Infant Hercules Strangling Two Serpents
late 15th–early 16th century
Medium
Bronze
Dimensions
3 3/8 x 2 15/16 in. (8.6 x 7.5 cm.)
Classification
Medals and Plaquettes
Culture
Italian
Department
European Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Ogden Mills, 1926
Accession Number
26.14.11
Tags
Art Historical Context
Behold the *Infant Hercules Strangling Serpents*, a masterful bronze plaquette by the Italian artist Galeazzo Mondella, known as Modern. Crafted in the late 15th to early 16th century this diminutive work (just 3 3/8 x 2 15/16 inches) the mythological moment when the baby Hercules, son of Zeus, heroically throttles the serpents sent by the jealous goddess Hera to kill him in his cradle. Moderno, a leading figure in Renaissance medal-making, renders the infant's divine strength with dynamic tension and expressive detail, making this a perfect emblem of heroism from classical antiquity revived i...
About the Artist
Moderno (Galeazzo Mondella) · 1467–1528
Moderno, identified by scholars as the goldsmith and medallist Galeazzo Mondella (c. 1467–c. 1528), was among the most gifted Italian artists working in small-scale bronze and lead relief at the turn of the sixteenth century. The pseudonym Moderno, meaning simply "the modern one," signals both the esteem in which his contemporaries held his work and his own conscious alignment with the revival of ...