Literature

This bronze statuette of Herakles presents the hero as a man of extreme strength and vitality as he fights the Lernean Hydra, the second of his famous Twelve Labours.

Herakles leans back with his legs taut as he remains on balance. He would have been holding his club in his right hand above his head. Herakles is nude apart from the skin of the Nemean Lion which he wore as an impenetrable armour, it covers his head and is wrapped around his shoulders with its mane flowing down his back and its paws tied around his chest.

The stories connected with Herakles offered Hellenistic artists a wealth of opportunities to experiment with the depiction of dynamic poses, postures, and exaggerated musculature. For a similar bronze, in The Fitzwiliam Museum, Cambridge, see acc. no. GR.1864.