The sculpture evokes the final phase of the Twelve Labors of Hercules, showing the hero caught in a moment of rest after completing the eleventh effort: having managed to get hold of the golden apples from the garden of the Hesperides (visible in the right hand).

Discovered in Rome at the Baths of Caracalla (212/216 AD).

The twelve works have always represented the clash between man and nature, an expression of divinity in its wildest and most terrible form: Heracles is considered a symbol of courage, moral rigour, strength accompanied by cunning, physical activity (founder of the Olympic Games) and figure of salvation and redemption of humanity from divine cruelty.

The fascinating figure of the Greek hero had great veneration in antiquity, so much so that it was replicated by the greatest artists and reproduced in different sizes and materials (bronze, marble, terracotta, stone, ivory).

In the Greco-Roman era, reproductions were widespread and in high demand. This is evidenced by the countless surviving statues copied in marble from now lost bronze originals.

In ancient times, the difference between original and copy had no role in relation to the function of copies and the context in which they were placed.

The same bronze originals, since they were born from a mechanical repetition of the matrix, are paradoxically more "serial" compared to the marble copies in which the reproduction requires the intervention of the chisel.

Likewise, 3D scanning and printing guarantee more fidelity to the original than any marble copy.