Herakles (Copy)

Beautiful, handmade bas-relief painted with ceramic glazes.

"Ex ungue leonem, ex pede Hercule" - From its claws (we can recognize) the lion, from its foot (we can measure) Herakles.

With this sentence, ancient philosophers stated that a dangerous beast and a great hero could be identified by their look, and by their actions too. The Lion of Nemea, a town in Greece, was famous for its ferocity and invulnerability: its claws could pierce armors and shields, while its skin could not be wounded by any weapon.

Herakles, the strongest of all Greek Heroes, had, therefore, to face the lion with a claw and his bare hands, strangling it in the dark cave, in which he had trapped it. After the atrocious fight, he ripped the beast’s fur and wore it as a mantel: it would have protected him in his following challenges, his famous labors.

An allegory of the fight with one own’s dark side, Herakles’ first task has inspired many artists. Together with Hebe and Muse in Venice, Ithaca’s sculpture is part of a triptych that depicts the purification of the hero through his many challenges and his mystic marriage with the goddess of eternal youth.