Cast of the Farnese Hercules; National Archaeological Museum, Naples

This sculpture represents the mythological hero Hercules resting on his club with the skin of the Nemean lion draped over it. Hercules killed this beast as the first of his twelve labours. Behind his back Hercules holds three of the golden apples which he had stolen from the Garden of the Hesperides – one of his last labours.

The original statue was discovered in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome in 1546 and was later installed in a courtyard at the Palazzo Farnese, Rome (which gave the sculpture its name). The original Roman marble was made in the early 3rd century AD and was an enlarged copy of a Greek original by Lysippus, dating from the late 4th century BC. The base of the statue is signed by the artist Glykon. The Greek letters on the base explain that the ‘Athenian sculptor Glykon made him’.

This cast was made specially for the RA Schools and shipped from Rome in about 1790. It was planned to be stationed in the Antique Room upstairs at Somerset House, but once it arrived at the RA there were concerns about the safety of the building because of the sculpture’s weight, so it stayed downstairs in the hall.

The Farnese Hercules is among the RA’s casts that have a metal pin protruding from the lower abdomen, on which would have been hung a fig leave when the Academy was open for the Summer Exhibition. There was a furore in the press in 1780 when the casts were left uncovered because of “the shameful state of nudity, to the terror of every decent woman who enters the room” (as the Morning Post wrote).