Lysippus executes a magnificent bronze statue of…

Lysippus executes a magnificent bronze statue of Heracles in about 340.

The heroically scaled Hercules is one of the most famous sculptures of Antiquity, and has fixed the image of the mythic hero in the European imagination.

It quickly made its way into the collection of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, grandson of Pope Paul III.

Alessandro Farnese was well placed to form one of the greatest collections of classical sculpture that has been assembled since Antiquity.

The Farnese Hercules is probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century CE and signed by a certain Glykon, from an original by Lysippos (or one of his circle) that would have been made in the fourth century BCE.

The copy was made for the Baths of Caracalla in Rome (dedicated in CE 216), where it was recovered in 1546.