 |
| Francesco Salviati Alexander the Great kneeling before a Priest of Ammon in front of Bramante's Tempietto ca. 1535 engraving British Museum |
The glamorous historical reputation of Alexander the Great ensured that his name and person obtruded in many incongruous settings. Above, the young conqueror is blessed by a Priest of Ammon with Bramante's revolutionary and aggressively classical Tempietto (standing in Rome since 1502) in the background.
 |
| John Faber the Younger Bust of The Dying Alexander ca. 1725-56 mezzotint British Museum |
The bust widely known as The Dying Alexander is recorded in Medici possession by 1579, acquired in Rome a few decades earlier. "The identification with Alexander the Great probably stemmed from Plutarch's statement that Lysippus, who alone among contemporary sculptors was permitted to take the likeness of the Conqueror, portrayed him with leonine hair and melting eyes, looking up to the heavens. ... Later accounts of the head after its installation at the Uffizi suggest that the Emperor had been shown wounded and swooning because of the blood he lost in battle with the Oxydracae; or feverish after bathing in the icy waters of the Cydnus; or lamenting that there were no more worlds to conquer; or in agonies of remorse for killing Clitus, a warrior who had saved his life, during a quarrel at a banquet ('a personal memorial of the terrible effects of intemperance and midnight hours'). The Dying Alexander remained, however, the most popular title. The various interpretations not only reflected a desire to find in ancient sculpture illustrations of ancient history, but also the recognition that the movement and the expression of this head were more dramatic than one would expect in a portrait – even in a portrait by Lysippus. The head is now in fact believed to be a fragment of some heroic narrative group."
This and other quoted passage below are from Taste and the Antique by Francis Hasekll and Nicholas Penny (Yale University Press, 1981)
 |
| John Brown Bust of The Dying Alexander 1779 drawing British Museum |
 |
| The Dying Alexander fragment of a Hellenistic marble sculpture group Uffizi, Florence |
"Although the head was clearly admired for its expression, and not simply as a likeness of Alexander, once that likeness was disputed, the celebrity of the sculpture did slowly decline. Bianchi was not certain that it was a portrait of Alexander and the discovery of the inscribed herm portrait at Tivoli in 1779 ('the Azara herm' [below] presented to Bonaparte and today in the Louvre) convinced most scholars that it was not."
 |
| The Azara Herm Roman marble copy of a Greek head of Alexander the Great Louvre |
 |
| Friedrich Anders The Azara Herm antique portrait of Alexander the Great ca. 1779 drawing British Museum |
"All the same, it was still popularly known as The Dying Alexander a century later, and some scholars still believed it might represent Alexander." Evidence for the extreme durability of the Alexander identification appears below in the form of an Italian portrait medallion based on The Dying Alexander and cast in gold during the 1920s. At bottom is a bronze statuette that is (perhaps hopefully) believed by many modern scholars to be a portrait of Alexander created in his lifetime.
 |
| Vincenzo Gemito Medallion based on The Dying Alexander ca. 1920-25 gold British Museum |
 |
| possible portrait of Alexander the Great as a hunter 250-100 BC Hellenistic bronze statuette, from a group British Museum |
The Hercules and Antaeus (below) "is recorded in 1509 as among the statues taken by Pope Julius II to the Vatican, and is mentioned forty years later by Aldrovandi as lying on the ground in the statue court near the niche containing the Cleopatra – Antaeus lacking head and arms and Hercules with no legs. Its battered and fragmentary condition, confirmed by contemporary drawings, perhaps accounts for its being neglected by other writers. By the 1560s it was no longer in the Belvedere, and in 1568 it was recorded under a loggia of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence."
 |
| Hercules and Antaeus Roman marble copy of an earlier Hellenistic work Palazzo Pitti |
"Despite its condition the Hercules and Antaeus was greatly admired during the High Renaissance, and the attribution to Polyclitus was published as early as 1510. The sculptor nicknamed Antico referred to it as 'the most beatiful work of antiquity that ever was' and made a small bronze reduction of it in a restored state (below) for the small grotta of Isabella d'Este . . ."
 |
| Antico Hercules and Antaeus ca. 1500-1510 copy - bronze statuette Victoria & Albert Museum |
" . . .whereas what looks like a replica of the actual battered original may be seen in Lotto's portrait of the famous Venetian art collector Andrea Odoni painted in 1527 (now at Hampton Court)." The Lorenzo Lotto portrait appears below, and the marble fragment in question is behind the sitter on the left-hand side of the painting.
 |
| Lorenzo Lotto Portrait of Andrea Odoni 1527 Royal Collection, Great Britain |
"It has been assumed but never proved that the group was among the statues given by Pope Pius IV to Cosimo I of Florence when he visited Rome in 1560, and this seems likely, especially in view of the great symbolical significance for Florence and the Medici of the Labors of Hercules. ... Eventually the fame of Hercules and Antaeus would far transcend any parochial or political considerations. Maffei put aside his usual scholarly caution and iconographic preoccupations to rhapsodize over every detail of this 'Greek' sculpture which again was ascribed to Polyclitus. His esteem and this attribution were repeated by Montfaucon and Spence, whilst William Cheselden, the surgeon, published a plate of 'the famous statue of Hercules and Antaeus' with the muscles exposed as one of the illustrations in his Anatomy of the Human Body. It seems to have been Cheselden's book which gave Thomas Jefferson the idea of obtaining a copy of the group for his projected art gallery at Monticello. He would perhaps have been able to buy a plaster statuette in London, but the work is not listed at the end of the century amongst those pieces copied by the Roman bronze-founders which suggests that it was losing international popularity by then."
The engravings below were made in the fairly short period while the Hercules and Antaeus remained in Rome as a large beautiful fragment.
 |
| Heinrich Aldegrever Hercules and Antaeus 1529 engraving British Museum |
 |
| school of Andrea Mantegna Hercules and Antaeus ca. 1470-1500 engraving British Museum |
 |
| Agostino Veneziano Hercules and Antaeus, with Mother Earth observing ca. 1533-36 engraving British Museum |