This marble torso is a fragment of a small-scale copy of a famous, lost bronze statue by the Greek sculptor Lysippus (ca. 320 BC) of the hero Hercules leaning on his club after completing the last of his labors: retrieving the golden apples of the Hesperides, which he holds in his left hand behind his back.
In the 1600s, the bronze statue was known through the marble copy made in the 3rd century by the sculptor Glykon, discovered in Rome in 1546 and acquired by the Farnese family for their palace there. Knowledge of the statue was dispersed by full-scale plaster casts and small-scale copies in bronze, such as that in Case III. By the 1590s, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria (uncle of Archduke Albert and an important collector within the Habsburg family) owned an "antique" marble torso of Hercules that is similar to the Walters' piece. His is now considered a 16th-century forgery; the Walters' piece may be as well.
<bdi><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Lysippos" class="extiw" title="w:en:Lysippos"><span title="4th-century BC Greek sculptor">Lysippos</span></a>
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100 BC-AD 100 (Roman)
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