Heracles Epitrapezios
Unknown (Roman, after Lysippos) (Lysippos active c. 370-310 BC) · 1st century BC (?)
Heracles sits naked on a rock, his body turned slightly, and the stump of his club shows where it rested beside him. The statuette is small, only thirty four centimetres of Carrara marble, and much is missing: the head, the neck, the right arm, the left hand, the left leg from the knee and the top of the club. The right knee and the base were remade in marble, and the neck and shoulder were recut to fit modern restorations, since removed. The mounting in the base is modern.
The type is the Heracles Epitrapezios, the hero at table, a small bronze that the poets Statius and Martial say Lysippos made for Alexander the Great, and which later passed through the hands of Hannibal and Sulla. Roman versions exist at every scale, from tabletop to colossal. This one, dated around the first century BC, is said to come from Gabii near Rome, and it entered the Louvre in 1807 with the Borghese collection. A second seated Heracles of the same type, from Smyrna, stands nearby for comparison.
Did You Know? Roman poets claimed the original of this seated Heracles was a tabletop bronze owned in turn by Alexander, Hannibal and Sulla.
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