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The base of this sarcophagus depicts a well-known theme in funerary art: the Twelve Labors of Hercules. The intercolumniations are filled by the twelve labors imposed on Hercules by Eurystheus, represented in high relief, with numerous details in the round (see in general Jongste 1992). On the front, the first five feats follow in succession, which show the hero, still young and beardless, defeat the Nemean Lion, the Lernaean Hydra, the Erymanthian Boar, the Ceryneian Hind and the Stymphalian Birds. The five labors of his maturity are depicted on the back side; the now bearded hero is represented fighting with the Cretan Bull, King Diomedes of Thrace, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, the monster Geryon and Cerberus. On the short right side, two figures of Hercules at rest - still young, fresh from the cleaning of the Augean stables, and mature, after the conquest of the Hesperidean apples-flank a female figure of uncertain identification. The current restoration of this figure (carried out by 1884), with a bow resting on the left shoulder, is consistent with the detail documented in the Codex Coburgensis (mid-sixteenth century); an object carved in low relief next to woman's right leg, moreover, is rendered like a quiver in the 1577 drawing of Pierre Jacques. These same attributes characterize the semi-nude female figure represented in the central niche of the right side of the large sarcophagus with the labors of Hercules in the Antalya Museum, interpreted as Omphale (Strocka 2017, pp. 79-80, no. 1, pls. 22,1-23,2). In the case of the Torlonia coffer, however, the fact that the woman, dressed in a chiton and without a lion skin, stands on a base, would suggest that a cult statue (Artemis / Diana?) is represented here, a hypothesis also supported by the detail of the diadem (now restored), again recorded in the Соdех Coburgensis drawing. Finally, on the left side, the central niche is occupied by the door of Hades, closed and surmounted by a rich entablature, on whose sides there is a veiled female figure, which can perhaps be recognized as a suppliant (Strocka 2017, p. 84), and a male figure, nude except for a chlamys fastened on the right shoulder, with a bull's head in his left hand and a staff in his right hand, who is probably to be interpreted as Thesues liberated from Hades by Hercules (see also cat. 36). The restoration of the staff as a caduceus and the consequent interpretation of the figure as Hermes / Mercury are first documented in the 1884 Torlonia catalog (Visconti 1884-1885, p. 292).
The Torlonia sarcophagus is one of the best preserved exemplars of a remarkable group of monumental columniated sarcophagi made by workshops in Asia minor from the middle of the 2nd century CE (Strocka 2017). For its wealth of architectural and decorative elements, the sarcophagus can be compared with monuments made around 170 CE (Wiegartz 1965, p. 27; Waelkens 1982, p. 76; Jongste 1992, p. 122; Strocka 2017, P. 84). If the dodekathlon, or twelve labors, appears as a continuous frieze on contemporary Roman sarcophagi (think of the Corsini sarcophagus, Lisippo 1995, pp. 270-271, no. 4.39.3, L. Musso), on sarcophagi from Asia minor the assimilation of peristyle buildings in the coffers allows for the presentation of each labor— according to a standardized sequence and iconography—as an isolated sculptural group, emphasizing its three-dimensionality. As a hero deified and often involved in otherworldly adventures, Hercules appears not only as a guarantor of victory over death, but also as an exemplar of the virtues and valor shown in life by the deceased (Grassinger 2007).
-- Essay by Eloisa Dodero
Roman, Imperial period, second half of the 2nd century CE. Made in Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), the manufacturing center for the largest sarcophagi in the Roman world, and exported to the capital city.
Originally in the collection of the Palazzo Savelli (later Orsini).
Torlonia Collection, Rome. On loan to the Art Institute of Chicago (ARTIC).
Lake Stymphalia (Greek: Λίμνη Στυμφαλία - pron. "Límnē Stymphalía") is located in the north-eastern part of the Peloponnese, in Corinthia, southern Greece.
The area is also mentioned in Greek Mythology, due to the Stymphalian birds, which infested the Arcadian woods near the lake. Heracles' sixth labour was to exterminate them.
The scene painted on this amphora shows Herakles, protected by Nemean lion skin, using a catapult to shoot at the birds which flock around him, their plumage decoratively picked out in added white and red paint.
The Stymphalian birds are rarely depicted in art, probably because they do not offer such an obviously satisfying compositional scheme as a single opponent. The images all present Herakles killing the birds, but the earliest literary source, Peisandros (followed by Apollonios, Argonautika 2.1052–7, and Diodoros 4.13.2), has Herakles just frightening them off with the noise of a rattle. Some later writers, like Apollodoros (2.5.6), compromise by supposing that Herakles shot the birds down with his arrows after first frightening them, with the rattle or with bronze castanets made by the craftsman-god Hephaistos. Exactly what threat the birds presented is unclear: Apollodoros merely cites their large number, Diodoros has them despoiling the surrounding countryside of fruit. Only Pausanias (8.22.4) claims that they were man-eating.
