Hercules and the Nemean Lion

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The composition recurs in a bronze in the Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, and in another bronze on the art market in London (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, May 29, 1981, no. 162). Wilhelm von Bode discussed the present statuette as an early-sixteenth century Venetian work from the circle of Camelio. However, the violent sideward torsion and the decorous penetrations of space along the right flank are fully Baroque. Convincing comparisons with Italian sculpture are wanting. The richly faceted surface suggests an original model in limewood. The anatomy is expressive but scientifically inexact, as can be appreciated especially in Hercules; muscular back, where the forms are knotted together around a high, pinched-in waist. These qualities recall German Baroque carving—large-scale sculptures by Bendl, Brokoff, and Braun families of Bohemia come to mind—but next to nothing is known about German bronze statuettes of the late seventeenth century. [James D. Draper, 1984]

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