watercolor set, and it took me a FEW times to finally remember how to use them, but I'm pleased with how these turned out!

Of course they're lil studies from Apollo Belvedere and Caravaggio's Bacchus.

My butthole was CLENCHED doing these I was GRIPPING the side of my chair like... Don't fuck it up don't fuck it up don't fuck it up... BUT we persevered and honestly I had a lot of fun. I'll probably try to do more again.

So, I actually intended a longer answer to this, but I can't return it to the "asks" queue, because I accidentally posted it with a reply meant for another ask. So I'll give the short answer. But first, here is the Leochares bust to which the asker refers. It's perhaps better known as the Akropolis Head (of Alexander). It is, as you can see, the model for the old cover of Dancing with the Lion 1: Becoming.

So, how accurate is it?

Medium. It shows what we might today call photoshopping, because it's tweaked to better suit the traditional cannons of male ephebe beauty. The face is oval, the mouth small and bow-shaped, the eyes larger than average.

But it's still clearly an Alexander, not a generic ephebe. The hair is not as tightly coiled, for instance; the chin looks like his in other statues. The eyes, although larger, have similar eyebrows. Compare that statue to the Azara Herm, which may be the closest likeness.

Apollo

1 artist unknown, Roman copy (c120CE) of a Greek bronze after Leochares (c350BCE) marble 224cm

2 Marcantonio Raimondi (1470/82-1534) Italian The Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican his left hand resting on the tree trunk around which coils a python (c1510–27) engraving

3 Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) German Adam and Eve (1507) oil on panel, each 209x81cm

A    metmuseum.org    The Apollo Belvedere was discovered near Rome in the late fifteenth century. Possibly a second-century marble copy of a bronze original by the Greek sculptor Leochares, the statue was immediately appreciated as a masterpiece and showered with praise. Probably once in the private collection of Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere (later Pope Julius II, r. 1503–13), it was moved to the Vatican in 1509 and placed, in 1511, in the Cortile del Belvedere, from which it derives its name. Raimondi's print became an important vehicle through which knowledge of the statue was transmitted far beyond the Vatican. He is famous for his many engravings after the designs of Raphael, including images such as the Judgment of Paris (19.74.1), scenes that, like the Apollo, illustrate Renaissance interest in classical antiquity and mythology. Here, Raimondi's mastery for replicating the effects of light on marble produces a convincing impression of the statue's form. Many artists incorporated the Apollo's much-lauded pose into their own work. Albrecht Dürer reverses the position of the figure's limbs and Apollo becomes Adam, reaching for the fruited branch offered by Eve in the 1504 engraving . A similar figure of Apollo, whose outstretched arm grasps—too late—a fleeing nymph, appears in the 1625 marble group Apollo and Daphne by the Roman Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680).

Detail of an antique photograph of the Apollo Belvedere, a 2nd century CE Roman marble copy of an original Greek bronze that would have dated to the 4th century BCE. The photograph was taken by Joseph Spithöver on March 8, 1867, according to a handwritten note on the back.

The Diana of Versailles, statue of the Greek goddess Artemis (Latin: Diana), with a deer, Louvre Museum in Paris. It is a Roman copy (1st or 2nd century AD) of a lost Greek bronze original attributed to Leochares, c. 325 BC.