Vatican Museums

These two reliefs in stucco constitute the remains of the decoration, which we can imagine to have been larger and more complex, of a tomb environment discovered in 1808 in the area of Vigna Moroni in Rome, on the initial part of the Appia near the Porta St. Sebastian. One of them depicts Aphrodite with the dying Adonis, whereas the other, of more dubious interpretation, shows Alexander-Zeus along with Heracles and Poseidon (alternatively identified as Vejovis between Saturn and Neptune). Alexander-Zeus appears seated on a throne and is influenced by the model of the painter Apelles, known from the copy in the house of Vettii in Pompeii. The figure of Heracles instead recalls the form of the lost colossal bronze statue produced by Lysippus for Taranto, the meditating Heracles, known iconographically and from descriptions: the statue, over five metres high, was first transferred to Rome, then transported to Constantinople in 325 A.D., where it was destroyed by the Crusaders in 1204.