A MARBLE FOUNTAIN FIGURE OF HERAKLES, ROMAN IMPERIAL , 1ST/2ND CENTURY A.D.

said to have been found on a Greek island
Yanakopoulos, Paris, 1913
Joseph Brummer Gallery, 1926 (Gift of Mrs. Seymour H. Knox, Sr.)

The Buffalo Arts Journal, vol. VIII, no. 3, March 1926, p. 9 (ill. no. 13)
Anna Glenny Dunbar, "New Acquisitions for the Albright Art Gallery," The Buffalo Artist's Register, Lee F. Heacock, ed., vol. I, 1926, p. 55, illus.
The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Academy Notes, vol. XXII, no. 1, September 1931, p. 31, illus.
Blue Book of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, 1931, p. 60
Andrew C. Ritchie, ed., Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. Catalogue of the Paintings and Sculpture in the Permanent Collection, Buffalo, 1949, p. 213, no. 240
Heide Scharmer, Der Gelagerte Herakles (Winckelmanns-programm der archäologischen Gesellschaft zur Berlin, vol. 124), Berlin, 1971, no. 40
Ruth Michael Gais, "Some Problems of River-God Iconography," American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 82, 1978, p. 368, fig. 19
Steven Nash, ed., Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942, Buffalo, New York, 1979, p. 76
Olga Palagia, s.v. “Herakles,” Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, vol. IV.1, Zurich and Munich, 1988, p. 778, no. 1024

Cf. Staatliche Museen Berlin, inv. no. 1969.10 (Scharmer, op. cit., p. 11, no. 3, pls. 1-3; LIMC IV.1, p. 777, no. 1017, vol. IV.2, pl. 514), for a related fountain figure of Herakles wearing a symposiast’s wreath and holding a  a cup in his left hand. Also see an archaizing Roman relief from Thebes in the Louvre (Gais, op. cit, p. 369, fig. 20).

The representation of Herakles as a symposiast emphasizes his connection with Dionysos, against whom he lost the Drinking Contest. The original statue “was created towards the end of the 4th Century B.C., perhaps inspired by figure D of the East Pediment of the Parthenon... In the Roman Imperial period, funerary iconography adopts the image of reclining Herakles as a symbol of blessed immortality" (Palagia, op. cit., p. 777).