Metope from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia: Heracles and the Cretan Bull
Unknown · c. 460 BC
Heracles, naked, short-haired and bearded, throws his weight against a bull that rears up across the whole width of the panel. The two bodies cross in an X, man and beast pulling in opposite directions, and the tension is carried by the diagonal of the hero's back and the animal's arching neck. The arms of Heracles and the head of the bull are lost, and only the upper two-thirds of the slab survive, but the composition is still legible at a glance, which is exactly what a metope high on a temple needed. Traces of red paint remain on the bull's body, a hint of the colour that once covered the sculpture.
The panel is one of the twelve metopes of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, which showed the labours of Heracles above the porches of the building, around 460, in the severe style that preceded the Parthenon. French archaeologists of the Morea expedition excavated the temple in 1829, and the Greek government gave the finds to France; they reached the Louvre in 1830. A fragment once thought to be Heracles's thigh was later shown not to belong to this relief.
Did You Know? The panel was dug up in 1829 by the French Morea expedition, the first scientific excavation at Olympia.
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