The Apollo Belvedere is the ancient Greek-style marble sculpture in the Vatican Museums showing Apollo advancing with an outstretched arm.
The statue was discovered in central Italy in the late fifteenth century and entered the Belvedere Palace collection under Pope Julius II. It is generally considered a Roman marble copy of a lost Greek bronze, often dated to the fourth century BCE and associated with the sculptor Leochares.
Apollo is shown in a dynamic stride, probably just after releasing an arrow. His quiver is visible behind his shoulder, while the missing left hand and portions of the right forearm have been restored. The work became a celebrated model for artists during the Renaissance and Neoclassical periods.
Its fame was especially strong in eighteenth-century Europe, when writers praised it as an ideal of classical beauty. Modern scholarship is more cautious about treating it as the absolute summit of ancient art, but its historical influence remains enormous.