This statue of Hermes, the Greek messenger god, identified by his winged sandals and staff (caduceus) in his left hand, is a copy — one of several — of the original made by the school of Praxiteles
London, British Museum 1599
Purchased from Brucciani in 1884
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 275 (n.2), pl. 96.4
Walston: Catalogue of Casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology (1889), 78, no.369
Smith: Catalogue of British Museum Sculpture III (1904), 37, pl. IV
Rizzo: Prassitele, 75, pl. CXII
It is thought to have been found in central Italy and was owned in the sixteenth century by the powerful and wealthy Farnese family, whose collection of antiquities was one of the finest in Renaissance Rome. It was later in the possession of the king of Naples, who sold it to the British Museum in 1864
