Playing host to…the Apollo from Mantua

This Apollo from Mantua is just the first loan in a new initiative entitled “Playing host to...” aimed at encouraging Museums to exchange major works of art on a temporary basis and will provide visitors to the Capitoline Museums with unmissable opportunities to admire masterpieces that are not normally available to them as part of the museum's own collections and that will certainly compensate for those well-known works that are temporarily absent. The Apollo is a magnificent example of a marble sculpture that dates back to the period when Hadrian was Emperor (117-138 AD) and is one of the jewels in the antiquities collection of Mantua's Ducal Palace. On temporary exhibit for visitors to enjoy at the Capitoline Museums from 19 September 2008 to 6 January 2009, the Apollo replaces a bronze statue known as Camillo that the museum in Mantua has requested for its first full exhibition dedicated to the works of Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, nicknamed the “Antico”, a Renaissance sculptor of Bronzes whose work is often part of the artistic collections of the courts in northern Italy in the Po regions.