Bronze Subject From The Grand Tour Depicting “seated Hermes”, 19th Century

A bronze figure with a brown patina depicting “Seated Hermes,” also known as “Hermes at Rest.” God of travelers and merchants, messenger of the gods, and personification of ingenuity and cunning intelligence, he is shown here as a youth, seated on a rock, his only recognizable attribute being his winged sandals. A souvenir of the Grand Tour, after the antique, of fine quality, well-proportioned, and exquisitely chiseled. Italy, 19th century. Height: 20 cm. Length: 19 cm. Width: 10.5 cm. (Wear and minor restoration to one toe). A particularly prized subject since the discovery of the antique original during the excavations of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum in 1758, the seated Hermes was reproduced from the 18th century onward for wealthy aristocrats who came to visit the ruins of the cities buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD. Now housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the ancient bronze was considered by Winckelmann to be "the most beautiful of all the statues found" at the time. It is now generally accepted that the Resting Hermes of Herculaneum is a Roman copy of a lost Greek original by the sculptor Lysippus or his school in the 4th century BC.