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Lot 98*

A Greek bronze Herakles

28 November 2017, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

£8,000 - £10,000

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A Greek bronze Herakles
Late Hellenistic Period, circa 1st Century B.C.
The nude hero standing with his weight on his right leg, the left leg bent at the knee, a club held in his left hand and resting on his shoulder, the right hand raised to touch an ivy wreath crowning his head, with well-defined muscular torso and back and a full curly beard, the eyes and nipples once inlaid, 11.4cm high

Footnotes

Provenance:
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 12 December 1983, lot 288.
Private collection, England.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 14 December 1993, lot 104.

The iconography of the present lot finds a parallel in a similar statuette of Herakles now in Kabul; see A. Stewart, Greek Sculpture, New Haven, 1990, no. 774. The pose of the arm, raised to touch the wreath, is also found on a large bronze figure of a victorious athlete at the Getty Museum, caught in the moment of either putting on or taking off the wreath won at the Olympic Games; see C. Rolley, Greek Bronzes, Fribourg, 1986, p. 51-53.

Additional information

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