Lot 15
  • 15

Roman Figure of Herakles

Estimate
70,000 - 100,000 USD
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Description

  • Bronze
  • Height: 9 1/2 in (24.2 cm)
standing in a majestic attitude with his weight on the left leg and head turned to the right, his face with full lips, broad straight nose, and large wide-set eyes with eyebrows in relief, the short thick wavy hair brushed up from the forehead and bound in a diadem knotted at the back, the details of both body and head very finely cast.

Provenance

Mathias Komor, New York
Howard and Saretta Barnet, New York, acquired from the above on February 29,1972

Catalogue Note

This bronze statuette is based on the statuary type of the Herakles Lenbach, which is derived from a Greek bronze original of the late 4th Century BC.1 The type is named after Fritz von Lenbach (1836 - 1904), the Bavarian painter who donated a Roman marble head, derived from the Greek original, to the Glyptothek, Munich (Inv. No. 245).

Several over-life-size marble copies from the Roman Imperial period exist, for example a statue in the Louvre (inv. no. Ma 200)2 and a restored torso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 03.12.03);3 together with statuettes (see Sotheby’s, New York, May 29, 1987, lot 114), they testify to the fame of the original in antiquity. A marble statue reduced in size, originally in the Ludovisi Collection and later in the Museo delle Terme, is now exhibited in the Palazzo Altemps in Rome (inv. no. 8573; see fig. 1). Heads are in the Museo del Sannio, Benevento (inv. no. 296) and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, Copenhagen (inv. no. 561). In the original statue, the robust young hero was shown in a powerful, energetic pose, with his right leg set firmly to the side, right arm bent outwards and holding the club, left lower arm covered with the lion skin, and head turned sharply to his right. Based on the style of the hair, scholars have suggested attributing the original to Lysippos, the Greek artist favored by Alexander the Great.

1 See Kansteiner, Herakles. Die Darstellungen in der Großplastik der Antike, Cologne, 2000, pp. 25-27
2 Illustrated in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae IV, (Eros-Herakles), Zurich and Munich, 1988, p. 748, no. 354, pl. 468
3 Picón et al., Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2007, p. 386, cat. no. 451