Apollo and Marpessa

This relief depicts how the god Apollo catches the beautiful mortal Marpessa. The graceful gesture of her hand reaching behind her head to pull the drapery over her body has apollo's forward movement. Her drapery is perfectly balanced by his billowing cloak. In the background, a delicately carved sprig of ivy falls over the outline of a column. Flaxman wrote that he wanted to 'convert the beauty and grace of ancient poetry' into sculpture 'without the intrusion of useless, impertinent or trivial objects'.