Mercury
19th/20th Century. Bronze, brown patina. Height 192 cm.
This sculpture represents Mercury, the swift messenger of the ancient Roman gods. In Greek mythology he was known as Hermes.
The artist Giambologna was not the first sculptor to address the subject of a figure in flight, nor was he the first to conceive Mercury as running through the air, but his elegant treatments of the problem became the most well known.
The original from around 1580 is in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence.