Farnese Hercules [SEP] time of discovery
for the Baths of Caracalla in Rome (dedicated in 216 AD), where the statue was recovered in 1546, and is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples. The heroically-scaled "Hercules" is one of the most famous sculptures of antiquity, and has fixed the image of the mythic hero in the European imagination.
The "Farnese Hercules" is a massive marble statue, following a lost original cast in bronze through a method called lost wax casting. It depicts a muscular, yet weary, Hercules
Palazzo Farnese, the Farnese family's palatial residence in Rome. This sculpture is dated to the Severian period (A.D. 222-235).
Unlike the discoveries of the Farnese Hercules and the Latin Hercules from this excavation, which were documented as to their location, the only reference to this grouping is from a 1595 engraving by Etienne du Perac of the ruins of the Baths, showing the end of the east palestra, which states: "...in the time of Paul III many beautiful fragments of statues and animals were