Head of Heracles (Hercules). 19x17cm

Description

Reproduction of a Roman-Greek figure made in reconstituted marble (marble dust with synthetic resin) finished with a patina of aging with natural earths.

This piece represents Heracles with head of the Nemean lion.

Height: 19 cm. Width: 17 cm.

Herakles is the human hero par excellence, simple, brave and good; violent and generous; far-sighted and reckless; but also persevering and indefatigable. He is the sublime son, for his gigantic labours and his great kindnesses. He is the great sufferer and the great persecuted. But he is also the great laugher; he laughs at his suffering and never ceases to act.

In the piece presented here, we see the hero clad in the skin of the Nemean Lion, whose hunt was one of his twelve labours. Herakles began to shoot arrows at him, but to no avail; then, threatening him with his mace, he forced him into his lair, and blocked one of its entrances; then seizing him in his arms, he drowned him. When the beast was dead, Herakles skinned it and dressed himself in its skin; the head served him as a helmet. Theocritus tells us that the hero was long perplexed by this skin, which neither iron nor fire could tear. Finally, the idea occurred to him to tear it with the lion’s own claws, and in this way he achieved his purpose.