The Belvedere Torso is displayed in which museum?

The Belvedere Torso is displayed in the Vatican Museums. More precisely, it is held in the Museo Pio-Clementino, one of the Vatican Museums’ principal collections of ancient sculpture.

The work is a 1.59-metre marble fragment of a seated, muscular male figure. An inscription identifies its sculptor as Apollonios, son of Nestor, an Athenian. Although it was once treated as a Greek original from around 200 BCE, many scholars now regard it as a late Hellenistic or Roman copy of an earlier sculpture.

Its subject is still debated. It was traditionally identified as Heracles seated on the Nemean lion’s skin, but the hide may be a panther skin; the Vatican describes Ajax contemplating suicide as the leading interpretation. The damaged figure became exceptionally influential after its rediscovery in Renaissance Rome. Michelangelo studied its twisting anatomy and used it as inspiration for figures on the Sistine Chapel ceiling and in The Last Judgment.

The name “Belvedere” refers to the Vatican’s Cortile del Belvedere, where it was installed in the sixteenth century. It is often confused with the Apollo Belvedere, a different ancient sculpture in the same Vatican complex.