Marble statue of a bearded Hercules

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Restorations made during the early 17th century: both legs, the plinth, the support at the left leg, pieces in the lion’s skin. The arms were also restored but have been removed. This statue and the over-life-sized statue of Hercules across the courtyard in all probability were made as a pair to decorate one of the great spaces in a large public bath. Although they are much restored, their stance and attributes are essentially correct and are variants on long-established statue types that probably originated in images of the Greek hero Herakles dating to the fourth century B.C. They were part of the large collection of ancient sculpture assembled in Rome at the beginning of the seventeenth century by a wealthy Genoese banker, the Marchese Vincenzo Giustiniani.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art