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Description
- 165
- Amazon Being Killed by Hercules, fragment
- late 2nd-3rd c. AD
- Densely grained white marble (Italian); metal (lost); pigment; 'wax'.
- Ht: Total, 58 cm Amazon: w. max., hem of skirt, 72.2 cm; waist, 15 cm; diam. upper arm, 16.8 cm Hercules’ left hand: l. 15 cm, diam. at wrist 5.8 cm.
- rnMissing are heads, legs, both arms of the Amazon and Hercules’ right arm, and any other elements of drapery, landscape setting and strutwork; missing is the metal arrow once sunk into the Amazon’s exposed shoulder. The surface polish is excellently preserved, with traces of colour and of a waxy protective ‘varnish’ over it still extant, as reported by the conservator, Fabio Sigismondi. The piece is essentially clean of scarring. Corrosion products, or perhaps traces of red pigment to denote drops of blood, were found at the hole sunk to take the attached arrow. Staining and encrustation are concentrated on particular portions, with linear edges showing that part of the sculpture rested in soil while the other half was exposed to an oily environment, probably due to its position in the area of a generator using diesel fuel.
- "This is a large fragment of a two-figure group, comprising the headless body of a woman preserved down to the end of herbelted tunic. which bares the left breast (Amazon costume) and the left hand and arm of a man, clutching her left breast. A lion-skin mantle falls from his right shoulder. Nothing else is preserved of the man.rnThere is a hole prominently positioned at the front of the Amazon’s exposed shoulder, 2 cm deep, for the attachment of a metal object which has left staining. The solid mass of the underside of the Amazon’s chiton preserves the point where her knees emerged from the garment, showing that her legs were wide spread and at least slightly bent at the knee. She seems to be collapsing from a previous position of fierce resistance. Hercules’ left hand has come all the way around her body to her exposed breast, which his fingers cup. rnTThe image must have been periodically re-waxed, as the wax is well preserved on the front of the statue. Because the conservator found that rewaxing did not seem to extend fully across the back of the Amazon, we can suggest that it stood close to a wall. There are, the conservators reported, traces of brownish paint on the lion-skin cloak, and of pigment undercoating on the tunic.
- For iconography generally, LIMC V (1990) sv Hercules. Sarcophagi, with slumped nearly vertical Penthesilea: an example much illustrated, Musei Vaticani , Cortile del Belvedere inv. 933 in Kleiner 1992, fig. 318 at 350; McCann 1978, 76-7 fig. 84., Grassinger 1999, cat. 127 pl. 111.3. The sarcophagi as a group, Newby 2010, 213-14; Zanker and Ewald 2004, 52-4 and cat. 3; Grassinger 1999, Group VI at 178-87, and cat. 119, 120, 125, 127 (Vat. 933), 131, 137, pl. 110-13; LIMC VII (1994) sv. Penthesilea at 300, cat. 54.c.1-9. Labors of Hercules sarcophagi, Jongste 1992. Sarcophagus production’s links to free-standing sculpture in the late Roman period, Hannestad 2007 280. Pigment, pigment undercoat on the Amazon’s skirt and waxing, reported by conservators Fabio Sigismondi and Josefina Marlene Sergio after autopsy, chemical testing of residues and RAMAN spectography.