Two of my favorite mythological rogues come together in this biggish terracotta statuette (or at 40 centimeters, is it rather a smallish statue?) in Boston. Herakles has passed out drunk somewhere (again), and the precocious prankster Eros has taken the opportunity to play dress-up with the hero’s signature lion-skin.
With one hand resting on his rump, Eros mimics the pose of Lysippos’ already famous ‘Weary Herakles’. But rather than slumping onto his club like the middle-age hero, he extends his other hand out in a sort of finger wag….the saucy pose augmented somehow by twining elements he wears like garter belts.
The Hellenistic period saw increased interest in the pudgy form of children (no longer rendered as little adults), and ever more virtuoso experimentation in terracotta. A few cities stand out as power houses of the coroplastic arts (good scrabble word for you there…), Myrina (in modern day Turkey) among the best known and the likely center that produced this work.
Masterfully produced from a mould, many of the details were added afterwards, incised into the wet clay, creating the textural tufts and feathers of lion-skin and wings, and that mischievous glimmer writ large over our young scamp’s face…
