Hercules and Antaeus

The integration of motifs from the classical repertoire and ancient mythology into the living body of the cultural and formal interests of its own age is, by contrast, evident in this masterpiece of the Florentine Renaissance. The episode of the Labours of Hercules, the god in whom glorious virtus was personified and the protector of Florence, which appears in a small bronze by Antico as a virtuoso imitation of a Roman group, had been Pollaiuolo's starting point for a formidable, original image of human violence as the symbol of continuous, cosmic energy.