Metope from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia: Head of Geryon
Unknown · c. 460 BC
A head with short hair, thirty-five centimetres high, is all that remains of one of the three faces of Geryon, the monstrous herdsman whom Heracles killed in the far west to take his cattle. The features are broad and simplified, the eyes heavy-lidded, the hair a close cap of locks, in the manner of the severe style of the early fifth century. Cut for a position high on the building, the face was meant to read from below and at a distance, and up close its planes look almost abstract. The head has been mounted in modern times against the main fragment of the metope to suggest the original grouping.
The panel belonged to the series of twelve metopes over the inner porches of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, the labours of Heracles, carved around 460 in Parian marble. Three pieces of the Geryon metope survive: this head, the large fragment with a body of Geryon and a leg of Heracles, and a piece of Heracles's thigh. They were found in 1829 by the French Morea expedition, given to France by the Greek government, and reached the Louvre in 1830.
Did You Know? Only one of Geryon's three heads survives, and it now sits on a modern mount beside the body it may not have belonged to.
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