Hercules in Battle

Roman art

This small statuette in patinated bronze depicts the Hercules in Battle type that was especially popular in the bronze production of the Archaic period in the Picente area between Abruzzo and Marche. The figure is missing the typical leonté, the skin of the Nemean Lion killed by the hero, and the club that he would have held in his right hand. During the eighteenth century, the goldsmith Luigi Valadier restored this small bronze and used it and three others like it to decorate a long gilt frame, alternated with three small painted panels. There are many similar small bronzes in the Borghese Collection, although different in subject, that were also attached to frames and are currently preserved in the Palazzina’s storerooms.

The Hercules in Battle is probably a miniature votive bronze made in the fourth century BCE.

Object details

Commentary

This statuette depicts a standing nude male, with his right leg supporting his body and his left leg advanced and slightly bent. His right arm is raised and held out to the side, with the forearm bent inward towards the body. His right hand is in a fist and would have held a weapon, probably a club. His left arm is only partially preserved. The pubis is described with light incisions and the nipples are rendered with dots. The hair, which recalls the Melonenfrisur style, is arranged in parallel streaked ridges.  The facial features are worn, although we can still make out the big eyes and broad nose. The body is sturdy and well proportioned, while the anatomy is vague. The sculpture reproduces the iconographic type “Hercules in Battle”, which was widespread in the Italic world and typically included a leontè, the skin of the Nemean Lion killed by the hero, and a club, both of which are missing in the Borghese copy. In his comprehensive analysis of Italic bronze production in the Archaic period, Colonna identified a number of different groupings based on style and included the Borghese sculpture in the ‘Umbro-Sabellian votive bronze’ group, in particular the ‘Bologna’ group concentrated in the Picene regione between Abruzzo and Marche (1970, p. 176, no. 567, pl. CXL). The Hercules in Battle type was widely reproduced following a specific formula with rare iconographic variants: nude and beardless, in an aggressive pose, with the left leg generally advanced, the lion skin wrapped around the left arm or worn on the head and shoulders, and a club in the right hand, held up in the air preparing to strike. According to Colonna, the iconographic model emerged in about the fifth century BCE, presumably drawing on models from Magna Graecia. Woodford and Cassola advanced the theory that small bronzes depicting Hercules as a fighter are copies of the Herakles Alexikakos, a bronze statue known only through literary sources and attributed to the Argive sculptor Ageladas, who was active between the sixth and fifth centuries BCE (1976, pp. 291–294; 1978, p. 42).

This statuette is part of a group of miniature bronzes of various subject preserved in the PalazzinaBorghese’s storerooms that are not mentioned in the inventories or bibliography relative to the archaeological collection. In a detailed study published in 2019, Minozzi notes a receipt, dated 1773 and discovered by Gonzàlez-Palacios, for payment for work done by Luigi Valadier on various small bronzes described as ‘alcune figurine accomodate’ (‘a few repaired figurines’), among which she identified the present group (1993, pp. 37, 50). Analysis of the receipt, which describes filling in missing parts and attaching the figurines to gilt wooden panels of various shape, led the author to attribute the frames to Valadier as well (2019, pp. 192–195). The Hercules in Battle was used, along with three others (inv. CCXCIX, CCC, CCCI), as a decorative element to separate small paintings on a long frame that probably corresponds to one mentioned in an old text: ‘Per aver affermatoquattro figurine antiche sopra una tavola longa dorata avendo in tutto fatto la med.ma fattura de sud.i già descritti bustini’ (‘For having attached four ancient figurines to a long gilt panel  of the same workmanship as the small busts described above’; Archivio Apostolico Vaticano, ArchivioBorghese 5294). EDXRF analysis of the figure for the exhibition Valadier. Splendore nella Roma del Settecento, held at the Galleria Borghese in 2019, confirmed its authenticity and identified the material as ternary bronze covered with a painted patina. Based on these observations and the rendering of the hair, the sculpture seems to be datable to the fourth century BCE.

Giulia Ciccarello