The statue was considerably reworked by Cesnola's "restorers" so that numerous features of the original are no longer clear. The proper left arm and the legs were certainly reattached; the original position of the right arm has also been obscured. Herakles wears a tunic, belt, modified kilt, and lionskin. In his left hand he held a bow, half of which appears against his body. (The pickle-shaped club that he brandished for many decades was added in modern times and has been removed.) On his right thigh are the ends of the arrows that he held in his right hand. Although the head 74.51.2857 indicates that Cypriot sculptors were working on a large scale as early as the beginning of the sixth century B.C., it was only during the second half of the century that monumental pieces were produced in some quantity.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Limestone Herakles
Period:Archaic
Date:ca. 530–520 BCE
Culture:Cypriot
Medium:Limestone
Dimensions:Overall: 78 × 19 × 12 in., 641 lb. (198.1 × 48.3 × 30.5 cm, 290.8 kg)
Classification:Stone Sculpture
Credit Line:The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76
Object Number:74.51.2455
Sanctuary of Golgoi–Ayios Photios, “first site”
Cesnola, Luigi Palma di. 1885. A Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Vol. 1. LXXXVIII.585, Boston: James R. Osgood and Company.
Myres, John L. 1914. Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus. no. 1360, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Sophocleous, Sophocles. 1985. ""Atlas des représentations chypro-archaiques des divinités." Master's Diss.." Master's Diss. no. 3, p. 31, pl. V.4. Paul Aströms Förlag.
Hermary, Antoine. 1985. "Un nouveau chapiteau hathorique trouvé à Amathonte." Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 109(2): p. 685 n. 92.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1990. Vol. 5: Herakles-Kenchrias. "Herakles (Cypri)," p. 193, no. 3, pl. 164, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Karageorghis, Vassos, Joan Mertens, and Marice E. Rose. 2000. Ancient Art from Cyprus: The Cesnola Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 190, p. 123–25, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Lightfoot, Christopher S. 2000. "The New Cypriot Galleries at The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Minerva, 11(3): pp. 19–20, fig. 8.
Karageorghis, Vassos. 2002. Early Cyprus: Crossroads of the Mediterranean. pl. 400, Los Angeles, California: J. Paul Getty Museum.
Picón, Carlos A. 2007. Art of the Classical World in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece, Cyprus, Etruria, Rome no. 289, pp. 248–49, 463, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Hermary, Antoine and Joan R. Mertens. 2013. The Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Art : Stone Sculpture. no. 302, pp. 228–30, Online Publication, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Counts, Derek B. 2014. "Myth into Art: Foreign Impulses and Local Reponses in Archaic Cypriot Sanctuaries." The Cambridge Prehistory of the Bronze and Iron Age Mediterranean, Arthur Bernard Knapp and Peter van Dommelen, eds. p. 293, fig. 16.8, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gubel, Eric. 2018. "'Milqart-Herakles' on a Persian Age Scarab from Sidon." Archaeology & History in Lebanon, vol. 48-49: pp. 97–98, figs. 2–4.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
