The statue was originally part of a larger sculptural group representing a fight between a chimera and the Greek hero Bellerophon.

Bellerophon set out on his winged horse, Pegasus, and emerged victorious from his battle, eventually winning not only the hand of Iobates' daughter but also his kingdom.

It is this story that led art historians to believe that the Chimera of Arezzo was originally part of a group sculpture that included Bellerophon and Pegasus.

[5] In response to questions of the statue's true meaning, Giorgio Vasari wrote in his Reasonings Over the Inventions He Painted in Florence in the Palace of Their Serene Highnesses: Yes, sir, because there are the medals of the Duke my lord who came from Rome with a goat's head stuck in the neck of this lion, who as he sees VE, also has the serpent's belly, and we found the queue that was broken between those bronze fragments with many metal figurines that you've seen all, and the wounds that she has touched on show it, and yet the pain that is known in the readiness of the head of this animal ...[6]The tail was not restored until 1785 when the Pistoiese sculptor Francesco Carradori (or his teacher, Innocenzo Spinazzi) fashioned a replacement, incorrectly positioning the serpent to bite the goat's horn.

[8] The sculpture was probably commissioned by an aristocratic clan or a prosperous community and erected in a religious sanctuary near the ancient Etruscan town of Arezzo, about 50 miles southeast of Florence.

Discovered on November 15, 1553, by construction workers near the San Lorentino gate in Arezzo (ancient Arretium),[11] the sculpture was quickly claimed for the collection of the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I, who placed it publicly in the Palazzo Vecchio in the hall of Leo X. Cosimo also placed the smaller bronzes from the trove in his own studiolo at Palazzo Pitti, where "the Duke took great pleasure in cleaning them by himself, with some goldsmith's tools", as Benvenuto Cellini reported in his autobiography.

The Italian painter Giorgio Vasari tracked down the statue motif by studying Ancient Greek and Roman coins, such as a silver stater[13] featuring an image of the Chimera, thus accurately identifying it.

Eventually, it was officially identified as being a part of a larger piece illustrating a fight between the Chimera and the Greek hero Bellerophon.

[14] Clearly influenced by Mediterranean myth culture, this bronze work is evidence of the mastery that Etruscan sculptors had not only over the medium but of mythological lore.

The art historian A. Maggiani gives details of a clear Italiote context by pointing out iconographic comparisons from sites in Magna Graecia such as Metaponto and Kaulonia.

)[14] With the Italiote context in mind, these trends are a clear indication of the increasing popularity of Attic (from Attica) or Athens-inspired architecture and sculpture.

While the ancient Athenians had long since perished by this time, their work and way of life were still regarded with great fascination and there was a desire to emulate it.

[14] In the 3rd millennium BCE ancient foundry workers discovered by trial and error that bronze had distinct advantages over pure copper for making artistic statuary.

By the late Archaic period (c. 500–480 BCE) sphyrelaton lost popularity as lost-wax casting became the primary means of producing bronze sculpture.