# The Cleveland Apollo: Apollo Sauroktonos (Lizard-Slayer) or Apollo the Python-Slayer > Attributed to Praxiteles, or a follower - c. 350 BCE; the museum's catalogue range is c. 350-200 BCE > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/praxiteles/cleveland-apollo-sauroktonos/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-04 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Attributed to Praxiteles, or a follower - **Date:** c. 350 BCE; the museum's catalogue range is c. 350-200 BCE - **Medium:** Bronze, with copper and stone inlay - **Dimensions:** Overall 150 x 50.3 x 66.8 cm. Bronze baseplate (2004.30.d) 0.5 x 45.8 x 40.3 cm. Detached left forearm and hand (2004.30.b) 25.9 x 8.8 x 8.7 cm. Detached creature (2004.30.c) 14.8 x 9.4 x 3.6 cm - **Object type:** Antiquity - **Period:** Greek, fourth century BCE, or Hellenistic - **Current location:** Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio - **Attribution:** disputed ## Summary A life-size bronze of a young Apollo, the only bronze version of a sculptural type that survives about twenty times in marble, bought by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2004 from a Geneva dealer for a price the museum has never published. Its owner before 1994 was a German lawyer who says he found it broken in the grounds of a family estate in what had been East Germany, and there is no document of any kind for it before that date.Greece said publicly that it had been fished out of the sea between Italy and Greece in the 1990s and got the Louvre to leave it out of a Praxiteles exhibition by threatening to withhold every loan it had promised. Fourteen years of metallurgy, published in full by the Getty in 2017, established that the figure had been in a fire, had never been in salt water, and had been soldered onto its display plate some time between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. The same analysis found that the lead in the bronze does not come from the Aegean.In 2013 the museum concluded that the creature at the god's feet is not the lizard Pliny describes but the Python of Delphi, and renamed the object accordingly. On that reading the sculpture is not a copy of a famous statue at all: it is the statue, and it stood at Delphi. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **c. 350 BCE-unknown** Unrecorded ancient setting; proposed as the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi `[disputed]` (origin) Michael Bennett argued in 2013 that the object was made for Delphi, on the reading that the creature is the Python rather than a lizard. No inscription, base block or excavation record supports a findspot. Ancient solder under the left little toe shows the figure was fixed to metal in antiquity, which tells us it was mounted but not where. - **unknown-c. 1700-1900** Unknown `[unknown]` (gap) No owner, location or transaction is documented between antiquity and the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The object was in the ground for a long period and then above ground again: the corrosion is stratified in a way that indicates a change of environment. The creature was reattached to the tree when the statue was first displayed after excavation, so an early restoration happened, undated and unrecorded. - **c. 1700-1900-1990** An estate in eastern Germany, in the family of Ernst-Ulrich Walter `[disputed]` (display and dispersal) The baseplate was soldered on in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, which is physical evidence that the statue was mounted for display in that period. The museum's account is that the object stood in the garden of a private estate in the eastern part of Germany well before the Second World War and was taken for a late eighteenth or nineteenth century cast. No photograph, inventory, insurance schedule or estate record from that period has been published, so the physical evidence for a display mounting is documented while the specific German location is not. - **1990-1994** Ernst-Ulrich Walter, Germany `[documented]` (recovery) Walter reclaimed the family estate after German reunification in 1990 and found the sculpture in pieces. Lucia Marinescu, formerly director of the National History Museum of Romania, saw the fragments while touring the estate in 1994 and later presented a paper on the sculpture at the sixteenth International Congress of Antique Bronzes in May 2003. Walter is the earliest name in the Cleveland Museum of Art's own provenance list. - **1994-2001** Unnamed purchaser; reported as a Dutch dealer `[disputed]` (sale) The sculpture was sold in 1994 and afterwards reassembled and restored. The museum's provenance list carries no entry between Walter and Phoenix Ancient Art. A Cleveland account identifies the 1994 buyer as a Dutch dealer and reports a further sale to the Aboutaam brothers in 2001 through an anonymous collector. Neither step is supported by a published document, and the restorer has not been named. - **2001-2004** Phoenix Ancient Art S.A., Geneva (Ali and Hicham Aboutaam) `[documented]` (dealer stock) A representative of the Cleveland Museum of Art saw the sculpture at the Geneva gallery in 2002. The gallery has not disclosed the person from whom it acquired the object. Ali Aboutaam's public position was that the firm stands by its provenance. - **2004-present** The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio `[documented]` (purchase) Acquired 2004 through the Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund and announced by the museum on 22 June 2004. No purchase price has been published by the museum. No claim has been filed against the object and no restitution agreement exists. