Mission complete as Apollo lands at Stowe Gardens
Image: National Trust (Apollo Cast statue emerging from mould) Credit: Cliveden Conservation, Alex Rickett.
After thirty-three years in the planning and crafting, a brand-new statue of Apollo will be landing at one of the National Trust’s flagship estates: Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire, this Thursday 27th April!
The arrival of Apollo completes a group of ten statues located around Stowe’s Doric Arch, which stands at the entrance to the area known as Elysian Fields. Apollo’s Nine Muses have been in situ since March 2020. They, like the rest of us, spent lockdown in isolation, patiently awaiting Apollo’s return.
Apollo is considered the most handsome and most Greek of all the gods. He’s certainly been the most elusive of all Stowe’s original statues to replace. It’s taken many years of research to reimagine the lead original, attributed to sculptor van Nost, which is known to have been at Stowe in 1735, but an 1848 auction catalogue for the estate notes the statue of Apollo had ‘long since been melted’.
Apollo was the Olympian god of the sun and light, music and poetry, healing and plagues, prophecy and knowledge, order and beauty, archery and agriculture. As God of just about everything good, he was clearly a very busy chap and consequently has many guises. Stowe’s Lyric Apollo was mainly concerned with music and poetry. He lived on Mount Parnassus with nine ethereal female muses who dedicated their lives to the Arts by supporting and encouraging creation, sparking imagination and providing inspiration.
Through research and archaeological excavation, it’s understood that, like many other statues at Stowe, Apollo and the Muses were moved around the garden, but their final location was around the Doric Arch which is where they’ve been reinstated. If you’re a fan of Dr Who, the Nine Muses are the perfect spot for a selfie or two with Stowe’s very own group of weeping angels.
Curator Gillian Mason says: ‘Stowe is a garden full of classical references and meaning. It’s a landscape built on myths, legends, historical characters and events, where over one hundred sculptures once played a part in telling these stories. Bringing back significant statue groups like Apollo and the Muses to the gardens adds meaning and significance to this remarkable landscape.’
Working with Cliveden Conservation and stonemason, Jem Hobbs, the long-lost Apollo has been recreated. The new Stowe Apollo has been informed by other surviving versions and has been created with the assistance of Historic Environment Scotland. Finally, after decades of work, a statue of Apollo created in the spirit of the original is on his way to Stowe.
The return to Stowe may only be a small step for a Greek God, but it’s a giant leap in the restoration of Stowe’s Grade 1 listed landscape gardens. Apollo and his Nine Muses will be welcoming visitors from the last week of April. He has informed us he will allow selfies, if you ask nicely.