Hercules and Antaeus, after Giulio Romano

Early in the 16th century artists tended to use motifs from antique sculpture with relative freedom, reflecting a more developed sense of historical continuity. For example, Marcantonio Raimondi’s Hercules and Antaeus is inspired by a marble sculpture that, lacking Antaeus’s head and Hercules’s legs, lay on its side at the Belvedere Courtyard. In the print the group has not only been imaginatively restored by the engraver, but also brought to life. The two figures struggle in a stylized setting, with a crumbling classical building in the background.