A ROMAN MARBLE HEAD OF HERCULES

CIRCA LATE 1ST-EARLY 2ND CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN MARBLE HEAD OF HERCULES
CIRCA LATE 1ST-EARLY 2ND CENTURY A.D.
Superbly sculpted, the aged hero depicted over-lifesized with his head turned to his left and lowered, his hair a mass of short curling locks, with a thick full beard, his lips slightly parted with his mustache enveloping the upper lip, his lidded eyes deep set beneath overhanging ridged brows, the cheekbones prominent, his forehead with two horizontal creases, the underside of the neck tapered for insertion into a separately-made body
14 in. (35.5 cm.) high

Provenance

Sarkis Collection, Beirut, 1941.
with N. Koutoulakis, Paris and Geneva, 1962.
Mrs. S., Geneva, 1962; thence by descent, Geneva, 1985.
Private Collection, England, 1986.

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Lot Essay

This head of Hercules is based on the famed depiction of the hero by the 4th century B.C. sculptor Lysippos. The bronze original was displayed in the Agora of Sicyon in the Peloponnese. The burly hero is shown old and exhausted after his final labor, barely able to stand and so leaning on his club, holding the apples of the Hesperides behind his back. While the bronze original does not survive, it is recognized in numerous Roman copies and adaptions, including the colossal example now in Naples, the Farnese Herakles. The attribution of the type to Lysippos is based on another colossal version, now in Palazzo Pitti, Florence, which has a Greek inscription on the rock supporting the club, reading: "Lysippos' work" (see pp. 763-793, Boardman, "Herakles," in LIMC).

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