Hercules (Piero della Francesca)

Hercules is a fresco fragment by Piero della Francesca, his only known secular work and probably originally part of a cycle of mythological figures.^[1] It dates to sometime after 1465 and is now in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, which acquired it from Joseph Lindon Smith, who in turn bought it from the Florentine art dealer Elia Volpi.^[2]

History

It was rediscovered during the second half of the 18th century in a room of the artist's family home on via delle Aggiunte in Sansepolcro. Removing it from the wall and transporting it caused some further damage. It passed onto the art market, passing through the hands of Florentine art dealer Elia Volpi before being acquired in 1903 by Isabella Stewart Gardner via Joseph Lindon Smith in 1903.

It depicts

in Arezzo, particularly that work's Death of Adam scene which includes a boy leaning on a club in a similar pose to that of Hercules.

References

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