The people of the historical town of Stymphalos in Arkadia seem to have been proud of their link with Herakles, because they alluded to the labor on coins of the late fifth/early fourth century, which have the head of a young Herakles on one side and the head of a water-bird on the other.
Attic black-figured Amphora
High 46 cm. – Diam. 31 cm
Attributed “Group E”, Workshop of Exekias
Ca. 540 BC
Boulogne-sur-mer, Musée, Inv. no. 420/3
On the front of the coffer, six of Hercules' labors are represented in a continuous frieze: the Nemean lion (killed with his bare hands, while the club and the bow with the quiver are left on the rocky ground, where a parapetasma is stretched); the Lernaean hydra (with a five-headed serpentine body and heads facing the club one by one); the Brymanthian boar (carried already dead on his shoulders by the hero, while a jar at the bottom alludes to the Fearful Burystheus, hidden from the sight of the animal; the Cerynian hind (felled, despite its abnormal size, by Hercules grabbing it by the horns); the Stymphalian birds (which fall, struck in sequence by his arrows); the capture of the belt of the Amazon Hippolytes (who lies dead on the ground, trodden by the hero). At the right end of the coffer appears the last feat, the theft of the apples in the garden of the Hesperides: Hercules, as he leaves with the fruits, turns back to look at the tree from whose summit hangs the sleeping snake-guardian, in the presence of two Nymphs whose the heads appear in the background behind the trunk, while at the bottom remains part of the pleated robe of another female figure, placed on a plane closer to the foreground.
On short sides Hercules' combat with the Centaurs appears: on the left side Hercules grabs his antagonist by the beard, raising his club threateningly; on the right side the hero, after felling an opponent who raises his arms in surrender, holds him by the hair, before launching the final blow, resting his left knee on his back in the same schema as the struggle with the doe on the front); in the background, another beardless Centaur, armed with a club, turns back as he flees to the right. As was usual, the execution of these sides was carried out by an artist artistically less gifted than that who worked on the front of the coffer and who, in addition to cursory rendering of some rows of Centaurs, left some parts incomplete, such as the lion skin of Hercules on the right side.
The back of the coffer is blank, and flattened roughly with the gradine, while in the lower part it has a series of grooves with a horizontal course, possibly attributable to a processing of the block when still in the quarry, or to the object's positioning inside the sepulcher.
The sequence of the feats depicted on the front is almost identical to the Uffizi sarcophagus (Robert 1897, no. 113, pl. XXXI; Mansuelli 1958, pp. 225 ff., N. 237; Jongste 1992, pp. 43 ff., Br) and in the sarcophagus displayed until the nineteenth century in the garden of Villa Borghese, which then passed to Hever Castle, which was documented in 1983 in New York (Royal Athena Galleries) and is now perhaps in Los Angeles (Robert 1897, no.112, pl. XXXI; Jongste 1992, p. 58, B9, fig. 18; Eisenberg 1985, p. 95, no. 273), which also shares with the Torlonia exemplar the theme of Hercules's combat with the Centaurs on the short sides.
The representation of the Labors of Hercules appears in a series of sarcophagi with continuous friezes, which includes an older series of examples between 150 and 180 CE, among which is that in the British Museum, London (Robert 1897, no. 120, pl. XXXII; Jongste 1992, pp. 48 ff., B3), which has a different articulation of the scenes and a cover with other labors of the hero on its front. The Torlonia sarcophagus also has a similar cover front, which in the central part shows the victory over the bull of Crete; the capture and harnessing of the mares of Diomedes; the fight against Geryon (rendered as three warriors connected at the back, armed with sword and shield, one of whom is already falls defeated); Cerberus dragged out of the underworld. At the ends of the front, however, there are three scenes with an uncertain meaning. On the left a naked man, seated on a rocky mass in front of an incongruous parapetasma, makes a gesture of surprise and wonder with his right hand raised towards the chin: Carl Robert, who disagreed with the interpretation given at the time by Visconti (Hercules seated on the Mount Eta with a cup - which is however not visible - in his hand, in celebration of his apotheosis), believed it showed instead Amphitryon amazed at the infant Hercules (absent however on the surface of the relief) choking the snakes (see the London example). Another scene (tentatively read by Jongste as an allusion to the cleaning of the Augean stables) shows a figure, who drags a chest with dung (?) out of a cave with a long rope; the scene is quite distinet from the next episode relating to the bull of Crete. At the opposite end of the front, again in a rocky landscape, are two women dressed only in a mantle gathered around their hips (apparently two Nymphs) before a tree where a third recumbent female figure (of larger size) reclines to the right: she too has a nude torso with a mantle on her legs and a veil that swells above her head. Here also P.E. Visconti developed a futile exegetical proposal (the grief of the Hesperides at the theft of the apples, in the presence of Hesperia, female personification of the West); C. Robert, while sharing the idea of the lamentation of the Hesperides, suggested interpreting the recumbent woman as Tellus, given the presence of the veil-like mantle. The difficulty of interpreting these scenes, together with their somewhat cursory execution and the evident presence of joints on the surface of the marble, reasonably suggests that these are fragments combined with the disjointed front in order to complete it, perhaps around the third decade from the nineteenth century, even before the Lungara Museum. Such fragments, obtained from other similar lids, or made in imitation of the antique but with evident uncertainties and misunderstandings on the iconographic level, were connected to the two authentic corner masks with a Herculean head covered by a lion skin, which conclude the whole and conserve the original border strip of the front.
