A very fine cast of the 'Seated Hermes,' after the original excavated in the 18th century. Known as the god Mercury to the Romans. The bronze seated Hermes, found at the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum in 1758, is at the National Archeological Museum of Naples.[1] "This statue was probably the most celebrated work of art discovered at Herculaneum and Pompeii in the eighteenth century", Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny have observed. To protect it from Napoleonic depredations, it was packed into one of the fifty-two cases of antiquities and works of art that accompanied the Bourbon flight to Palermo in 1798. It was once again in the royal villa at Portici in 1816 (Haskell and Penny 1981:269). Martin Robertson classifies it as a Roman copy, made before AD 79, of a Greek bronze original of the late fourth or early third century BC, in the tradition of Lysippus, whose name has been invoked in connection with the sculpture since its first reappearance.

DETAILS:

• Bronze
• Circa 1890
• Grand Tour Bronze
• No Signature
• Green Marble Base
• 12 " Tall
• 8" x 6" base
• 12.5 lbs
• In very Good Condition For Its Age