The Appennine Colossus - Italy

Measuring about 35 feet tall, it’s arguably the most spectacular feature of the gardens of Villa Medici at Pratolino, now part of Villa Demidoff, located about 7 miles north of Florence, Italy. A personification of the Apennine mountain ranges, it’s sculpted as though on that minimal margin between landscape and man, its smooth skin emerging out of the rough terrain or metamorphosing back into a mountain. He even has stalactites for a shaggy beard.

This colossal sculpture recalls the figure of Atlas in Virgil’s Aeneid, and also the architect Dinocrates’ proposal to shape Mount Athos into a man in honor of Alexander the Great.
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