Roman Schools 1st-2nd century AD, ‘ Hercules’, Roman interpretation after  an original by the Greek sculptor Lysippos of about 325–300 BC.

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Yvo Reinsalu

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Roman Schools 1st-2nd century AD, Hercules, Roman interpretation after  an original by the Greek sculptor Lysippos of about 325–300 BC., Restored and set into a modern bust by the English sculptor Joseph Nollekens (1737- 1823), Marble Sculpture, H: 74.70 centimetres, The Enlightenment Gallery, British Museum

Roman Schools 1st-2nd century AD, ‘ Hercules’, Roman interpretation after  an original by the Greek sculptor Lysippos of about 325–300 BC. Hercules Yvo Reinsalu
Roman Schools 1st-2nd century AD, Hercules, Roman interpretation after  an original by the Greek sculptor Lysippos of about 325–300 BC., Restored and set into a modern bust by the English sculptor Joseph Nollekens (1737- 1823), Marble Sculpture, H: 74.70 centimetres, The Enlightenment Gallery, British Museum

Many sculptures of Hercules survive from antiquity in various forms of preservation and reconstruction. The most influential are derived from a lost bronze original by the Greek sculptor Lysippos, produced around 325–300 BC. Two Roman versions of his prototype—this compact bust at the British Museum and the most famous, colossal Farnese Hercules in Naples—both date from the Imperial Roman period but were rediscovered and reconstructed during very different historical eras. The Farnese Hercules, excavated in the 16th century from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, now stands in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. It was reconstructed to highlight Hercules’ immense physical weight, slumped posture, and exaggerated musculature—an image of exhausted triumph that appealed deeply to Renaissance and later Baroque fascination with the expressive power of the human body.

In contrast, the Neoclassical approach taken by Joseph Nollekens in the late 18th century was shaped by an entirely different agenda. Working from a damaged Roman torso, he did not attempt to recreate the full mythological figure. The torso was reworked into a composition of calm and proportion, where heroism was redefined through idealisation. The Enlightenment approach did not seek to revive the emotional intensity of antiquity but to distil it into an image of cold rationality and timeless, restrained beauty. In this vision, Hercules is no longer a labouring figure worn by suffering but an abstract ideal of controlled strength, purified of myth and emotion. Such busts were widely collected and reproduced in Enlightenment circles as powerful instruments of intellectual culture—objects to be admired, studied, and displayed in accordance with the age’s belief in the civilising power of classical form

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