Leto with the Infant Apollo

Leto has been put back together twice. The first time, in the mid-1950s, restorers assembled her from dozens of fragments found at Veii in 1916, and the result stayed very incomplete, with gaps in the drapery and a face that no longer sat correctly on the neck and shoulders.

The second time began in May 2022, and the museum set up the workshop in the gallery so that visitors could watch. The restorer Sante Guido, who had earlier treated the Apollo and the Herakles from the same temple roof, removed the old protective coating, and the clay and pigments were analysed. He then remodelled the area of the neck and chin so that the face and the back of the head could return to their proper place.

What emerges is a mother carrying her child. Leto holds the infant Apollo in her arms, a scene usually linked to the serpent Python, her persecutor, which Apollo would later kill.