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Farnese Hercules

Archaeological discoveries in ItalyCollections of the National Archaeological Museum, NaplesFarnese CollectionHarv and Sfn no-target errorsRoman copies of 4th-century BC Greek sculptures
Sculptures of Heracles
Herakles Farnese MAN Napoli Inv6001 n01
Herakles Farnese MAN Napoli Inv6001 n01

The Farnese Hercules (Italian: Ercole Farnese) is an ancient statue of Hercules, probably an enlarged copy made in the early third century AD and signed by Glykon, who is otherwise unknown; the name is Greek but he may have worked in Rome. Like many other Ancient Roman sculptures it is a copy or version of a much older Greek original that was well known, in this case a bronze by Lysippos (or one of his circle) that would have been made in the fourth century BC. This original survived for over 1500 years until it was melted down by Crusaders in 1205 during the Sack of Constantinople. The enlarged copy was made for the Baths of Caracalla in Rome (dedicated in 216 AD), where the statue was recovered in 1546, and is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. The heroically-scaled Hercules is one of the most famous sculptures of antiquity, and has fixed the image of the mythic hero in the European imagination. The Farnese Hercules is a massive marble statue, following a lost original that was cast in bronze through a method called lost wax casting. It depicts a muscular, yet weary, Hercules leaning on his club, which has the skin of the Nemean lion draped over it. In myths about Heracles, killing the lion was his first task. He has just performed one of the last of The Twelve Labours, which is suggested by the apples of the Hesperides he holds behind his back. The type was well known in antiquity, and among many other versions a Hellenistic or Roman bronze reduction, found at Foligno is in the Musée du Louvre. A small Roman marble copy can be seen over the Museum of the Ancient Agora, Athens (see illustration).

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Farnese Hercules (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Farnese Hercules
Piazza Museo Nazionale, Naples Municipalità 3

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N 40.8534 ° E 14.2505 °
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Museo archeologico nazionale di Napoli

Piazza Museo Nazionale 19
80135 Naples, Municipalità 3
Campania, Italy
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call+390814422149

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museoarcheologiconapoli.it

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Herakles Farnese MAN Napoli Inv6001 n01
Herakles Farnese MAN Napoli Inv6001 n01
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Secret Museum, Naples
Secret Museum, Naples

The Secret Museum or Secret Cabinet (Italian: Gabinetto Segreto) in Naples refers to the collection of 1st-century Roman erotic art found in Pompeii and Herculaneum, now held in separate galleries at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the former Museo Borbonico. The term "cabinet" is used in reference to the "cabinet of curiosities" - i.e. any well-presented collection of objects to admire and study. Re-opened, closed, re-opened again and then closed again for nearly 100 years, the secret room was briefly made accessible again at the end of the 1960s before being finally re-opened in 2000. Since 2005 the collection has been kept in a separate room in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. Although the excavation of Pompeii was initially an Enlightenment project, once artifacts were classified through a new method of taxonomy, those deemed obscene and unsuitable for the general public were termed pornography and in 1821 they were locked away in a Secret Museum. The doorway was bricked up in 1849. Throughout ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum, erotic frescoes, depictions of the god Priapus, sexually explicit symbols and inscriptions, and household items such as phallic oil lamps were found. The ancient Roman understanding of sexuality viewed explicit material very differently from most present-day cultures. Ideas about obscenity developed from the 18th century to the present day into a modern concept of pornography. At Pompeii, locked metal cabinets were constructed over erotic frescos, which could be shown, for an additional fee, to gentlemen but not to ladies. This peep show was still in operation at Pompeii in the 1960s. The cabinet was only accessible to "people of mature age and respected morals", which in practice meant only educated men. The catalogue of the secret museum was also a form of censorship, as engravings and descriptive texts played down the content of the room.