Ironically, the provenance of what is arguably the most famous fragment in European cultural history, the so‑called Belvedere Torso, contains significant lacunae: not only is it difficult to identify the work's subject due to the lack of crucial body parts, but we know virtually nothing about its maker, Apollonios of Athens, nor about its discovery and excavation history in post‑antique times.

These conspicuous absences have all but disappeared over the course of the Torso's successful canonisation. As a result, its story is commonly told only in terms of the most spectacular episodes: its entry into the papal collections in Rome, its 'discovery' by Michelangelo as one of the greatest artworks of all time, and its apotheosis at the hands of Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Hence, the sculpture's earliest reception has so far been interpreted, with a certain inevitability, as a period of latency, a minor prelude to greatness.

Emerging from Anna Degler's (Research Area 2: "Travelling Matters") project The Travelling Torso at EXC 2020, the article "Anfang offen. Zur Bildwerdung des Torso Belvedere" focuses on the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Seeking to unburden its early artistic reception from the weight of what was to come, Degler offers an intriguing reconsideration of the Torso 'before' the Belvedere.

 

Anna Degler. "Anfang offen. Zur Bildwerdung des Torso Belvedere". Pegasus. Beiträge zum Nachleben antiker Kunst und Architektur 2 (2026) (Fund und Aufstellung, Fragment und Ganzes. Bildwerdung der Antike. Zur Episteme von Zeichnungen und Druckgraphiken der Frühen Neuzeit II), edited by Ulrich Pfisterer, Cristina Ruggero and Timo Strauch: 7–29. (Open Access)