Apollo Citharoedus of the Casa Sassi

This is probably the earliest of Gossart’s Roman studies. The drawing was made after a Roman copy of a Hellenistic sculpture representing Apollo with his cithara or lyre. During the first half of the sixteenth century, this sculpture was in the collection of Decidio and Fabio Sassi and displayed in the courtyard of the Casa Sassi, as recorded in a drawing by Maerten van Heemskerck.

The sculpture was acquired in 1546 from Fabio Sassi by Odoardo Farnese who had the missing left arm and the lower right arm completed before 1552. Gossart’s drawing does not show the sculpture as he must have seen it in Rome in 1508-09 as it was recorded by an anonymous Netherlandish artist before any restorations were undertaken. He completed Apollo’s lower right arm and entire left arm, and replaced the lyre with an ornamented throne and extended the sculpture’s drapery. It was not uncommon for artists to complete ancient sculpture when representing it: Marcantonio Raimondi’s print of the same Apollo Citharoedus completed the arms of the sculpture in a different way.