According to Jongste, the monumental sarcophagus found in Velletri (Andreae 1963, pp. 11-87; Jongste 1992, pp. 22, 39ff. with other earlier literature) constitutes the first Roman example decorated with the Labors of Hercules, rendered according to prototypes derived essentially from the classical and Hellenistic world (related in particular to the sculpture of Lysippus) alongside a few others designed specially in the imperial era, such as the cleaning the Augean stables in the presence of the river Alpheus. The Torlonia sarcophagus, on the other hand, falls into a second group, whose forerunner is the Uffizi sarcophagus mentioned above, datable to 150-160 CE, with a lid dispersed after the seventeenth century, but known from a dal Pozzo drawing, and of which there now remains only a fragment in the Chiaramonti Museum in the Vatican (longste 1992, P. 53, B4).
Rather than organizing the decoration according to a predictable canonical and repeated order of the labors between the case and the lid, the workshop that produced this series of sarcophagi must have composed the sequence of Hercules' feats somewhat freely. In the case of Torlonia marble, in particular, although chronology is respected (as shown by the transition from a beardless hero to a bearded and more mature man, following a precise cycle of development), attention seems in fact to have been focused on the labor of the Cerynian hind, with an oversized depiction of the animal in the center of the coffer and the other labors made almost subsidiary to it. There is however great attention to detail, seen in the rendering of faces, with the hero's face always shown with an expression of concentration, or of classical beauty in the Hesperides, as in the finishing of the bow of Hercules in the first task, or the scaly coils of the snakes in two other cases. All this was in order to catch the attention of buyers and make the piece a competitive work compared to the sarcophagi produced by craftsmen in Asia minor, which were starting to be successfully imported into Rome at the time.
The presence of the combat with the Centaurs on the short sides, widespread from the time of Trajan until the end of the Antonine era, together with stylistic considerations such as the anatomical structure of the figures still in a firmly classical mold, the large and deep undercuts of the relief on the coffer, alongside a still discreet use of the drill for color in the surfaces and a sensitive decorative quality in certain details, allow us to limit its dating to 160-170 CE. The success of the production of these sarcophagi lies in the appreciation of the feats of Hercules by the Roman clientele who saw in the hero's accomplishment of the tasks imposed on him a testimony of virtus and a celebration of his ability to dominate adversities by restoring order to the world threatened by horrible, hostile monsters, winning forbidden goods such as those in the garden of the Hesperides, or even crossing the border into the afterlife unharmed, by subjugating Cerberus, to earn at last a place among the gods as a prize.
Through the figure of Hercules and the representation of his labors, the deceased could therefore supply a laudatory and consoling self-representation as a sort of encomium during a laudatio funebris, with an allusion to his industrious activity in life and a reference to the fame and glory he won in the form of immortality, on the model of the hero (see Grassinger 2007, p. II6). The discovery of this sarcophagus, together with another with the myth of Apollo and Marsyas (MT 423), ascribable to now lost funerary monuments, took place on April 13, 1830 during the excavations carried out by Carlo Torlonia on the estate of Roma Vecchia near the Via Latina and the Villa dei Settebassi (Gerhard 1830, p. 75; see the introduction to Section II by S. Tuccinardi).
-- Lucilla de Lachenal, The Torlonia Marbles. Collecting Masterpieces (2021, Fondazione Torlonia, for the original exhibition of these sculptures in the Musei Capitolini in Rome)
Roman, about 160-170 CE, Thasian marble. Found on the Torlonia's Roma Vecchia estate on the Via Latina, Rome (area of Villa dei Settebassi).
