Hermes Resting
Also known as Seated Mercury.
The Resting Hermes was considered a prize find in the late eighteenth century — being bronze adds considerably to its rarity value — and was very widely copied in northern Europe.
The proportions and subtle twist of the body are in the sculptural tradition of Lysippos, though the head is reminiscent of portraits of Augustus, some 250 or 300 years later. It cannot of course be later than 79 CE, when Herculaneum was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius, along with neighbouring Pompeii
Naples, National Museum 841
Purchased in 1884 from Naples Museum
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 283 (n.4), pl. 102.1
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 82, no.384
Brunn-Bruckmann: Denkmäler Griechischer und Römischer Skulptur, 282
Ruesch: Guide to the National Museum, Naples, 208
Lawrence: Later Greek Sculpture (1927), 47 & appendix 94
Pollitt: Art in the Hellenistic Age, 57, pl. 52
Trace (stolen art & antiques magazine), 84, December 1995, 19
Found at Herculaneum