Statue of Hercules at Rest

Roman art

This small statuette in patinated bronze depicts the Hercules at Rest type that was popular in the bronze production of the Archaic period in the central-Italic area. The figure, in heroic nudity, holds an apple in his left hand while his right is resting on his hip. The leonté, the skin of the Nemean Lion killed by the hero, is wrapped around his left arm.  The statuette, which is part of a group of similar small bronzes of varying subject that do not appear in the documentation relative to the Borghese’s antiquities collection, is preserved in the Palazzina’s storerooms. The Hercules at Rest is probably a miniature votive bronze dating to the third century BCE.

Object details

Commentary

This statuette depicts a standing nude male, with his right leg supporting his body and his left leg advanced, slightly bent and moved off to the side. His right arm is bent and resting on his hip, while the left is held close to the body. He holds out an apple in his left hand. The leonté, the skin of the Nemean Lion killed by the hero, is draped over his forearm, and we can clearly make out its head on the outside and its tail along the figure’s calf. The figure’s short hair is held by a taenia and frames his face with a crown of frothy curls over his forehead. His features are clearly defined, the eyes described with deep incisions, a large nose and small, partially open mouth. The musculature of his body, in heroic nudity, is rendered with particular care, with two clear lines crossing at a right angle, one under the pectorals and the other marking the linea alba. The belly button is indicated by a triangular hole and below it a marked iliac crest highlights the pubis. The statuette is an exemplar of the ‘Hercules at Rest’ iconographic type, characterised by the sinuous pose and the simplification of the leonté, wrapped around his left arm. The figure of Hercules is found in the small votive bronze production of the central-Italic region starting in the fourth century BCE, although the most popular variant was ‘Hercules in Battle’.

The present statuette belongs to a group of miniature bronzes of varying subject preserved in the storerooms of the Palazzina Borghese and of which there is no mention in the inventories or bibliography relative to the archaeological collection. Some of them were restored and attached to decorative frames by Luigi Valadier in the eighteenth century. Based on stylistic analysis, the statuette dates to the third century BCE.

Giulia Ciccarello