Apollo of Veii

On 19 May 1916, with Italy at war, the excavation at Veii, north of Rome, uncovered this Apollo in pieces. What struck the archaeologist in charge, Giulio Quirino Giglioli, was how the pieces lay, and he photographed them within hours. The broken statues had been set upright in a neat line along an embankment. His reading was that, when a Roman road was later cut through the sanctuary, someone had laid the old gods to rest with care, while much of the other rubble was tipped into the valley below.

Apollo once stood on the ridge of the temple roof. He strides forward barefoot, left arm thrust ahead, the other lowered, perhaps once holding a bow, and he is angry. Facing him stood Herakles, who had just captured a hind sacred to Apollo's sister Artemis. The colour survived the burial too, brown for the skin and white for the clothes, edged with black.