Excerpt from The Magazine of Art, Vol. 21: May, 1897<br><br>HE mythological pair of which I speak are the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de' Medici, who have travelled considerably since they came to light from the repose of centuries beneath the soil of Rome.* The Apollo was the first to leave his niche in the Vatican, for Napoleon carried him off to Paris, as the spoil of war, during his first invasion of ltaly in 1706. The autocratic First Consul next decided to celebrate in the Museum of l'aris a mar riage between the Venus de' Medici and the Apollo l-ielvedere; and to accomplish this he seemed to give nearly as touch thought as to the conquest ot' nations. The (irand Duke was fully alive to the schemes laid to carrv oil the beautiful Venus sculptured bv Cleomenes, son of -\pollodorus the (treek, and at the tirst rumour of another l'rench invasion, he had the statue packed, and sent it under escort to l'alermo, together with some other precious works of art from the Florentine. Galleries. The King ot' Naples promised to guard the treasure faithfully, and to give it up to no one, except at the order of the Grand ltuke himself: and t'av. Tommaso t'acciai. Director of the Florentine Gallery, remained in l'alermo to watch over it.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.