Cape Town Lens: Olympia Metopes – I: Herakles’ First Labor

A Cape Town Lion’s Head tagged image from photographer – Egisto Sani as published on Flickr.

Olympia Metopes – I: Herakles’ First Labor

Image by Egisto Sani

The Lion of Nemea
Twelve sculpted metopes of Parian marble, approximately 1.6 m square and carved with the labors of Herakles, graced the entablature of the pronaos and opisthodomos, six per side. The completion of the labors guaranteed Herakles’ immortality; he was apotheosized at the time of his death and is the only mortal to be honored in this fashion. Pindar and Pausanias claim that Herakles founded the Olympic games. Pausanias also reports that Herakles founded the central ash altar to Zeus at Olympia and introduced the wild olive into Greece from the land of the Hyperboreans ; these olive trees provided the victory crowns for the Olympic victors. Herakles thus has many claims on Olympia.
This metope depicts the first of Herakles’ labor in which he slays the Lion of Nemea. In the scene the young and beardless Herakles, tired, rest his foot on the lion’s body. His right hand holds it his head and his left one would have been leaning on his club. Naer him is Athena, who supported and protected him. A small part of the foot of a figure is visible behind Herakles would have belonged to Hermes. The figure of the weary hero is unprecedented in the art of that period, in which heroic figures were usually portrayed in an epic manner, full of strength.

Marble bas-relief
ca. 470 BC – ca. 457 BC
Olympia, Peloponnese