Lansdowne Heracles
Encyclopedia
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...
's "Getty Villa
Getty Villa
The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California, USA, is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty Villa is an educational center and museum dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria...
" in Malibu, California. The statue, representing the hero Heracles
Heracles
Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...
as a beardless Lysippic youth grasping the skin of the Nemean lion
Nemean Lion
The Nemean lion was a vicious monster in Greek mythology that lived at Nemea. It was eventually killed by Heracles. It could not be killed with mortal weapons because its golden fur was impervious to attack...
with his club upon his shoulder, was discovered in 1790 on the site of Hadrian's Villa
Hadrian's Villa
The Hadrian's Villa is a large Roman archaeological complex at Tivoli, Italy.- History :The villa was constructed at Tibur as a retreat from Rome for Roman Emperor Hadrian during the second and third decades of the 2nd century AD...
in Tivoli, Italy
Tivoli, Italy
Tivoli , the classical Tibur, is an ancient Italian town in Lazio, about 30 km east-north-east of Rome, at the falls of the Aniene river where it issues from the Sabine hills...
, where many fine Hadrianic copies and pastiches of Greek sculptures had been discovered since the 16th century. Today, the sculpture is considered to be an example of Roman-era improvisations on the Greek sculptural style of the fourth century BCE than a copy of a specific Greek original.
The sculpture was found in the part of the villa's former site that had belonged to conte Giuseppe Fede
Giuseppe Fede
Conte Giuseppe Fede was an Italian nobleman, collector and archaeologist of the 18th century. As early as 1724 he started to buy up parcels of land on the site of Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli and excavate on them...
, and was quickly acquired by Thomas Jenkins
Thomas Jenkins (antiquary)
Thomas Jenkins was a British antiquary and minor painter who went to Rome accompanying the English landscape painter Richard Wilson about 1750 and remained behind, establishing himself in the city by serving as cicerone and sometime banker to the visiting British, becoming a dealer in Roman...
, an English connoisseur and dealer in antiquities with deep connections to English aristocrats on the Grand tour
Grand Tour
The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...
. In 1792, the statue was purchased by the first Marquess of Lansdowne
William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne
William Petty-FitzMaurice, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, KG, PC , known as The Earl of Shelburne between 1761 and 1784, by which title he is generally known to history, was an Irish-born British Whig statesman who was the first Home Secretary in 1782 and then Prime Minister 1782–1783 during the final...
. The statue had been fragmentary when rediscovered. It was restored at that time, as fragmentary sculptures did not appeal to neoclassical taste; the sculptor responsible, who was probably Carlo Albacini
Carlo Albacini
Carlo Albacini was an Italian sculptor and restorer of Ancient Roman sculpture, a pupil of Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, an eminent sculptor and restorer of Rome...
, completed the statue's missing parts according to the taste of the day: the nose was completed, the right forearm, several fingers, the rear of the lion's hide, part of the right thigh and the whole of the left calf were sculpted and assembled as discreetly as possible. The restorations were removed in the 1970s, after it was detected that iron and lead pins connecting the restorations to the original were swelling from corrosion and threatening to spall off additional pieces of marble. The 18th-century restorations were in part replaced with casts in epoxy resin, "to show the original as much as possible free of alien additions" according to the conservator Jerry Podany. They have been re-integrated with the sculpture more recently.
The sculpture remained at Lansdowne House
Lansdowne House
Lansdowne House is a building to the southwest of Berkeley Square in central London, England. It was designed by Robert Adam as a private house and for most of its time as a residence it belonged to the Petty family, Marquesses of Lansdowne. Since 1935, it has been the home of the Lansdowne Club....
, London, until the grand reception rooms were sheared off in a street-widening scheme. The Lansdowne sculptures were sold at auction. The oil billionaire and collector J. Paul Getty
J. Paul Getty
Jean Paul Getty was an American industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, whilst the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1,200 million. At his death, he was...
bought the sculpture in 1951.