Workshop of Giovanni Maria Mosca(1495/99 – after 1573), Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos, c.1510–1515, White marble inlaid with red and purplish grey breccia marble, 41.3 x 25 x 9.5 cm, Victoria & Albert Museum, London
The sculpture is one of several versions crafted by Mosca and his workshop. It draws on classical myth to depict the Greek hero Philoctetes, abandoned on Lemnos by the Greeks due to the stench of his incurable snakebite wound. His isolation and suffering, central to the narrative, reflect nearly a decade of exile. The piece shows him clutching Heracles’ bow, a gift essential to the Greeks’ eventual victory in the Trojan War, symbolising his redemption.
The work’s iconography likely draws from literary sources like Sophocles’ ‘Philoctetes’ or Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and ‘Odyssey’, which detail his ordeal and return. Its composition reflects Renaissance fascination with classical mythology, highlighting Philoctetes’ physical agony and emotional despair and emphasising human vulnerability and resilience.