To the Apollo Belvedere

Twelve heads, from man to Apollo.

Work: coloured etchings
Maker: Christian von Mechel after Johann Kaspar Lavater
Date: 1797
Held by: Published Basel, 1797 · Wellcome Collection

Gradation de la tête jusqu’à l’Apollon

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

The companion to the frog sequence, executed and published by Christian von Mechel in Basel in 1797 after Johann Kaspar Lavater. Twelve heads in profile climb from a rough, primitive face to the head of the Apollo Belvedere, the antique statue the eighteenth century took as its measure of beauty. It is an argument made entirely in pictures, and a revealing one: the period's ideal figure drawn as a destination. Paired with its partner it reads as a single long scale. Wellcome Collection, Public Domain Mark.

See it on your wall

The plate, in the room it was made for

To the Apollo Belvedere, printed large and framed — in the consulting room, the study, the library. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

To the Apollo Belvedere framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of coloured etchings — Christian von Mechel after Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1797 — from the copy held by Published Basel, 1797 · Wellcome Collection. The source. The work is centuries out of copyright and in the public domain.
Printed faithful to that source scan. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the plate you receive is the plate as it survives.
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. Framed editions sit in a box frame under acrylic, with no mount.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the engraver’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days.
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our plates cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the engraver’s hand is visible — the linework, the tonal work, the lettering — on a matte sheet that shows every line without glare.

From the same hand