Hercules and Antaeus

This drawing is part of a group of sheets of similar size, technique and subject matter that are now dispersed in various public and private collections. In 1987 J. Byam Shaw explained how an album with thirty-eight drawings of this subject, once in the Bordes collection, was bought by Colnaghi from Paul Prouté in Paris in 1936 and later dismembered and its contents dispersed (see J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, The Robert Lehman Collection. Italian Eighteenth-Century Drawings, 6, New York, 1987, no. 133). More sheets of the same subject were also included in another album of drawings, the Beauchamp Album, (Christie's, London, 15 June 1965, lots 149-152). Two sheets in the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (inv. 1975.1.491, inv. 1975.1.492; J. Byam Shaw and G. Knox, op. cit., nos. 133 and no. 134) and other two at the Morgan Library and Museum (1996.129 and 1996.130; F. Stampfle and C. Denison, op. cit., 1973, nos. 96 and 97) are very similar to the present one. All the drawings depict the same subject matter, the struggle between Hercules and Antaeus, with small variations. While some sheets include a simple pedestal underneath the figures, others present elements of a landscape setting. It has been suggested that a source of inspiration for the series could have been a statue - either an antique marble or alternatively a small Renaissance bronze similar to those produced by Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi, called L’Antico (ca. 1460-1528).