In August of 1787, when Goethe had been in Rome for ten months, the sculptor began work on one of the most famous busts of the poet. Goethe posed for him in his studio and greatly enjoyed doing so, as he wrote in his Italienische Reise. Drawing on the antique statue of the Apollo Belvedere Trippel depicted the poet with long curls, a raised head, and antique clothing, and Goethe, flattered, wrote that he had “no objection that posterity should think I looked like this.”