Friday, May 27, 2016

Statues of Hercules in Early Prints

Jan de Bisschop
Bust of Commodus as Hercules
ca. 1643-71
etching
British Museum

Giulio Bonasone
Double Bust of Hercules and Dejanira
ca. 1531-76
engraving
British Museum

Rivers level granite mountains,
Rains wash the figures from the sundial,
The plowshare wears thin in the furrow;
And on the fingers of the mighty,
The gold of authority is bright
With the glitter of attrition.

  Sulpicius Lupercus Servasius (4th century) translated by Kenneth Rexroth (1944)

Anonymous Italian artist
Fireworks apparatus with statue of Hercules
ca. 1580-1620
etching
British Museum

Adamo Scultori
Statue of Hercules (front)
ca. 1547-87
engraving
British Museum

Adamo Scultori
Statue of Hercules (back)
ca. 1547-87
engraving
British Museum

Agostino Veneziano
Antique Hercules Terms
1536
engraving
British Museum

Giulio Bonasone after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Terms of Dejaneira and Hercules
ca. 1545-50
engraving
Victoria & Albert Museum

after Simon van de Passe
Statues of Zeus (center) and Hercules (left)
ca. 1614
engraving
British Museum

Claude Mellan
Statue of Hercules in the Giustiniani collection
1631
engraving
British Museum

studio of Annibale Carracci
Study of the Legs of the Farnese Hercules
early 17th century
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Jacopo da Leonardus afer Gaetano Gandolfi
Statues of a goddess and of Hercules
ca. 1723-82
engraving
British Museum

Robert Sayer
Hercules as Ship's Figurehead
1788
mezzotint, etching
British Museum

Philippe Trière
Statues of Bacchus and of Hercules at Palazzo Pitti
ca. 1789-1807
engraving
British Museum

Johann Heinrich Ramberg
Guide to proportion, with figure based on the Farnese Hercules second from left
1805
etching
British Museum