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - This object has never been offered at auction. It was bought privately from a dealer in 2004, so there is no hammer price and no buyer's premium to separate, and the only figure that could exist is an invoice the museum has not published. The sums repeated in print, five million United States dollars and 5.2 million, are journalistic reports and are recorded here as reports rather than as prices. ## Exhibitions - Praxiteles: The Cleveland Apollo, Cleveland Museum of Art, Julia and Larry Pollock Focus Gallery, 29 September 2013 to 5 January 2014, 2013-2014 - Praxitele (the object was NOT shown; Greece withheld loans on condition it be excluded), Musee du Louvre, Paris, 2007 ## Literature - 2013, Michael Bennett, Praxiteles: The Cleveland Apollo, 124 pages, published to accompany the 2013 focus exhibition. - 2017, Colleen Snyder, Ernst Pernicka and Peter Northover, 'The Cleveland Apollo: Recent Research and Revelations', in Artistry in Bronze: The Greeks and Their Legacy, J. Paul Getty Museum. ## Open questions - Where was the statue between antiquity and the eighteenth or nineteenth century, when someone soldered it onto a display plate? The corrosion proves the gap; nothing fills it. - Who mounted it on the baseplate, and in what country? The plate is the earliest datable event in the object's modern life and its maker is unknown. - Where exactly was the German estate, and when did the family acquire the statue? No photograph, estate inventory, insurance schedule or customs document from before 1994 has been published. - Who sold the sculpture to Phoenix Ancient Art, and who bought it in 1994? The gallery has never named its source and the museum's provenance list has no entry between 1994 and 2004. - What did the Cleveland Museum of Art pay in 2004? The figures of five million and 5.2 million United States dollars are reported, not confirmed by the museum. - Who reassembled and restored the sculpture after the 1994 sale, and what evidence did that campaign remove? The restorer has not been named in any published account. - Is the creature a lizard or the Python? The museum's own catalogue title carries both readings, which is an unusual admission that its reidentification has not been settled. - Was the object ever the subject of a German export application, and if so on what declared value and description? Nothing has been published either way. ## Sources - [1] Cleveland Museum of Art, collection record 2004.30, The Cleveland Apollo: Apollo Sauroktonos (Lizard-Slayer) or Apollo the Python-Slayer. Tombstone, measurements, credit line and the museum's own three-entry provenance list. - [2] Colleen Snyder, Ernst Pernicka and Peter Northover, 'The Cleveland Apollo: Recent Research and Revelations', in Artistry in Bronze: The Greeks and Their Legacy (J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017). The full technical study, with sample tables, released under a Creative Commons licence. - [3] Cleveland Museum of Art press release, 'Cleveland Museum of Art Presents Praxiteles: The Cleveland Apollo', for the exhibition of 29 September 2013 to 5 January 2014, including Michael Bennett's Delphi argument and the museum's statement that laboratory tests prove the sculpture was not a recent discovery and was not recovered from the sea. - [4] David Gill, 'The Cleveland Apollo: New Comments', Looting Matters, post dated 18 February 2008. Collects the museum's June 2004 acquisition release, the Walter and Marinescu chronology, the Rub and Bennett statement on the solder, the Guardian and New York Times coverage, and the Apollo magazine polemic on the Louvre loans. - [5] Jean Marie Carey, 'The Cleveland Apollo: Roman Copy or Greek Original?', Italian Art Society blog, 17 September 2017. Gives the reported purchase figure of five million United States dollars and notes that the museum holds a second, Roman, sculpture also commonly called the Cleveland Apollo. - [6] Cleveland Scene, 'An ancient Apollo statue landed in Cleveland and touched off an international outcry'. Reports the 1994 sale to a Dutch dealer, the 2001 sale to the Aboutaam brothers through an anonymous collector, the reported price of 5.2 million United States dollars, and the December 2006 Greek Ministry of Culture allegation. - [7] Pliny the Elder, Natural History 34.70, in the Bostock and Riley translation, Perseus Digital Library. TERTIARY for the biography, PRIMARY for the Sauroktonos sentence itself. Replace with a critical edition of the Latin. - [8] Wikipedia, 'Cleveland Apollo', consolidating the 1990 rediscovery account, the 2002 Geneva viewing, the exclusion from the 2007 Louvre exhibition and the 2009-2021 testing. TERTIARY; flagged for replacement with Bennett 2013 and the Getty publication. - [9] Hyperallergic, "Why Do So Many Museums Hold a Convicted Antiquity Dealer's Treasures?", 15 July 2026. Reports the Manhattan DA's Office seizure of nine Phoenix Ancient Art artifacts worth nearly 5 million US dollars from institutions since 2021, including a Roman marble bust repatriated from the Met to Turkey in February 2026, documenting continuing law-enforcement scrutiny of the Aboutaam/Phoenix Ancient Art dealer network this object passed through in 2001-2004. Does not name this object or the Cleveland Museum of Art. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.