A small trace of the bow once held in the right hand remains visible above the right knee. This attribute helps to identify the figure as Apollo. The gaze was clearly turned towards some object once held in the left hand. The style of the sculpture reflects the school of
Phidias, perhaps the young Phidias himself, as
Jiří Frel suggested, and
Kenneth Clark observed of it, "If only this figure, instead of the
Apollo Belvedere, had been known to
Winckelmann, his insight and beautiful gift of literary re-creation would have been better supported by the sculptural qualities of his subject." Of this marble
Brian A. Sparkes reminds us that "the general effect of copies always tends towards sweetness, and so it is here." The figure, with his girlish curls, may once have held the laurel branch and bow, as he is not a
citharoedus. The pensive reserve of such Apollos provided the iconographical type for Hadrianic portrait heads of
Antinous in the following century. As a patron of the arts, many of the Hadrianic and
Nerva–Antonine sculptures sought a softer, more relaxed form of masculinity. == Examples of type ==