Statue of a Child as Hercules Fighting

Roman art

This sculpture was mentioned in the second enclosure of the garden of Villa Borghese in 1700. Restored in 1828 by Massimiliano Laboureur, in 1833 it was placed in Room 2, which was also known as The Room of Hercules.

It depicts Hercules as a child, fighting with his signature club brandished with his raised right arm and wearing the leontè, the hide of the Nemean lion killed by the hero, wrapped diagonally across his chest. The figure is standing with its legs wide apart, the right slightly bent forward.

This work, datable to the mid second century CE, was probably designed to decorate a child’s burial, according to the widespread custom of heroizing a deceased infant.

Object details

Commentary

This sculpture was mentioned by Montelatici in 1700 in the second enclosure of the garden of the Villa, in the woods to the south of the Piazza in front of the Palazzo: ‘Hercules as a child, brandishing a club in the act of delivering a blow’ (p. 43). In 1828, it appeared in the Quarta Nota submitted by Minister Giuseppe Gozzani to Prince Camillo Borghese listed along with another two, collectively described as ‘Three little Hercules of the same size’, among the works entrusted to Massimiliano Laboureur for restoration (Moreno, Sforzini 1987, p. 361). In 1833, it was cited in the so-called Room of Hercules: ‘Statue of Hercules as a child clad in a lion’s skin’ (Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese, C., p. 46, no. 81); this location was confirmed by Nibby in 1841 (pp. 915–916, no. 7).

The child is standing, his right leg bent and a little forward, the left to the side. The left arm is raised and extended to the left, the head turned in the same direction; the right arm is bent, the hand clasping a small club. The figure is naked, except for the leontè, the skin of the Nemean lion killed by the hero, wrapped diagonally around his chest where we can make out the animal’s muzzle. Draped over the left shoulder, the skin crosses the healthy body fore and aft. The hair on the head is arranged in long, straight, compact locks, parted at the summit of the forehead, to which they confer a triangular shape. The ears are not covered by the compact mass of hair surrounding them. The features of the oval face are fleshy, the arches of the eyebrows merging into the bridge of the nose, the small lips parted and the chin protruding. The eyeballs are smooth, the lids heavy.

This work draws upon the familiar iconography of Hercules as a child in the act of fighting and brandishing a club. As postulated by Calza, it is quite likely a funerary piece (1957, p. 12, no. 97). The same motif was employed to decorate the tombs of children, where the deceased was heroized by identification with the figure of Hercules. When examining the most common variant, in which the child is asleep, Collignon observes that the motif represents a funerary allegory, standing, on the one hand, for eternal slumber, and on the other for the hope of a happy life after death, much like the hero rendered divine by Zeus at the end of his life (Collignon 1911, pp. 342–345).

Based on stylistic observations, this sculpture seems datable to the mid second century CE.     

Giulia Ciccarello