The Farnese Hercules

Giovanni Pichler

ca. 1770–90 · Onyx and gold · European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

The Pichler family was an Austrian dynasty of glyptic artists based in Rome. Giovanni’s cameo quotes a famous ancient marble statue in the Museo Archeologico, Naples. Another after it, also signed by Pichler, is in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Nathaniel Marchant (see 40.20.1) began to use the same two-thirds viewpoint by at least 1780 in intaglios (now in the State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, and elsewhere) that circulated in the form of sulfur impressions. Whether he or Pichler was the first to do so remains to be discovered.

Artist

Giovanni Pichler

Date

ca. 1770–90

Medium

Onyx and gold

Culture

Italian, Rome

Department

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

Credit line

The Milton Weil Collection, 1939