Conserving a Monumental Bronze: The Apollo Saettante

To examine the Apollo Saettante with digital imaging tools, determine what previous conservation interventions had been done, and restore its stability, structural integrity, and surface. We wanted to see what these can tell us about the many facets of the ancient world, as well as how people have historically interacted with and viewed antiquity to make it their own.

Discovery

A statue of Apollo in the pose of an archer was one of the first large-scale bronzes to be excavated at Pompeii, Italy. It was found in fragments in 1817 and 1818, centuries after the city was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

Ancient Manufacture

The statue of Apollo was made using the lost-wax technique, which was widely employed in the ancient Mediterranean to produce large-scale bronze sculptures. The process involved creating a working model in wax and casting it in bronze in separate pieces. The resultant metal parts were then joined together and the assembled statue's surface was finished.

Ancient Repairs

A puzzling feature of the statue of Apollo is a large hole in the lower back. Covered by the sculpted drapery, it only became apparent through study of the statue's X-rays and endoscope photographs. The hole was intentionally created, but its purpose is uncertain; it may have been an attempt to economize on metal. What is clear is that it caused problems during the casting, for it prevented an even distribution of molten bronze. Concentrated around the gap are numerous metal patches that were used to repair defects on the newly cast bronze.

19th-Century Repairs

​​When the fragments of the Apollo were found in 1817, it was accepted practice to reconstruct the statue. The figure was reassembled around an internal iron armature that was inserted through the left leg. Individual fragments were joined together using iron straps secured with brass screws and solder. Some gaps were repaired with pieces of modern metal that were shaped to fit. The restorers aimed to hide signs of their intervention. The screws would have been visible on the exterior of the statue, which had been extensively cleaned. The final step, therefore, was to produce an overall surface coloring that looked ancient and allowed the screws to blend in with the surrounding metal.

Objectives

As part of a collaboration with the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the sculpture was brought to the Getty Villa for conservation in 2009. What began as a project to clean the Apollo and ensure its stability for display developed into a rare opportunity to investigate its conditions and improve upon its previous interventions.

The conservation of the Apollo at Getty focused primarily on two objectives. The first was to secure the join at the right ankle, where 19th-century repairs had failed. The second was to address structural concerns regarding the sections of drapery hanging from both arms.

Drapery

Study revealed that the drapery ends were neither ancient nor from the statue's initial restoration before 1825, but were added during a later phase of work completed in the mid-1860s. A conservator’s primary goal is to address any factors that are or could potentially be damaging to an object, and even before beginning work on the Apollo, we understood that the drapery ends hanging from its arms needed attention. They were clearly placing a significant strain on the figure, and we later discovered that their combined weight is around 80 pounds—almost as much as the rest of the statue. As the project developed and we studied these drapery ends in detail, we gleaned valuable insights about the restoration of the ancient statue after it had been unearthed.

Historical Reconstruction

Although the original approach to the Apollo’s conservation was reparative, the project ended up revealing new information about historical repairs both in antiquity and in the 19th century. The information gathered during this process has become part of a larger Getty initiative on understanding conservation processes of large scale bronzes.

X-Radiography

One of the first methods of analysis was X-radiography of the whole figure. Besides allowing us to see “inside” Apollo, the X-ray images showed that the two bronze drapery ends were much thicker than the rest of the statue—which explained their disproportionate weight. In addition, we could also see very clearly that the drapery ends had been attached to the arms with a series of screws.

Visual Analysis

Once we had removed the drapery ends, we encountered holes in the arms, but they did not all correlate with the screws that were used to attach the sections of the bronze drapery. On the right arm, for example, there is a third hole that’s somewhat smaller than the other two.This suggested that there had been two different interventions.

UV Photography

This helped us to identify the extent to which materials such as lead solder and colophony had been used both as reinforcements and to conceal the joins. Having conducted these visual—and non-invasive—studies, we made the decision to remove the two drapery ends for further analysis. X-ray Fluorescence (XRF) was employed on the surface to examine the major constituents of the alloy composition and to identify representative or significant sampling sites for more quantitative methods. Polarized Light Microscopy (PLM) was used to examine the microstructure of the bronze from selected areas, while electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) were used to quantify all major, minor, and trace elements.

Endoscopic Examination

The hollow interior of the figure was closely studied with an endoscope in order to look for signs of the earlier phases of the manufacturing process which, during finishing, would have been removed from the exterior surface. In addition, this imaging technique was used to identify any surviving remains of core material that, among other things, could assist in dating by thermo-luminescence (TL) or organic inclusions for possible carbon dating.

Replacement

The questions raised in studying the drapery were critical to our understanding of the statue and the phases of its restoration. But as is so often the case, the answers we obtained only prompted new lines of inquiry. One of the most pressing, of course, was how to display the statue once we had removed the bronze drapery ends. We decided to fabricate replacement parts in epoxy, using 19th-century archival images to guide us. These new drapery ends are mechanically attached to the statue using the pre-existing holes in the arms, and can be removed without any risk of damage to the ancient bronze.

Erik Risser, Conservator, Antiquities Conservation

Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli