This plaster-cast statue of Apollo was given to the MGH by statesman and orator (and short-term Harvard President) Edward Everett in the 1840s. It is a copy of the Apollo Belvedere, a sculpture unearthed in Rome during the Renaissance. The original sculpture is marble, and it is thought to be an ancient Roman copy of an even older ancient Greek statue. Napoleon’s army looted Rome in the early 19th century and took the Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican to the Louvre in Paris. The Louvre made and sold plaster casts of the statue, one of which Everett bought and shipped back to Boston. Apollo was the god of healing and disease, among other things.