| Webster's Online Dictionary |
| Expressions | Definition | ||
| Farnese Hercules | The Farnese Hercules stood for generations in his own room at Palazzo Farnese, Rome, frescoed with his feats by Federico Zuccaro in 1566-69 (as Vasari noted). The is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale NapoliMuseo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. The Hercules is one of the most famous sculptures of antiquity, and has fixed the image of Hercules in the European imagination. The sculpture is a 3rd century Roman copy (or perhaps one made in the Athenian studio of Glycon) of a sculpture by Lysippos or one of his circle, in the 4th century BCE. The chronicler Ulisse Aldrovandi recorded in 1592 that the statue had been unearthed in 1546 in the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla (dedicated in 216 CE). It quickly made its way into the collection of Alessandro Farnese, nephew 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. (references) | ||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | Top | ||
| Expressions | Domain | Definition | |
| Farnese Hercules | Antiquities | Farnese Hercules. A colossal statue executed by Glycon of Athens, and representing Hercules clothed in a lion's skin and resting on his huge club, while in his right hand he holds the three golden apples of the Hesperides. The statue, which is now in the Museo Nazionale at Naples, was found at Rome in the Thermae of Caracalla in 1540. It then lacked the legs and the left hand, which were restored by Della Porta after a model in terra cotta by Michael Angelo. Twenty years later the original legs were found in a well three miles from the place whence the statue itself was taken. The work is evidently of a comparatively late period, and shows a tendency to exaggeration in the overstrained effort to express muscular strength, which led Thackeray to characterize it as a “clumsy, caricatured porter. â€. (references) | |
| Farnese Hercules | Literature | 1: [Far-na'-ze Hercu-lees ]. A name given to Glykon's copy of the famous statue of Lysippos, the Greek sculptor in the time of Alexander the Great. It represents the hero leaning on his club, with one hand on his back, as if he had just got possession of the apple of the Hesperides. Farnese is the name of a celebrated family in Italy, which became extinct in 1731. 2: "It struck me that an ironclad is to a wooden vessel what the Farnese Hercules is to the Apollo Belvidere. The Hercules is not without a beauty of its own." - The Times (Paris correspondent). Source: Brewer's Dictionary. | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | Top | ||
