Farnese Hercules

Lore & Background

The Farnese Hercules depicts a muscular but weary Hercules leaning on his club, which is draped with the skin of the Nemean lion. He holds the golden apples of the Hesperides behind his back in his right hand, suggesting he has just performed one of the last of the Twelve Labours. The statue was made for the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, dedicated in 216 AD, and was recovered in 1546. It was signed by Glykon, an Athenian who may have worked in Rome.

After its rediscovery, the statue entered the collection of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, grandson of Pope Paul III. It stood for generations in its own room at Palazzo Farnese in Rome, surrounded by frescoes of Hercules' feats by Annibale Carracci and his studio, executed in the 1590s. The statue was moved to Naples in 1787 with most of the Farnese Collection and is now displayed in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale.

The sculpture was reassembled and restored in stages. The head was found separately in a well in Trastevere and bought for the Farnese collection with the help of Guglielmo della Porta, who also made replacement legs. These replacement legs were so well regarded that when the original legs were later found at the Baths of Caracalla, della Porta's were kept, on Michelangelo's advice. The original legs were not reunited with the statue until 1787.

Reader's Guide

The Farnese Hercules is one of the most influential ancient sculptures, having fixed the image of the mythic hero in the European imagination. Its rediscovery in 1546 sparked widespread admiration and numerous copies in gardens and collections across Europe. The statue's exaggerated musculature was admired from the start, though reservations emerged in the later eighteenth century. Napoleon remarked to Antonio Canova that its absence from his Paris museum was the most important gap in the collection. The sculpture was crated for shipment to Paris more than once before the Napoleonic regime fled Naples.

Many engravings and woodcuts spread its fame, including an engraving in the 1562 Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae. Artists such as Hendrik Goltzius and the young Rubens made sketches of the statue. Before photography, prints were the only way to put the image into many hands. The statue has inspired modern artists including Jeff Koons and Matthew Darbyshire, and a replica titled Herakles in Ithaka I was erected at Cornell University in 1989. The Farnese Hercules remains a key example of Roman copying of Greek originals and a touchstone for the representation of heroic masculinity.

Did You Know?

• The original Greek bronze by Lysippos survived for over 1500 years until it was melted down by Crusaders in 1205 during the Sack of Constantinople.
• The statue's replacement legs, made by Guglielmo della Porta, were kept even after the original legs were found, on Michelangelo's advice.
• Goethe wrote about the statue in his Italian Journey, describing seeing it with both sets of legs and being amazed at how much better the original ones were.
• A small Roman marble copy of the type can be seen over the Museum of the Ancient Agora in Athens.