Head of the Farnese Herakles
- Title:
- Head of the Farnese Herakles
- Collection:
- Cornell Cast Collection
- Creator:
- Musées Nationaux Moulages (reproduction)
Glykon the Athenian (Roman copy)
Lysippos (Greek original) (original)
- Photographer:
- Mericle, Danielle
- Date:
- ca. 1890-1900
early 3nd c. CE (Roman copy)
ca. 320 BCE (Greek original)
- Site:
- Paris, France (reproduction)
Rome, Italy (discovery site, mid 1500s) (original) - Location:
- Goldwin Smith Hall (Room 120), Cornell University
Paris, France (reproduction)
Rome, Italy (discovery site, mid 1500s) (original) - ID Number:
- CCC_0709
- Accession Number:
- Sage no. 224
696 - File Name:
- CCC_0709.tif
- Original Measurements:
- 3.17 (H) m (complete statue)
- Culture:
- Roman, after Greek
- Style/Period:
- Roman Imperial, after Greek Late Classical or Early Hellenistic
- Work Type:
- casts (sculpture)
busts (sculpture) - Materials/Techniques:
- plaster cast (sculpture)
marble sculpture in the round (Roman copy)
bronze (Greek original) (original) - Subject:
- Heracles (Greek mythology)
- Image View Type:
- overall
- Image View Description:
- from front
- Measurement:
- 85.5 (with pedestal) x 67.5 (without pedestal) x 43.5 x 29 (pedestal) x 29 (centimeters, height x height x width x width x diameter)
- Description:
- This is a cast of the head of the Farnese Herakles or Hercules, the colossal original of which was retrieved from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in the mid 1500s and, soon after, was acquired by the collector Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. It is now housed in Naples. In the complete original, Herakles bows his head to his left in rest and looks down. In this partial cast, the head is tilted to upright and Herakles appears to look out to his left. His irises and pupils are incised, his brow is furrowed. He has a full, curly beard, and short, curly hair. Herakles' lips are parted and turned down. The statue has been renowned since its discovery and has been widely copied in diverse media on various scales. It represents Herakles at rest after fetching the apples of the Hesperides, a labor that included temporarily supporting the world on his shoulders in place of Atlas. The Weary Herakles type derives, ultimately, from a fourth century BCE bronze original by Lysippos. This copy of the statue, with its baroque musculature and styling, might also reflect Hellenistic copies of that famous Lysippic original. It is signed by Glykon the Athenian, who perhaps contributed his own sculptural style to the work he copied to decorate Caracalla's bath complex. While this statue is the most well-known of the type, the Weary Herakles is known from dozens more statues, statuettes, reliefs, and coins, as well as fragments thereof. Jason Seley's "Herakles in Ithaka I" (Johnson Museum accession no. 83.030), sculpted between 1980-1981, is a tribute to the fame of the Farnese Herakles. The sculpture, made from welded steel car bumpers, today stands outside Uris Hall along East Avenue. From January until July 2015, this object was exhibited in the Bartels Gallery, Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, as part of an exhibition titled "Cast and Present: Replicating Antiquity in the Museum and the Academy."
- Notes:
- Items in the Cornell Cast Collection are meant for inventory and reference purposes. Metadata may not be complete in all cases.
no. 6001 - Bibliography:
- Cornelius Vermeule, "The Weary Herakles of Lysippos," AJA 79 (1975), 323-332
Paolo Moreno, Lisippo, L'Arte e la Fortuna (Milan: Fabbri Editori, 1995), 103-110
Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 229-232
J. J. Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 50-51
Charles M. Edwards, "Lysippos," in Olga Palagia and J. J. Pollitt, eds., Personal Styles in Greek Sculpture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 130-153 - Related Work:
- See ID nos. 127, 127a, 131, 132, and possibly 462, which are fragments of a cast of the complete statue.
- Repository:
- Cornell University (current)
Naples, National Archaeological Museum (original) - Collecting Program:
- Cornell Collections of Antiquities
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- The images in the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Casts are protected by copyright, and the copyright holders are their creators, generally Cornell University Library, Annetta Alexandridis, and Verity Platt. This collection of plaster casts owned by Cornell University was photographed by Cornell University Library, Alexandridis, Platt, and Andreya L. Mihaloew from 2010-2015, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Annetta Alexandridis. Cornell is providing access to the materials for research and personal use. The written permission of any copyright and other rights holders is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use that extends beyond what is authorized by fair use and other statutory exemptions. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Please contact Annetta Alexandridis and Verity Platt for more information about this collection, or to request permission to use these images.