The United Kingdom Has Credited the Sculpture of Apollo as an Inheritance Tax

An Italian bronze sculpture from the Renaissance era depicting one of the Olympic gods, Apollo, has been handed over to the United Kingdom as payment for an inheritance tax of £10.5 million.

This information was reported by The Guardian.

The bronze sculpture was donated from the collection of philanthropists Cecil and Hilda Lewis under the Acceptance in Lieu (AiL) program, allowing individuals to gift important cultural, scientific, or historical objects to the state instead of paying inheritance tax.

In the last decade alone, numerous art pieces with a total value of £479 million have thus become state-owned through this program.

The bronze figure of Apollo was created around 1520-22 by Italian sculptor Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, better known as 'Antico.' The sculpture is only 41.3 cm high.

From now on, Apollo will be owned by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, which already houses a large collection of 56 bronze figurines previously owned by Lt Col Mildmay Thomas Boscawen, a former Trinity College, Cambridge graduate.

"The beautiful male nude is now such an expected ingredient within museum collections that we almost take them for granted... The acquisition of Antico's miniaturised, part-gilded bronze version of the Apollo Belvedere reminds us that in Renaissance Italy they were still an extraordinary novelty," noted Luke Syson, director and curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

It's worth mentioning that the first and most famous sculpture of Apollo, the Bronze Apollo, dates back to the 2nd century AD and is one of the most well-known statues worldwide, standing over 2.1 meters tall. For a time, the Bronze Apollo was considered lost. However, at the end of the 15th century, the statue was found, and since 1511, it has been part of the Vatican's collection.

Recall that The Gaze previously reported that the Museum in North Hertfordshire, UK, would use the pronouns 'she' and 'her' for the ancient Roman emperor Elagabalus, who ruled the Roman Empire for four years from 218 to 222 when the eighteen-year-old Elagabalus was killed.

These revolutionary changes are linked to classical texts preserved from the time of the Roman Empire, mentioning that Emperor Elagabalus once said, 'Do not call me lord, for I am lady.' Furthermore, during Elagabalus' reign, they were married to a man.