Let’s talk about the wine-soaked, bloodstained, sex-steamy world of the early medieval papacy.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, the sculpture became one of the world’s most celebrated sculptures. It was hailed by Johann Joachim Winckelmann as the best example of the perfection of the Greek aesthetic ideal. As a result, during his Italy campaign in 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte looted it and from 1798 onward it formed part of the collection in the Louvre during the First Empire. When Napoleon fell in 1815 the Apollo was repatriated to the Vatican. The Romantic Movement was harsh to the sculpture with William Hazlitt describing it as “positively bad”, John Ruskin also wrote of his disappointment with the sculpture. In 1969 a kind of epitaph was provided by noted art historian Kenneth Clark (1903–1983):

Sitting at the airport, heading off to #Rome the city where I was abused, the city where I suffered more than anywh…

Roma Sancta (1581).

Gregory Martin
Ed. di Storia e Letteratura, 1969