Torlonia Collection, Rome, on loan for an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago
Figure of an archer, hollow cast bronze in the round. The figure is nude, well muscled, with richly tousled hair and short beard. He is portrayed in action, slightly bent over and tensed, concentrating on shooting, his left arm extended, his right drawn back. His gaze follows his left arm to the hand, where he originally held the bow, now missing.
It's likely to represent a god or hero, possibly Hercules in the act of shooting the Stymphalian birds, the fifth of his twelve Labors. Or perhaps he represents Odysseus-Ulysses drawing his bow to slay the suitors of Penelope. But the lack of Odysseus' signature pileus hat favors the former analysis.
Romano-British, 100-150 CE; found in July of 1842 in Queen Street, Cheapside, London. Bronze with silvered eyes (not mentioned in any of the museum's literature, but the eyes are clearly silvered)>
Height: 27.70 cm (10.91 in.)
Width: 25.50 cm (10.04 in.)
British Museum, London (1882,0518.1)
For the sixth Labor, Hercules was to drive away an enormous flock of birds which gathered at a lake near the town of Stymphalos. The Stymphalian Birds were man-eating birds with beaks of bronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung. According to Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8.22.5:
“These fly against those who come to hunt them, wounding and killing them with their beaks. All armor of bronze or iron that men wear is pierced by the birds; but if they weave a garment of thick cork, the beaks of the Stymphalian birds are caught in the cork garment... These birds are of the size of a crane, and are like the ibis, but their beaks are more powerful, and not crooked like that of the ibis.”
The amphora decoration shows Herakles using a sling against the Stymphalian birds (swans). On the left Herakles stands to right, in a short purple chiton with lion's skin over head and body, quiver slung at back; the swans are sixteen in number, of which one flies away behind him, five forming a lowermost row have not risen the remaining ten fly about in confusion.
CAV / CAVI @ www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/
Source: www.perseus.tufts.edu
Attic black figured amphora
Height : 40,6 cm.
Attributed to “Group E”
Ca. 540 BC
From Vulci, Viterbo
London, The British Museum, Inv. No. 1843,1103.40
For the sixth Labor, Hercules was to drive away an enormous flock of birds which gathered at a lake near the town of Stymphalos. The Stymphalian Birds were man-eating birds with beaks of bronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung. According to Pausanias, Description of Greece, 8.22.5:
“These fly against those who come to hunt them, wounding and killing them with their beaks. All armor of bronze or iron that men wear is pierced by the birds; but if they weave a garment of thick cork, the beaks of the Stymphalian birds are caught in the cork garment... These birds are of the size of a crane, and are like the ibis, but their beaks are more powerful, and not crooked like that of the ibis.”
The amphora decoration shows Herakles using a sling against the Stymphalian birds (swans). On the left Herakles stands to right, in a short purple chiton with lion's skin over head and body, quiver slung at back; the swans are sixteen in number, of which one flies away behind him, five forming a lowermost row have not risen the remaining ten fly about in confusion.
CAV / CAVI @ www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/
Source: www.perseus.tufts.edu
Attic black figured amphora
Height : 40,6 cm.
Attributed to “Group E”
Ca. 540 BC
From Vulci, Viterbo
London, The British Museum, Inv. No. 1843,1103.40
The Stymphalian Birds are man-eating birds with beaks of bronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung. They were pets of Ares, the god of war. They migrated to a marsh in Arcadia to escape a pack of wolves. There, they bred quickly and swarmed over the countryside, destroying crops, fruit trees, and townspeople.The Stymphalian birds were defeated by the hero Heracles (Hercules) in his Sixth Labour for Eurystheus. Heracles could not go into the marsh to reach the nests of the birds, as the ground would not support his weight. Athena, noticing the hero's plight, gave Heracles a rattle which Hephaestus had made especially for the occasion. Heracles shook the rattle and frightened the birds into the air. Heracles then shot many of them with his poisoned arrows. The rest flew far away, never to plague Arcadia again. Heracles brought some of the slain birds to Eurystheus as proof of his success.
