[106] Winkelmann has twice described the Apollo, _History of Art among the Ancients_, Paris, 1802, 3 vols., in 4to. Vol. i., book iv., chap. iii., _Art among the Greeks_:--"The Apollo of the Vatican offers us that God in a movement of indignation against the serpent Python, which he has just killed with arrow-shots, and in a sentiment of contempt for a victory so little worthy of a divinity. The wise artist, who proposed to represent the most beautiful of the gods, placed the anger in the nose, which, according to the ancients, was its seat; and the disdain on the lips. He expressed the anger by the inflation of the nostrils, and the disdain by the elevation of the under lip, which causes the same movement in the chin."--_Ibid._, vol. ii., book iv., chap. vi., _Art under the Emperors_:--"Of all the antique statues that have escaped the fury of barbarians and the destructive hand of time, the statue of Apollo is, without contradiction, the most sublime. One would say that the artist composed a figure purely ideal, and employed matter only because it was necessary for him to execute and represent his idea. As much as Homer's description of Apollo surpasses the descriptions which other poets have undertaken after him, so much this statue excels all the figures of this god. Its height is above that of man, and its attitude proclaims the divine grandeur with which it is filled. A perennial spring-time, like that which reigns in the happy fields of Elysium, clothes with lovable youth the beautiful body, and shines with sweetness over the noble structure of the limbs. In order to feel the merit of this _chef-d'oeuvre of art_, we must be penetrated with intellectual beauty, and become, if possible, the creatures of a celestial nature; for there is nothing mortal in it, nothing subject to the wants of humanity. That body, whose forms are not interrupted by a vein, which is not agitated by a nerve, seems animated with a celestial spirit, which circulates like a sweet vapor in all the parts of that admirable figure. The god has just been pursuing Python, against which he has bent, for the first time, his formidable bow; in his rapid course, he has overtaken him, and given him a mortal wound. Penetrated with the conviction of his power, and lost in a concentrated joy, his august look penetrates far into the infinite, and is extended far beyond his victory. Disdain sits upon his lips; the indignation that he breathes distends his nostrils, and ascends to his eyebrows; but an unchangeable serenity is painted on his brow, and his eye is full of sweetness, as though the Muses were caressing him. Among all the figures that remain to us of Jupiter, there is none in which the father of the gods approaches the grandeur with which he manifested himself to the intelligence of Homer; but in the traits of the Apollo Belvidere, we find the individual beauties of all the other divinities united, as in that of Pandora.