Chimera of Arezzo Chimera of Arezzo The Chimera of Arezzo is regarded as the best example of ancient Etruscan artwork. British art historian, David Ekserdjian, described the sculpture as "one of the most arresting of all animal sculptures and the supreme masterpiece of Etruscan bronze-casting." Made entirely of bronze and measuring 78.5 cm high with a length of 129 cm, it was found alongside a small collection of other bronze statues in Arezzo, an ancient Etruscan and Roman city in Tuscany. The statue was originally part of a larger sculptural group representing a fight between a Chimera and the Greek hero Bellerophon. This
Chimera (mythology) in "Inferno" xvii.7–17, 25–27, hybrid monsters, more akin to the Manticore of Pliny's Natural History (viii.90), provided iconic representations of hypocrisy and fraud well into the seventeenth century, through an emblematic representation in Cesare Ripa's "Iconologia". The myths of the Chimera may be found in the "Bibliotheca" of Pseudo-Apollodorus (book 1), the "Iliad" (book 16) by Homer, the "Fabulae" 57 and 151 by Hyginus, the "Metamorphoses" (book VI 339 by Ovid; IX 648), and the "Theogony" 319ff by Hesiod. Virgil, in the "Aeneid" (book 5) employs "Chimaera" for the name of gigantic ship of Gyas in the ship-race, with possible