Constantin Hansen

Drawn during the artist´s stay in Rome 1830-38.

The Belvedere Torso, located in the Vatican, is a fragment of a nude male statue, signed prominently on the front of the base by an Athenian sculptor "Apollonios son of Nestor", who is unmentioned in ancient literature. It was once believed to be a 1st century BC original, but is now believed to be a copy of an older statue, likely dating to the 2nd century BC. The statue is documented in the collection of Cardinal Prospero Colonna in Monte Cavallo, Rome from the 1430s. A generation later it began its career as a catalyst of the classical revival. Around 1500 it was in the possession of the sculptor Andrea Bregno. It was in Palazzo Colonna at the Sack of Rome in 1527, when it suffered some mutilation. How it entered the Vatican collections is uncertain, but by the mid-16th century it was installed in the Cortile del Belvedere, where it joined the Apollo Belvedere and other famous Roman sculptures. "The Laocoön took two months from unearthing to Belvedere canonization," the arthistorian Leonard Barkan observed, "the Torso took a hundred years.". The figure has traditionally been identified as a Heracles, seated on an animal skin, though in recent studies, the skin has been identified as that of a panther, not the Nemean lion, occasioning other identifications. The exact figure represented remains open to debate (possibilities include Hercules, Polyphemus and Marsyas, among others).
The contorted pose of the torso and musculature were highly influential on late Renaissance, Mannerist, and Baroque artists, including Michelangelo and Raphael. Michelangelo's admiration of the Torso was widely known in his lifetime. Legend has it that Pope Julius II requested that Michelangelo complete the statue fragment with arms, legs and a face. He respectfully declined, stating that it was too beautiful to be altered, and instead used it as the inspiration for the majority of the figures in the Sistine Chapel, including, but not limited to, the Sibyls and Prophets bordering the ceiling. The Belvedere Torso remains one of the few ancient sculptures admired in the 17th and 18th centuries whose reputation has not suffered in modern times.
Early drawings of the Torso were made by Amico Aspertini, ca 1500-03, by Martin van Heemskerck, ca. 1532-36 and by Hendrick Goltzius, ca 1590. The Belvedere Torso entered the visual repertory of connoisseurs and artists unable to go to Rome through the engraving of it by Giovanni Antonio da Brescia, ca 1515. Several small bronze reductions of it were made during the 16th century, often restoring it as a seated Hercules.