Apelle
Palla di pelle di pollo

THE REVIEW

Apelle, son of Apollo made a ball of chicken skin
All the fish came to the surface to see the beautiful ball...

The work I am about to review is more than a mystery. It's an enigma wrapped in a mystery.
Roughly crafted yet effective, spherical in shape, the artifact has come down to us perfectly preserved.
Found in a stone niche in the Acropolis of Athens, the ball is currently kept at the Vienna Archaeological Museum. Distinguished scholars have been trying for decades to uncover its secrets.
Sure, we know its author. But who was Apelle, really?
Why did he decide to create exactly a ball of chicken skin?
Perhaps crushed by the personality of an overbearing father, who boasted of being none other than the sun and went on continuous raids through the region with his golden chariot, Apelle, poor soul, resigned himself to inventing a minor work that, nevertheless, granted him immortality.
What was the purpose of this so-called "ball"?
Did it serve as the core for some now-forgotten team game?
Was it worshipped as a simulacrum of a deity lost in the mists of time?
It is not permissible to know.
Just as it is not permissible to know why the fish gathered in its presence: was it perhaps a clever type of lure, invented by the skilled fishermen of the Peloponnese and later attributed to the son of Apollo?
Pending an enlightened scholar, a Schliemann or an Indiana Jones, capable of revealing the truth to the whole world, the mystery continues.
There remains, for the admiring tourist, the magic of a fascinating and proverbial artifact.

The chosen image is "Ball of Chicken Skin" by Mario Mariotti