Despite the copyist’s addition of a support, there is no reason to suppose that the Los Angeles statue is a copy of an original bronze. Not only are there few projecting parts (the lion’s skin acts as a support for the left arm, the club for the right) but the figure so closely resembles a Herakles on a Sicyonian coin of Geta (A21: PLATE 31d), long suspected by scholars to depict Skopas’ statue, that there can be little doubt that the Genzano-Hope type is in fact a copy of the work seen by Pausanias, and shows the hero with the Apples of the Hesperides after his demanding period supporting the sky in place of the giant Atlas[23]. It is clearly an early piece, although as an attempt at characterizing physical exhaustion by no means unsuccessful. The turn of the head alone breaks the rigid frontality of the pose, which, as Stewart (1979) remarks, is unbalanced, with the result that the whole right side of the body hangs[24]. The work is obviously inspired by the original of the Herakles statuettes in Boston and Oxford, usually attributed to Myron.
The Multi Faceted Hero Herakles in Hellenistic Sculpture (part 5)
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