The surviving birds made a new home on an island in the Euxine Sea. The Argonauts later encountered them there. Wikipedia
Klassische Sagen
Die schönsten Sagen des klassischen Altertums gesammelt von Gustav Schwab
neu bearbeitet von Josef Guggenmos
Illustrationen: Gerhard Ulrich
Sigbert Mohn Verlag
(Gütersloh / Deutschland; um 1960)
ex libris MTP
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griechische_Mythologie
One of the statues depicting the twelve labours of Hercules. Shown here is the sixth labour: killing the Stymphalian birds
The Stymphalian Birds are man-eating birds with beaks of bronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung. They were pets of Ares, the god of war. They migrated to a marsh in Arcadia to escape a pack of wolves. There, they bred quickly and swarmed over the countryside, destroying crops, fruit trees, and townspeople.The Stymphalian birds were defeated by the hero Heracles (Hercules) in his Sixth Labour for Eurystheus. Heracles could not go into the marsh to reach the nests of the birds, as the ground would not support his weight. Athena, noticing the hero's plight, gave Heracles a rattle which Hephaestus had made especially for the occasion. Heracles shook the rattle and frightened the birds into the air. Heracles then shot many of them with his poisoned arrows. The rest flew far away, never to plague Arcadia again. Heracles brought some of the slain birds to Eurystheus as proof of his success.
The surviving birds made a new home on an island in the Euxine Sea. The Argonauts later encountered them there. Wikipedia
The Stymphalian Birds are man-eating birds with beaks of bronze, sharp metallic feathers they could launch at their victims, and poisonous dung. They were pets of Ares, the god of war. They migrated to a marsh in Arcadia to escape a pack of wolves. There, they bred quickly and swarmed over the countryside, destroying crops, fruit trees, and townspeople.The Stymphalian birds were defeated by the hero Heracles (Hercules) in his Sixth Labour for Eurystheus. Heracles could not go into the marsh to reach the nests of the birds, as the ground would not support his weight. Athena, noticing the hero's plight, gave Heracles a rattle which Hephaestus had made especially for the occasion. Heracles shook the rattle and frightened the birds into the air. Heracles then shot many of them with his poisoned arrows. The rest flew far away, never to plague Arcadia again. Heracles brought some of the slain birds to Eurystheus as proof of his success.
The surviving birds made a new home on an island in the Euxine Sea. The Argonauts later encountered them there. Wikipedia
This tombstone is in the shape of a miniature altar and was dedicated to a teenage boy by his mother Rodope (pronounced ‘Rod-OH-pea’). On each side it has relief decoration referring to the myth of Hercules.
The front shows a chubby baby wrestling with the many-headed Hydra. The sculptor has mixed up the story of Hercules strangling snakes when he was a baby, with Hercules killing the snake-like Hydra as an adult.
The back shows Hercules’ possessions: a quiver full of arrows, the Nemean lion’s skin, a bow and a club. The left side shows a bearded Hercules about to hit a centaur with his club. This is not one of the traditional 12 labors, but shows the story of his fight with Nessus.
The right side shows Hercules about to hit one of the Stymphalian birds with his club. It is more common for Hercules to be shown shooting the birds with his bow, but this image may have been chosen to balance the left side.
Latin:
d(is) m(anibus) L(ucio) Marcio / Pacato filio d/ulcissimo / fecit Ro/dope ma/ter in/[f]eli/cissima / qui vi(xi)t annos / XV m(enses) VIIII d(ies) VIIII
English translation:
‘To the departed spirits. Rodope, unhappiest mother did this for Lucius Marcius Pacatus, sweetest son, who lived 15 years, 9 months, 9 days.’
In the bottom two lines, the stonecutter has made a mistake. Instead of writing VIX. ANNOS (for ‘vixit annos’ - he lived for ... years’), he’s written VIT. ANNOS.
Roman
75-100 CE
Smyrna, Turkey
Ashmolean Museum (ANMichaelis.202)
Our first show at the Black Cat.
Hands based on "suicide" King of Hearts art.
I've tried several flyer designs in the past using knives / daggers but this is my favorite.
Details best viewed in Original Size.
According to a museum plaque, Herakles is seen preparing to shoot at the Stymphalian birds. This work, which established Bourdelle's reputation, was executed in 1909 following several small-scale studies, most of which were cast in bronze. The first cast of the monumental version was purchased by Prince Eugene of Sweden for his palace in Stockholm.
This was the scene: opening solo act Stymphalian Birds played with an enormous layout of pedals in front of the stage. The audience sat and stood all around; he was lit from the back by red floods. Kind of a cool mood throughout the set, which was a quite successful kind of improvised drone/noise.
“While speaking with my long-ago dead son”
Texts-Design-Photo; Central Kad Suan Kaew Mall, Chiang Mai, Thailand (September 26, 2019) - Terrell Neuage 2019
#LongAgoDeadSon #MythologicalCreature #PegasusWhispered #CentralKadSuanMall #StymphalianBirds #ChiangMai #SymmetricalTeaLeaves #ThoughtsInPatterns #Neuage #ThoughtsInTravel