The figure of Hercules is taken from the famous Farnese Hercules which once stood in the courtyard of the Palazzo Farnese, Rome along with the Farnese Flora. Traditionally discovered together in the Baths of Caracalla, both statues are huge, standing well over three metres in height and were widely copied. They are now in the National Museum in Naples (F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, New Haven and London, 1981, pp. 217-218, 229-232, figs. 113 and 118).