Standing Hercules

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A reduction of the gilt-bronze colossus in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome, famous in antiquity and ever since it was dug up in the fifteenth century, this bronze Hercules differs from the original in several respects.[1] The position of the legs is reversed, and the torso has lost torsion and authority, thereby compromising the contrapposto. The head is larger in relation to the whole, the hair artfully feathered, and the gnarly club shorter. In cataloguing the statuette for The Met, Johanna Hecht noted similarities in the stances of two ancient ones in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris,[2] but their poses are more coherent, and our imitator’s conception probably derived, ultimately, from the large work in Rome. -JDD Footnotes (For key to shortened references see bibliography in Allen, Italian Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. NY: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022.) 1. Haskell and Penny 1981, pp. 227–29. 2. Inv. bronzes .519, .549.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art