
Praxiteles
Apollo the Python-Slayer, c. 350 BC

Although Praxiteles was more successful, and therefore more famous for his marble sculptures, he …

One of the most important sculptors of ancient Greece, Praxiteles is best known for his marble sculptures, although he also worked in bronze. He produced elegant representations of gods and mythological figures, as well as portrait sculptures, pioneering a new humanizing style that transformed the detached divinities of the past into playful, sensuous youths. His most celebrated work, Aphrodite of Cnidus, depicted the titular god in the nude, a bold and influential innovation at the time. In his delicately modeled Apollo, the god is represented as a boy, leaning against a tree trunk in a relaxed pose.


Although Praxiteles was more successful, and therefore more famous for his marble sculptures, he nevertheless also created very beautiful works in bronze. He made a youthful Apollo called the Sauroktonos (Lizard-Slayer), waiting in ambush for a creeping lizard, close at hand, with an arrow. -Pliny the Elder, 1st …

One of the most important sculptors of ancient Greece, Praxiteles is best known for his marble sculptures, although he also worked in bronze. He produced elegant representations of gods and mythological figures, as well as portrait sculptures, pioneering a new humanizing style that transformed the detached divinities of the past into playful, sensuous youths. His most celebrated work, Aphrodite of Cnidus, depicted the titular god in the nude, a bold and influential innovation at the time. In his delicately modeled Apollo, the god is represented as a boy, leaning against a tree trunk in a relaxed pose.